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Fed's Rosengren makes strong case for more QE

WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) - The U.S. economy is "only treading water" and central bankers need to launch another, open-ended, asset purchase program to spur demand, said Boston Federal Reserve Bank President Eric Rosengren on Tuesday. In an interview on CNBC that followed an interview in the Wall Street Journal, Rosengren argued that the Fed should set out to buy a specific dollar amount of mortgage-backed securities per month but not set an end-date until there was a clear improvement in the economy. "My hope would be that the policy would be substantial enough that we actually wouldn't have to carry it on for that long and that we would start to see real improvements in the economy," said Rosengren, who is not a voting member of the Federal Open Market Committee this year. More QE would boost asset prices and could help the housing market that already has "some legs," he said. In the Wall Street Journal interview, Rosengren also said he would support trimming the 0.25% rate that banks receive for parking excess cash at the central bank.