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San Diego/Los Angeles - The risk of inflation is keeping the Federal Reserve from doing more to support the US economy, according to comments from several top Fed officials that, taken together, reinforced the notion the central bank is happy to stand pat for now.
Five policymakers weighed in on Tuesday on how the US central bank intends to deal with possible threats to the economic recovery, including volatile oil prices, Europe's debt troubles, and a looming "fiscal cliff" of scheduled US tax increases and spending cuts.
With inflation - or the measure of how much prices rise over time - very close to the Fed's targent of 2%, the officials seemed hesitant to rock the boat with more bond buying - even if unemployment remained high at 8.2%.
Atlanta Fed President Dennis Lockhart said inflation can run "a bit" above the Fed's 2% target, but he would be concerned if it ran at 3% or higher, and policymakers should aim for the rate to gravitate back toward that target.
"As a practical matter, running higher inflation ... I just don't see happening. Not intentionally," said Lockhart, a voter this year on the Fed's policy-setting panel, in comments at the 2012 Milken Institute Global Conference in Beverly Hills, California.
"In my mind," he added, "the inflation target is always something that you're always trying to gravitate toward."
In January, the Fed took the historic step of formally setting an inflation target of 2%. At the same time, it made a conditional pledge to keep interest rates "exceptionally low" until at least the end of 2014 - a statement it repeated last week to help revive an economy slow to recover from recession.
Inflation is running very close to the new target. Headline inflation receded to a rate of 2.1% in March, though core inflation has risen slightly in the last several months. In the early stages of its easy monetary policies, the Fed was worried about deflation.
"The public has a right to expect the central bank to keep inflation near its target of 2% over the medium term," Philadelphia Fed President Charles Plosser told a conference in San Diego.
"Inflation often develops gradually, and if monetary policy waits too long to respond, it can be very costly to correct," said Plosser, an inflation hawk who does not have a policy vote this year.
Some see room for more stimulus
Chicago Fed President Charles Evans, opposite Plosser on the Fed's philosophical spectrum of policymakers, meanwhile, urged an inflation "cushion" up to 3% that would let policymakers help the economic recovery along and cut the unemployment rate, which in March was still high at 8.2%.
The Fed has a "tremendous" amount of room to ease policy more, in part because the United States is not likely to see a "burst" of inflation, said Evans, a policy dove who has long endorsed more bond buys.
In late 2008, the Fed slashed interest rates to near zero and has bought $2.3 trillion in long-term securities in an unprecedented drive to spur growth and revive the economy after the worst recession in decades.
But the US recovery, especially in jobs, has been slow and economic growth has been erratic.
Last week, the central bank slightly raised its inflation forecasts through the end of 2014, a move some took to mean it was less inclined to embark on a third round of bond buys, known as quantitative easing (QE3).
The Fed may need QE3 if the jobless rate gets "stuck" at around 8 percent or inflation drops well below 2%, San Francisco Fed President John Williams said at the Milken conference.
But Williams made it clear he does not expect the economy to underperform in such a way, and added that the Fed would "take the punch bowl away" if inflation picks up above 2% in a sustained way.
Jeffrey Lacker, head of the Atlanta Fed,, speaking in Washington, warned the further easing would only raise inflation pressures and not do much for economic growth.
