- Associated Press - Wednesday, July 13, 2011

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke said Wednesday that the central bank is prepared to provide additional stimulus if the economic lull persists.

Delivering his twice-a-year economic report to Congress, Mr. Bernanke laid out three options the central bank would consider. One possibility, he said, was another round of buying Treasury bonds, a policy sharply criticized by some Republicans. That would make the third such effort since 2009.

The Fed chief’s reassurances helped drive stock prices higher, but it also underscored the fragile state of the economy more than two years after economists said the recession had ended. Unemployment has risen for three straight months and a debt crisis in Greece and other European countries threatens to weaken the global economy.

Mr. Bernanke said more stimulus would only be necessary if economic conditions worsened and deflation re-emerged as a threat. Deflation is a destabilizing period of falling prices.

He also said the Fed was nimble enough to respond if the opposite happened. In other words, the Fed was ready to raise interest rates that have been held at record lows for nearly three years, should the central bank fear a greater risk of inflation.

“We have to keep all options on the table,” Mr. Bernanke told the House Financial Services Committee on the first of two days of Capitol Hill testimony. “If we get to the point where the recovery is faltering” and inflation is dropping toward zero, then the central bank would consider the additional stimulus options, he said.

In addition to purchasing Treasury bonds, Mr. Bernanke said the Fed could help the economy by:

*Cutting the interest paid to banks on the reserves they hold as a way to encourage them to lend more.

*Communicating in more explicit terms how long it planned to keep rates at record-low levels. That would give investors confidence about the Fed’s efforts to continue supporting the economy.

The Fed last month agreed to end on schedule its program to boost the economy through the purchase of $600 billion in Treasury bonds. But the central bank also acknowledged that the economy had slowed in the first half of the year. As a result, it lowered its economic growth forecast for 2011 and said unemployment wouldn’t fall below 8.6 percent this year.

Since then, the government reported a second straight month of dismal hiring in June. The economy added just 18,000 jobs last month, the fewest in nine months. The unemployment rate rose to 9.2 percent, the highest rate this year.

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