Europe impact on U.S. overstated, Fed's Bullard (by Greg Robb)

WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) - Despite nervousness due to headlines from the European sovereign debt crisis, U.S. households or businesses have not changed their behavior in a major way and as a result moderate growth continues, said James Bullard, the president of the St. Louis Fed Bank on Tuesday. In general, U.S. consumers view Europe as too distant to force them to alter their spending, Bullard said in a speech to financial analysts in St. Louis. Large U.S. businesses are also worried about Europe but their growth strategies are in Asia, Bullard said. The crisis in Europe remains unpredictable, he said. If the situation worsens, the Fed can pump money into the financial system using the same means used during the U.S. financial crisis in 2008 and 2009, he said. In a discussion of the Fed's tool-kit, Bullard said he was against tying Fed policy directly to the unemployment rate as some have suggested. Fed policy could be "pulled off course for a generation" if it tried to bring down high unemployment stuck at high levels.