Remember QE3?

While the shorts struggle, some of the FED members are thinking of QE3….

Meeting participants expressed a range of views on the potential efficacy of policy tools tied to the size and composition of the Federal Reserve’s balance sheet. Many judged that these policies could provide addi- tional monetary policy accommodation by lowering longer-term interest rates and easing financial condi- tions at a time when further reductions in the federal funds rate are infeasible. However, a number saw the potential effects on real economic activity as limited or only transitory, particularly in the current environment of balance sheet deleveraging, credit constraints, and household and business uncertainty about the econom- ic outlook. Participants noted that a SOMA maturity extension program would not expand the Federal Re- serve’s balance sheet or the level of reserve balances, and that the scale of such a program was necessarily limited by the size of the Federal Reserve’s holdings of shorter-term securities so that it could not be repeated to provide further stimulus. A number of participants saw large-scale asset purchases as potentially a more potent tool that should be retained as an option in the event that further policy action to support a stronger economic recovery was warranted. Some judged that large-scale asset purchases and the resulting expansion of the Federal Reserve’s balance sheet would be more likely to raise inflation and inflation expectations than to stimulate economic activity and argued that such tools should be reserved for circumstances in which the risk of deflation was elevated.

Full reading FOMC minutes.