Plosser del Fed dice que US esta preparada para la caida de Europa.
ECONOMY Updated May 28, 2012, 9:41 a.m. ET
U.S. Ready for Europe Fallout, Says Fed Official
By BRIAN BLACKSTONE
ELTVILLE, Germany—The U.S. Federal Reserve is well equipped to deal with any fallout from Europe's escalating debt crisis, a top official said.
"There's absolutely no reason for people in the United States to get all in a dither," Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia President Charles Plosser said in an interview with The Wall Street Journal.
Charles Plosser, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia.
Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia President Charles Plosser on risks to the U.S. from the Greek crisis, the Fed's tools to contain any fallout and the central bank's evolving communications strategy.
Q&A: Philadelphia Fed Chief Charles Plosser
Mr. Plosser said that in the short run, uncertainty in Europe might even work in the U.S. economy's favor, via lower U.S. interest rates and energy prices.
Worries over Greece could lead to more global investment funds being parked in the U.S., boosting liquidity, Mr. Plosser said in an interview in Eltville, in the wine-growing region near Frankfurt, where he was attending a conference sponsored by the German Bundesbank.
He said it was "not an unreasonable argument" that lower U.S. borrowing costs and falling gasoline prices in response to the European crisis could, in the near term, outweigh the drag on the U.S. economy from lower stock-market values.
For the Fed, the challenge is how to extract signals for the U.S. on interest rates from financial markets that are increasingly dominated by events in Europe, Mr. Plosser said.
"You get a good labor number, you get a good industrial production number, but if you have bad news from Europe it's completely swamped," he said.
"I think that Europe is just throwing a lot of noise into the system right now," he said. "It makes reading the tea leaves particularly difficult right now."
The main danger for the U.S., he said, is that concerns over European banks could potentially lead to more restrictive financial-market funding for U.S. banks as well, "just because everybody's scared."
However, with U.S. financial institutions already cutting their European exposure, Mr. Plosser said he isn't too worried about that risk. A "flood of liquidity" into the U.S. as investors seek safer assets is more likely "than the drying up of liquidity," he said.
Mr. Plosser said the Fed has tools to deal with any contagion from Europe, including the existing U.S. dollar-funding lines with the European Central Bank as well as longer-term loans through the Fed's discount window and Lehman-era programs such as the Term Auction Facility.
"I think we have the tools at our disposal if they become necessary," he said.
Despite the uncertainty emanating from Europe, Mr. Plosser expects U.S. gross domestic product to expand by 2.5% to 3% this year and next, and the unemployment rate to drift gradually lower. Against that backdrop, central-bank interest rates would need to rise, he said.
"As long as that's continuing, then I don't see the case for [an] ever-increasing degree of accommodation," he said.
Mr. Plosser is considered one of the Fed's most strident inflation fighters. Still, even with annual consumer-price growth above the central bank's 2% target, he doesn't see inflation as a short-term risk, noting that lower energy prices should bring the rate down. The risk he sees is longer term.
"We have $1.5 trillion in excess reserves. Inflation is going to occur when those excess reserves start flowing" into the economy, he said.
"The challenge for the Fed is will we act quickly enough or aggressively enough to prevent that from happening," he said. The central bank could also come under political pressure if it is forced to sell some of its portfolio of mortgage-backed securities, he said.
Mr. Plosser is a member of a Fed working group tasked with improving the central bank's communications with financial markets and the public. As part of that effort, the Fed has started releasing individual forecasts for interest rates, and publishes a date—currently late 2014—for how long they expect them to remain at their current level near zero.
Mr. Plosser, who opposes setting a specific time frame for policy, warned against putting too much emphasis on specific interest-rate assumptions, calling them "inputs" into the Fed's deliberations.
"I'd rather get rid of the calendar date and talk more about economic conditions and how our decision on how to change the funds rate is going to be more a function of the economy than some calendar date," he said.
He said he opposes extending a $400 billion Fed program launched last year, called "Operation Twist," which involves selling short-term Treasury securities and using the proceeds to buy long-term bonds.
"I don't see where it's had any impact. I see no reason to extend it," he said.
Write to Brian Blackstone at brian.blackstone@dowjones.com