For Immediate Release: Wednesday, Febraury 9, 2011
Contact: Phoebe Silag or Karen Conner, news@epi.org 202-775-8810

Economic Policy Institute economist Josh Bivens testified before the House Financial Services Subcommittee on Domestic Monetary Policy and Technology this morning, where he discussed the actions the Federal Reserve has taken to stabilize the economy. Bivens explained that the Fed’s actions have been effective, but that they haven’t been buttressed by strong exchange-rate and fiscal policy responses. “In short, the Fed saw the economic downturn coming before any other major macroeconomic policymaking body, acted more aggressively than any other, and continues to attack the problem of sluggish recovery in both output and employment with greater urgency than any other team of economic policymakers. If our fiscal and exchange-rate policies were as aggressive as our monetary policy in historical terms, we could well have an unemployment rate 2-3 percentage points lower today and hundreds of billions of dollars of additional economic output,” said Bivens.

Read Bivens’ testimony here.