QE2: Fed may start with $500-bn plan

The Federal Reserve will probably introduce an unprecedented second round of unconventional monetary easing tomorrow by announcing a plan to buy at least $500 billion of long-term securities, according to economists surveyed by Bloomberg News.

Policy makers meeting today and tomorrow will restart a program of securities purchases to spur growth, reduce unemployment and increase inflation, said 53 of 56 economists surveyed last week. Twenty-nine estimated the Fed will pledge to buy $500 billion or more, while another seven predicted $50 billion to $100 billion in monthly purchases without a specified total. The remainder said the Fed would buy up to $500 billion or didn’t quantify their forecast.

The varied responses reflect differences among Fed officials over the total amount of purchases needed to bolster the recovery. Policy makers, pursuing unprecedented stimulus, have cut the benchmark rate almost to zero and bought $1.7 trillion in securities without generating growth fast enough to bring down unemployment from near a 26-year high.

“There’s no silver bullet right now” and central bankers have “very few options left in terms of lowering interest rates,” said John Silvia, chief economist at Wells Fargo Securities LLC in Charlotte, North Carolina. He predicted $500 billion of Treasury and mortgage-backed securities purchases in the next six months.

Shock-and-awe plan
Disagreements among policy makers over whether to expand the balance sheet incrementally or stage a so-called shock-and- awe program of big asset purchases have created confusion among investors over the likely size and duration of any new easing, said Ward McCarthy, chief financial economist at Jefferies & Co in New York.

“There has not been a uniformity of opinion emanating from the multitude of public appearances from Fed officials,” McCarthy said. He predicts the Fed will buy $500 billion of securities over the next six months and was among 13 economists who said the purchases would include mortgage-backed bonds in addition to Treasuries.

New York Fed President William Dudley set expectations at $500 billion in purchases when he said in an October 1 speech that purchases totaling about that amount would add as much stimulus as lowering the Fed’s benchmark rate by 0.5 percentage point to 0.75 percentage point.

Dudley put the $500 billion figure “in there and it sounded like he was trying to move it along in that direction,” said Chris Rupkey, chief financial economist at Bank of Tokyo- Mitsubishi UFJ Ltd. in New York, who predicts the Fed will announce up to $500 billion of purchases by March.