Fed: Third round of “QE3” won't affect joblessness

An old Montana joke: A cattleman goes in to see his banker. "I've got good news and bad news, hoss. First, the good news. The book keeper says I lost $20,000 last year. Now, the good news. I'm gonna stay with y'all - at least through calving season..."

What else would you expect from a bunch of bankers?

With unemployment hovering at the same rate  as in January and the dollar falling against the worth of the euro - which is at $1.30 - the Federal Reserve Board of Governors annonced it will continue to allow the U.S. government to try to borrow the American economy out of debt.

Chairman Ben Bernanke admitted the plan to continue to buy nearly worthless securities from banks – in this third round of "quantitative easing," the plan is to buy mortgage-backed derivatives – is inflationary.

The Federal Reserve system will buy an additional $40 billion per month in the mortgage bonds while continuing to reinvest an additional $85 billion per month in principal payments from government agency debt. At the same time, it will further cut the benchmark “federal funds rate” to nearly zero percent.

Mr. Bernanke told the media that the Fed is seeking to "balance" the problem of inflation against the goal of reducing unemployment, which pragmatic voices peg at around 15  percent, discounting the figures for those who have applied for unemployment benefits, and adding the numbers who are not only out of work, but have simply quit looking for employment.

How much inflation will the continued policy of “quantitative easing” - QE3 - cause?

Shylock agrees to loan the sum at zero percent interest

Well, our policy approach doesn’t involve intentionally trying to raise inflation. That’s not the objective. It’s to ensure that we have enough support to have the economy grow and bring unemployment over time. We’ve seen unemployment basically the same place it was in January. We’ve seen not enough jobs growth to bring down the unemployment rate. And what we need to see is more progress. And that’s -- that’s what we’ll be looking at... if inflation goes above the target level as we talked about in our statement in January, we take a balanced approach. We bring inflation back to the target over time but we do it in the way that takes into account the deviations from both of their targets...

How much will QE3 reduce unemployment? Well, what happens is going to depend on where the economy goes. How much ultimate accommodation we give the economy...In any case, again, I want to be clear while I think we can make a meaningful and significant contribution to this problem to reducing this problem, we can’t solve it. We don’t have tools that are strong enough to solve the unemployment problem.

He is up for reappointment in the year 2015, no matter who is President.