Fed policy can help job market, Lockhart says

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Fed policy can help job market, Lockhart says
from MarketWatch.com - MarketPulse
WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) - Federal Reserve policy can have an impact on the weak labor market and that is what justified the central bank's decision to launch a third round of asset purchases, colloquially known as QE3, said Dennis Lockhart, the president of the Atlanta Federal Reserve Bank, on Friday. "As I approached the FOMC meeting last week, I concluded that there was indeed a call to action falling out of the discouraging conditions of slowing growth and still high unemployment with meager recent progress in bringing it down," Lockhart said in a speech to a business group in Atlanta. There has been a vigorous debate at the central bank over the hiring slowdown. Lockhart is the second top Fed official in two days to say he was persuaded that the problems in the labor market are cyclical. On Thursday, Narayana Kocherlakota, the president of the Minneapolis Fed Bank, and a former leading advocate of the theory that the labor market woes were structural, said the evidence has now caused him to change his mind.