I dissented from these Committee actions and have expressed my concerns at length elsewhere. Briefly, as I’ve touched on today, I think that further monetary stimulus is unlikely to materially increase the pace of economic expansion, and that these actions will test the limits of our credibility. At some point, we will need to withdraw stimulus by raising interest rates and reducing the size of our balance sheet, and the larger our balance sheet, the more vulnerable we will be to seemingly minor miscalibrations in policy. Accordingly, I see an increased risk, given the course the Committee has set, that inflation pressures emerge and are not thwarted in a timely way.

“I think that unemployment will continue to tick down through 2013,” Bullard said today in an interview on CNBC television. A 7.1 percent rate “would probably be substantial improvement” in the labor market, he said, referring to the Fed’s goal for halting its open-ended monthly purchases.

Since September, hardly a trading day goes by without a company announcing a new debt offering to take advantage of today's historically low interest rates to finance further share buybacks and/or special dividend payouts. Too little of this money is being used to invest in job creation and job-creating expansion of plant and equipment in the U.S. Which raises a question about the efficacy of our accommodative monetary policy: Are our massive purchases of Treasury notes and bonds effective in meeting our mandate of conducting monetary policy so as to create maximum employment?

The answer is, quantitative easing is a necessary but insufficient tool to spark job creation. Employers will not deploy the cheap and abundant capital on hand toward job creation while there is so much uncertainty surrounding final demand for the goods and services they sell.

In my view, the supply of bank reserves is already large enough to support the economic recovery, and the benefits of further asset purchases are unlikely to be sizeable. The effects on longer-term interest rates are uncertain and likely quite small, and the potential to boost job creation seems quite limited, given the fundamental impediments that appear to be restraining growth now. At the same time, it’s important to recognize the potential costs of additional asset purchases. A larger Fed balance sheet will increase the risks associated with the timely and appropriate withdrawing of monetary stimulus by raising interest rates and selling assets.

My assessment was that the costs associated with additional asset purchases outweighed the expected benefits, and thus, I dissented.

"It should be pretty clear that this committee is straining to provide as much stimulus as possible without endangering our price-stability credibility,” Lacker told CNBC in an interview. “My worry, and the reason I dissented on this and the asset purchases, is that we seem to be willing to test the very limits of that credibility."

"I argued that basically we were at risk of what I call a 'Hotel California' monetary policy," Fisher said in an interview with CNBC, referring to an Eagles song about a hotel from which one can never leave. "Theoretically we can check out any time we want from this program, but practically, since we're going to have an engorged balance sheet, we may never be able to leave this position."

in my view, a strong case can be made for the Federal Reserve continuing to purchase the current $85 billion in longer-term securities a month – even after our so-called “Operation Twist” maturity-extension program (a portion of those purchases) is completed at the end of 2012.

When we achieve a stronger recovery in the context of price stability, I'll view it as consistent with our goals and not a reason to pull back on our policies prematurely. If you're trying to get a car moving that is stuck in the mud, you don't stop pushing the moment the wheels start turning, you keep pushing until the car is rolling and is clearly free.

“My own viewpoint is that we need to continue with those asset purchases at the $85 billion pace until we see labor-market improvement. That’s likely to be at a minimum six months I would say, perhaps as long as a year,” Mr. Evans said in an interview with BNN, a Canadian business television network. He defined labor market improvement as payroll employment growth of 200,000 a month for about six months, above-trend growth, and a drop in the jobless rate.

The Fed could announce a limit as to how much we are going to acquire of treasuries and mortgage-backed securities, say up to a limit of X, up to a point where our balance sheet reaches that, Fisher said today in Berlin. It is my personal preference to do it sooner than later, perhaps at the next meeting.

"There is no such thing as QE infinity, he said. QE infinity gets you into trouble."

Cutting to zero the interest rate the Federal Reserve pays banks to park excess reserves on its books wouldn’t add much stimulus to the economy, Chairman Ben Bernanke said Tuesday. Cutting this rate is “something we’ve considered, and continue to consider, and I don’t rule it out as an action in the future,” Mr. Bernanke said in response to a question at a gathering of the Economic Club of New York. But as a new avenue of stimulus, Mr. Bernanke said it is unlikely that lowering this rate, which currently stands at 0.25%, to zero would do all that much.… “I think it’s wrong to think of this as a major tool that is unused. If it were used it would have some effects that would be marginally constructive,” but it could also impair the functioning of many, very short-term markets. Ultimately, “it’s a relatively small-cost benefit calculation,” and cutting the interest rate on reserves to zero would lower short-term rates by around eight to nine basis points, Mr. Bernanke said.

It’s important for us to remember that we cannot continually buy more securities and create more bank reserves without jeopardizing our inflation goal. Accordingly, I have opposed additional easing steps at FOMC meetings this year. My main concern is that we have eased policy aggressively for over four years; at some point, the growth outlook will improve enough that the FOMC will need to begin raising interest rates and reducing the supply of bank reserves in order to preserve the price stability that we have enjoyed over the last 20 years. The larger our balance sheet when the time comes to withdraw monetary stimulus, the more difficult and risky that process will be. In my view, the balance of considerations suggests that we should be standing pat now rather than easing policy further.

I expect it will be some time until the job market makes substantial progress towards our congressionally mandated maximum employment goal. Therefore, I anticipate that we will need to continue our purchases of mortgage-backed securities and longer-term Treasury securities past the end of this year and likely well into the second half of next year in order to best achieve our mandated goals. As I noted, the ending date for these programs will hinge on the performance of the economy.

Extending Operation Twist is “unlikely” because the Fed has “only so much balance sheet we could use” to sell short- term securities, Bullard said. On the other hand, purchasing Treasuries outright “is definitely an option on the table.”

“It should be at least that big but I would think it would probably be bigger given my view on how slow the economy is going,” Williams said, referring to his Aug. 31 comment that the Fed should purchase $600 billion in bonds in a third round of asset purchases.