Fed policymaker: We need QE3

Charles Evans, a leading Federal Reserve policymaker, has called on Ben Bernanke to issue further monetary stimulus as inflation higher than the 2% target would not be a "catastrophe".

While chairman Bernanke has resisted calls for QE3 in the US, Evans said he favours "more accommodation" and is the first policymaker on the Federal Open Market Committee to publicly declare inflation above 2% would not be disastrous to the US economy, the FT reports. "If 1% was not a catastrophe, 3% is not a catastrophe," he said in a CNBC interview. "I favour being much clearer and [more] specific about the economic markers it would take in order for us to alter that." This could also include keeping interest rates low until unemployment falls from its current level of 9.1% to 7%...