With fiscal austerity slowing down economies both here and abroad, it will in my view be important to maintain sufficiently accommodative U.S. monetary policy so that national labor market conditions can improve.

Hoenig repeated his call for raising the central bank’s target interest rate to 1 percent as part of a normalization of monetary policy reflecting that the recovery is more than two years old.

“ I am not for tight monetary policy,” he said. “I am for nonzero monetary policy” that isn’t “wracked with imbalances and new crises we have to deal with.”

“I look forward to exiting from accommodative monetary policy,” Fisher told reporters, while declining to say when an exit might take place. “The question is timing.” Holding the balance sheet steady after June is a “first step.”

We do have a number of ways of acting; none of them are without risks or costs. We could, for example, do more securities purchases and structure them in different ways. We could cut the interest on excess reserves that we pay to banks. And as was suggested by an earlier question—several earlier questions, actually—Jon’s question about giving guidance on the balance sheet or by perhaps even giving a fixed date, you know, to define “extended period,” those are ways that we could ease further if needed.

But, of course, all of these things are somewhat untested. They have their own costs. But we'd be prepared to take additional action, obviously, if -- if conditions warranted.

“The worst outcome of all would be for the Fed to continue monetizing the debt,” Fisher, 62, said today during a speech in Dallas. “We’ve been doing that since November.”

“We’ve done enough,” Fisher said in a speech to the Chartered Financial Analysts Society of Dallas-Fort Worth. “I will not support our doing more.”

I don't think QE3 will be necessary. I think we're going to see this modest, moderate but continuing pace of growth that doesn't require further stimulus. Secondly, the stance of policy is at the moment very stimulative. Simply maintaining that stance of policy for some period of time should be sufficient support for a continuing recovery. I would also have concerns about diminishing returns to further stimulus when many of the headwinds to growth are not fundamentally addressable by monetary tools.

Zero is not the right rate, that much I am pretty confident of.

There is a very high bar to another round of asset purchases and my forecast for the economy really would not need another round.

I am personally just pleased that we're done with this large-scale asset purchase program.  It ends in June.  I am personally not able to envision a scenario where we would do more because there's lots of liquidity in the system.

“Somewhat tighter monetary policy is possible by the end of the year,” he said today at a press conference, after speaking at an event organized by the Bank of Finland in Helsinki. “We will have to begin exiting from our policies long before the unemployment rate is down to what people would like to have. That’s going to be a difficult decision.”

Under my baseline forecast, it would be desirable for the FOMC to raise the fed funds target interest rate by a modest amount toward the end of 2011. Of course, the FOMC could also reduce accommodation by shrinking the Fed’s holdings of long-term government securities... I’m open to these approaches to reducing accommodation. However, based on what I know now, I would prefer to reduce accommodation primarily by raising the fed funds target interest rate.

"We're close to the high tide for [the Fed's] easy-money policy," said Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis President James Bullard.

“If the economy comes in reasonably strong in the second half of the year, which I think it will, the likely next move would be to tighten policy,” he said. “The most likely way to do that would be to allow some runoff of the balance sheet.”

“The rise in gasoline prices is really troubling to everyone,” Dudley said today in response to audience questions after a speech in Fishkill, New York. “So far, the pass through of higher energy prices seems to be very modest. That is consistent” with the historic trend.

“We will do whatever we need to do to keep inflation in check over the medium to long term,” Dudley said. “It is important we don’t overreact” to the temporary increase in food and energy prices.