So far the Fed has acquired 177 billion in Treasury securities

The spectrum of the "double dip" (the double-dip recession) plane on the Federal Reserve (Fed). Premature or not, there is no doubt that the question of the exit strategy will be dominated the meeting of the monetary policy Committee which ends today. If the vast majority of economists expected a continuation of its interest rate in the range of 0 to 0.25 until the end of the year, questions remain on the impact of its massive policy of quantitative easing and redemption of debt and on ways of exiting without awaken inflationary pressures and dangerous for the resumption.

"Some members of the Fed fear that any further action could be counterproductive and could lead to rising interest rates in the long term because of fears of a return of inflation", said the "chief economist" of Moodyseconomy, Mark Zandi. Even if the signals of recovery remain weak, the question today is how the Fed will manage the stabilization of the economy. After having injected more than 1,000 billion dollars in the US economy by doubling to 2,100 billion the size of its balance sheet, the Central Bank will have to decide the slowdown of its non-conventional policy for the purchase of Treasury bills.

Some experts believe that after having announced $ 300 billion of repurchase of Treasury securities in the next six months and 1,250 billion of real estate debt, at its meeting of 29 April, the Central Bank should spread its interventions to avoid inflationary risks. So far, the Fed has acquired 177 billion in Treasury securities.

The spectrum of a relapse

Despite the recent warning of its Chairman, Ben Bernanke, on the risk of drift of the Federal deficit (13 of GDP in 2009), the Obama administration fears the perverse effects of a premature return to austerity. In a forum published by "the economist", Barack Obama, economic adviser Christina Romer, estimated that the Fed should be able to issue debt to reduce the size of its balance sheet without stimulating inflation. For her, the absolute priority is to avoid the spectre of a "recession in W" of the type of 1937. It is the abrupt withdrawal of monetary stimulus policy that caused the relapse at the time of the great depression. "The temptation to declare victory (and the return to normal after an economic crisis) is strong." "But he must resist this temptation until the economy returned again with full employment", writes Christina Romer activist for the granting of new powers to the Fed.

But Economist Nouriel Roubini of New York University, despite the growing signs of a way out of recession end of the year, the relaxation of monetary policy and the massive injection of liquidity into the financial system could lead to a new speculative bubble in the financial markets and raw materials. What some experts call the risk of "liquidity trap", where monetary policy is more than no recourse to stimulate the economy. Other observers, such as former Vice President of the Fed, Alan s. Blinder, believe that the issue of the "crisis exit" is very premature and that inflationary pressures are widely overstated for the next two years.