"I am really doubtful that monetary policy is a tool that is going to help us very much" to help spur demand and improve hiring in an economy where many households and companies are still looking to cut borrowing levels, rather than to increase them, Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia President Charles Plosser said in an interview with Dow Jones Newswires and The Wall Street Journal.

Plosser said he sees a high bar to new Fed action. "Broadly speaking, there are two things the Fed should respond to," he said. "If there were some kind of financial crisis, like Europe, it would be appropriate for us to step in" and be the lender of last resort. Also, if deflationary fears "became a real threat again, that would be a justification for the Fed to step in again."

Asked if he would push at the Sept. 20-21 policy meeting for clarity on how long the Fed will leave interest rates unchanged, he said that “would be a welcome addition to our current conditional forward guidance.”

“At the moment we added mid-2013 to the statement and there’s some conditionality associated with that,” he said. “I would prefer to be extraordinarily clear in the conditioning to that. That would be truly clarifying.”

In a speech last week in Bismarck, I said that I believe that any additional provision of accommodation in September or thereafter will have to be judged on its own merits. Some readers or listeners may have found this statement to be imprecise. So, let me elaborate on what I meant then, and continue to believe. I assess FOMC actions in light of the incoming data and the Committee’s communicated objective of keeping inflation at 2 percent or a bit under. With that in mind, the data in August did not justify the additional accommodation provided at that meeting. It is unlikely that the data in September will warrant adding still more accommodation.

“Given the weak data we’ve seen recently and considering the rising concern about chronic slow growth or worse, I don’t think any policy option can be ruled out at the moment,” Lockhart said today a speech in Lafayette, Louisiana. “However, it is important that monetary policy not be seen as a panacea.”

“We may find, as economic circumstances evolve, that policy adjustments are required,” Lockhart said to the Greater Lafayette Chamber of Commerce. “In more adverse scenarios, further policy accommodation might be called for. But as of today, I am comfortable with the current stance of policy, especially considering the tensions policy must navigate between the short term” and longer structural adjustments.

Lockhart said in response to audience questions that the central bank should have a significant impact through its pledge to hold interest rates low through at least mid-2013, while the commitment may change should the economy gain strength.

The central bank’s pledge “should have a big influence on the market,” Lockhart said. “Even that is conditional to an extent” and “could be revisited,” he said. “For the most part, we can count on it.”

“I believe that undoing this commitment in the near term would undercut the ability of the Committee to offer similar conditional commitments in the future -- and this ability has certainly proved very useful in the past three years,” Kocherlakota said today, according to prepared remarks for a speech in Bismarck, North Dakota. “I plan to abide by the August 2011 commitment in thinking about my own future decisions. Of course, the case for any additional easing would have to be made on its own merits.”

Kocherlakota changed his mind by October.

"I definitely favor strong accommodation at this point," he said. "I supported the policy decision and the announcement, but frankly, I would have wanted to do more."

We need to do much more to increase the level of accommodation.

In light of its current outlook, the Committee recently decided to provide more specific forward guidance about its expectations for the future path of the federal funds rate. In particular, in the statement following our meeting earlier this month, we indicated that economic conditions--including low rates of resource utilization and a subdued outlook for inflation over the medium run--are likely to warrant exceptionally low levels for the federal funds rate at least through mid-2013. That is, in what the Committee judges to be the most likely scenarios for resource utilization and inflation in the medium term, the target for the federal funds rate would be held at its current low levels for at least two more years.

I think there are three elements to my concern. One was I thought that our description of the economy was overly pessimistic, that our language we used was not as optimistic as it might have been.

And I also think that the signal we send about 2013 signaled that we were pretty pessimistic for some time to come. I thought that was not appropriate.

I didn`t think the data justified it at this point. But even if we did justify that in terms of the outlook, I was concerned that now was not the time to make a policy decision.

The data had been very volatile. The stock market had been very volatile, and that it was inappropriate to react on a very short-term basis.  Monetary policy needs to be focused on the intermediate to longer term.

And I thought we were overreacting to the events. So I would prefer us to sort of sit tight for a little longer, let the data come in to get a better handle on the outlook and forecast.

“With my diminished outlook for economic growth, and my outlook for inflation to soon fall back to 2 percent, I was in favor of providing additional support to the recovery at last week’s FOMC meeting,” Pianalto said today in a speech in Columbus, Ohio.

“Under the circumstances, I think it made sense to take the unprecedented step of including that conditional guidance in our press statement,”

“We very much still expect the economy to recover,” Dudley, 58, said today in response to audience questions after a speech in Newark, New Jersey. Growth during the second half of 2011 will be “significantly firmer” than in the first six months, and the risk of recession remains “quite low,” he said.

"We have plenty of ammunition left."

I was also concerned that just by tweaking the language the way the committee did, our action might be interpreted as encouraging the view that there is an FOMC so-called “Bernanke put” that would be too easily activated in response to a reversal in the financial markets.

My long-standing belief is that the Federal Reserve should never enact such asymmetric policies to protect stock market traders and investors. I believe my FOMC colleagues share this view.

A very downbeat description of the economy would not do much to engender confidence in the business community or the consumer community. And I was worried that we were playing into that.

But I was also concerned that the action that was taken, which was to change the extended period language to a date, was poorly designed and was inappropriate. Policy should not be dependent on the calendar. It should be depending on the economy.

We're reacting too quickly here.