Fed’s Evans: More Easing Needed to Bolster Recovery

Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago President Charles Evans said the central bank needs to further ease monetary policy to fuel the U.S. economic expansion.

“Clearly, more accommodation would be appropriate,” Evans said in the text of speech Thursday in Washington. “At 8.3 percent, the unemployment rate is substantially above reasonable measures of the natural rate.”

Evans repeated his call for the central bank to make more explicit its pledge to hold down the benchmark interest rate. In a paper released Thursday, Evans and Chicago Fed economists said the central bank may be able to limit inflation as economic growth picks up by clarifying the changes that will prompt it to raise the main interest rate.