AUGUST 30, 2010

Bernanke Tries to Manage Expectations of Fed Role

Federal Reserve officials and economists appear increasingly united in their view that the partisan gridlock on fiscal policy in Washington has clouded the prospects for a faster and stronger recovery.

The Fed chairman, Ben S. Bernanke, who has assiduously avoided taking sides in fiscal debates, said on Friday that the central bank stood ready to use a variety of tools to forestall deflation, a broad decline in prices. But he made it clear that the Fed could not simply conjure up a recovery by manipulating interest rates and the money supply.

“Central bankers alone cannot solve the world’s economic problems,” Mr. Bernanke said in what became a theme of the annual Fed policy symposium here, organized by the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City.

Mr. Bernanke has told Congress that some additional fiscal stimulus could be helpful in supporting the recovery, as long as it was accompanied by a credible plan to gradually bring deficits under control and stabilize the ratio of debt to gross domestic product, the broadest measure of economic output.

He has not weighed in on specifics — like the Obama administration’s proposal to spur lending to small businesses, or the call by some Republicans to extend all of the Bush-era tax cuts — but has instead expressed hope that a bipartisan fiscal commission appointed by Mr. Obama will deliver specific and meaningful proposals.