Fed should not let credibility suffer, Lacker says (by Greg Robb)

WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) -- It would be devastating if the Federal Reserve lost the inflation-fighting credibility that has built up over the past two decades, Richmond Federal Reserve Bank President Jeffrey Lacker said Tuesday. In a speech in New York, Lacker said investors have some confidence in the Fed's commitment to keep inflation around 2%. "But that confidence should not be taken for granted," Lacker said. Lacker repeated his arguments against the Fed's third round of asset purchases, saying that monetary policy could do little to bring down the unemployment rate. "These forces are hard to quantify, but my sense, given an array of statistical analyses and a wide range of qualitative reports, is that labor-market conditions have been held back by real impediments that are beyond the capacity of monetary policy to offset," he said. And trying to bring down unemployment might be a repeat of the Fed's mistakes in the 1970s, which resulted in high inflation despite high unemployment.