Unemployment, Ben Bernanke | featured news

Chairman Ben Bernanke offered a wide-ranging defense Monday of the Federal Reserve's aggressive policies to stimulate the still-weak economy. The Fed needs to drive down long-term borrowing rates because the economy isn't growing fast enough to reduce high unemployment, Bernanke said in a speech to the Economic Club of Indiana. The unemployment rate is 8.1 percent.

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke makes clear in a letter to a House lawmaker that he thinks the Fed can do more to bolster the economic recovery and help reduce unemployment.

Bernanke, who has called the level of long-term unemployment in the United States a national crisis, made clear that policymakers were still preoccupied with lowering the 9 percent jobless rate, but he warned it will take time to bring it to more-normal levels.

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke said Wednesday that long-term unemployment is a “national crisis” and suggested that Congress should take further action to combat it. He also said lawmakers should provide more help to the battered housing industry.

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke told Congress Friday that there's increasing evidence that a "self-sustaining" economic recovery is taking hold, but he said the Fed's $600 billion Treasury bond-buying program is still needed because it will take years for unemployment to drop to more normal levels.

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke on Friday laid out a case for the central bank to take further action to bolster growth, citing the risks of prolonged high unemployment and a U.S. economy slipping into a deflationary spiral.

Fed chief Bernanke expressed confidence to Congress that the unfolding economic recovery will have staying power, but not fast enough to relieve high unemployment quickly.