What is obvious to some...

...is a "dawning realization" to others.

“I believe the U.S. economy is best described as being in a bona fide liquidity trap,” Evans said to the Boston Fed’s 55th Economic Conference. “This belief is not a new development for me; instead it is a dawning realization.” In a liquidity trap, additions to the money supply fail to stimulate the economy.

Easing Steps

The bank president’s comments are among the strongest of any Fed official in favor of additional easing steps. With projections for unemployment to be at 8 percent and for inflation excluding food and energy to be at 1 percent by the end of 2012, “the Fed’s dual mandate misses are too large to shrug off,” Evans said.

He gave his support to a target for the path of the price level over a “reasonable period of time” that is communicated “regularly and often” to the public. Such a policy could complement large-scale asset purchases and a change to the Federal Open Market Committee’s statement to include a pledge to keep rates near zero for longer than “an extended period.”

Targeting a path for the price level would help the Fed push inflation higher “for a time,” Evans said. The central bank would need to state the terms for exiting the policy, he said.

“I’ll admit that my views on this are evolving,” Evans said in response to audience questions. “I think it could be conveyed credibly but there’s a lot of work to establish that and think through what the operational characteristics of this would be.”