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Click here to visit the new home of Politics Daily!WASHINGTON -- Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke said Wednesday that the Fed can't take additional steps to try to ease high unemployment without escalating high inflation. If inflation were to accelerate, the Fed would have to raise rates to slow borrowing and spending and blunt price increases. Hiring might then slow. Speaking at a news conference with reporters, Bernanke sketched a picture of an economy growing steadily but still weighed down by a prolonged period of unemployment, now at 8.8 percent. He acknowledged the pain that is causing, noting that around 45 percent of the ...
WASHINGTON -- Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke told Congress Tuesday that a prolonged rise in oil prices would pose a danger to the economy. But he said a more likely outcome is a temporary and modest increase in consumer prices - not runaway inflation. Bernanke, in prepared testimony to the Senate Banking Committee, expressed confidence that economic growth would increase this year. But he warned it won't be strong enough to quickly lower unemployment, now at 9 percent. He also cited other risks to the economy, including rising prices for oil, gasoline, food and other commodities, and ...
The food on your plate, the gas in your tank, the plastic in your children's toys and the clothing on their backs are likely to get more expensive in the coming months in a spurt of inflation that could play havoc with the economic recovery. Consumers haven't yet felt many cost increases in their daily and weekly lives, thanks to companies' skittishness when it comes to raising prices amid widespread unemployment, but evidence is growing that inflation is working its way to store shelves and Americans' wallets. The Labor Department today said that wholesale prices for finished goods rose 0.8 ...
Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke told Congress on Wednesday that the sharp drop in unemployment over the last two months is encouraging but cautioned that it will take several years for hiring to return to normal. See full article from DailyFinance: http://srph.it/e2eqhY ...
It seems safe to say that Elizabeth Duke started her professional life thinking more of Shakespeare than small-business loans, leading roles on stage rather than leadership of a $14.8 trillion economy amid the tumult of financial crisis. But Duke, now a governor on the board of the Federal Reserve and an active player in efforts to heal an economy with millions of Americans out of work, says it was her aspirations as an actress that led her to become a banker. Chris Rank, Bloomberg/Getty Images Elizabeth Duke, a governor of the U.S. Federal Reserve, recently told a student ...
The U.S. economy is doing better -- unless you're out of work or worry about the cost of buying gasoline and putting food on your table. That was an unspoken bottom line of Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke's speech today at the National Press Club in Washington, where he asserted that the U.S. economic recovery is back on track and that the emergency measures taken by the Fed are working. "Overall," Bernanke said, "improving household and business confidence, accommodative monetary policy, and more-supportive financial conditions, including an apparent increase in the willingness of ...
For all the knotty financial, psychological and political factors complicating the Federal Reserve's effort to get the economy back on track, one persistent and simple truth in its monetary policy statement today says it all: "Employers remain reluctant to add to payrolls." The United States just isn't putting back to work the millions of Americans who lost their jobs during and since the 2008-09 recession. And "the disappointingly slow" progress toward the Fed's objective almost seems to mock the central banks' long-running and continuing promise to keep its benchmark costs for borrowed ...
WASHINGTON -- The U.S. economy ended last year on an encouraging note, with all parts of the country showing improvements. Factories produced more, shoppers spent more and companies hired more. All those signs point to a stronger economy in 2011. That's the picture that emerges from the Federal Reserve's survey of nationwide economic conditions released Wednesday. Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke is optimistic that the economy will strengthen this year, but warned last week that it will take up to five years for unemployment, now at 9.4 percent, to drop to a historically normal level of around 6 ...
(Dec. 15) -- Last month, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke argued that the Fed's latest attempt to get the economy improving at a quicker pace -- a second round of quantitative easing (widely dubbed QEII) -- would help create "a virtuous circle" stemming from lower long-term rates, greater investment, higher stock prices, improved consumer confidence and a lower dollar. It is now one month later; long-term rates have gone up sharply and the dollar is strengthening. The central bank's Federal Open Market Committee met this week and decided not to change course -- maintaining its plan to ...
Bebeto Matthews, AP Among other things, Ben Stein is an economist. (Nov. 12) -- What is "quantitative easing" and why are all those professors, pundits and foreign finance ministers saying so many bad things about it? Let me tell you. The nation, as we all know, is in at best a shallow, slow, painful recovery from a cruel recession. Our leaders want the recovery to come sooner and more vigorously. There are basically two ways to stimulate the economy, economists generally believe. One is by "fiscal policy," which is by running large government deficits that supply missing private demand ...
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