Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke said the Fed will probably hold down its target interest rate long after ending $85 billion in monthly bond buying, and possibly after unemployment falls below 6.5 percent, Bloomberg News reported today. “The target for the federal funds rate is likely to remain near zero for a considerable time after the asset purchases end, perhaps well after” the jobless rate breaches the Fed’s 6.5 percent threshold, Bernanke said yesterday. In deciding when to wind down open-ended purchases of bonds, Fed officials are weighing both the “cumulative progress” since they began the program in September 2012 as well as “the prospect for continued gains,” Bernanke said. The labor market has shown “meaningful improvement” since the start of the program, although recent job reports have been “somewhat disappointing,” he said.
