Fed's Bullard: U.S. fits slow post-crisis pattern (by Greg Robb)

WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) -- The U.S. economy seems to be experiencing the slower-than-normal growth predicted by two prominent economists who have looked at 800 years of financial history, James Bullard, president of the St. Louis Federal Reserve Bank, said Thursday. In their book, "This Time is Different," economists Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff warned that economies grow more slowly in the wake of financial crises. "A version of this seems to have happened in the U.S.," Bullard remarked in a speech at Notre Dame University. He said U.S. growth and inflation are "about on target if properly adjusted for the Reinhart-Rogoff effect." If policy makers don't adjust for this, it could be "an unmitigated disaster," he added. Bullard has come out against the Fed's third round of asset purchases, colloquially known as QE3. He suggested that the Fed could be repeating a mistake of the early 1970s, when the central bank did not recognize a productivity slowdown