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Fed’s Bullard: Programs so far are ‘standard’ central banking – Metro US

Fed’s Bullard: Programs so far are ‘standard’ central banking

FILE PHOTO: St. Louis Federal Reserve Bank President James Bullard
FILE PHOTO: St. Louis Federal Reserve Bank President James Bullard speaks at a public lecture in Singapore

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The aggressive programs enacted by the U.S. Federal Reserve so far are “standard” and don’t cross the line to direct monetary financing of the federal government’s rising deficits, St. Louis Fed president James Bullard said.

“I don’t see monetary finance coming out of this. These are standard moves that we made,” Bullard said of the trillions of dollars in programs the Fed has rolled out to backstop credit markets and buy unlimited amounts of U.S. Treasury bonds. “We can go much further…But it is not monetary finance. It is lending, not spending.”

(Reporting by Howard Schneider, Editing by Franklin Paul)