WASHINGTON — Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke sent a fresh signal Thursday that he’s in no rush to reverse course and start boosting interest rates.
The Fed’s key bank lending rate is at a record low near zero and will probably stay there for an “extended period,” Bernanke said in a speech to a Fed conference in Washington, D.C.
That echoed the pledge he and his colleagues made at their meeting in late September. The goal: Super- low rates will entice people and businesses to spend more, nurturing the budding recovery.
Although Bernanke has previously said the United States is likely out of recession, he has warned that the recovery won’t be robust enough to prevent the unemployment rate — now at a 26-year high of 9.8 percent — from rising. It is expected to top 10 percent this year and rise as high as around 10.5 percent in the middle of next year before slowly drifting downward.
Still, Bernanke made clear Thursday that when the time is right, the Fed will have the tools and the political will to reel in the unprecedented amount of money it has pumped into the economy to avoid unleashing inflation.
