Federal Reserve (Fed) Chairman Ben Bernanke said Wednesday he has an exit strategy from the U.S. central bank's recent monetary expansion that will keep inflation under control as the economy recovers. “We are quite confident that we can raise interest rates, reduce the money supply, and do that all in a timely way to avoid any inflationary consequences,” Bernanke told the House of Representatives Financial Services Committee in a second day of congressional testimony on the Fed's monetary policy. The severe U.S. recession has sharply lowered price pressures, and Bernanke said that inflation would not be a problem for the next few years. The central bank has cut a key interest rate to nearly zero and has injected over $1 trillion into credit markets to keep them functioning after the collapse of the U.S. housing market sparked a global credit crisis last year. Bernanke defended the Fed's aggressive actions and said steps taken by the central bank and other agencies last autumn averted what could have been a “global financial meltdown.” “I do quite seriously believe we avoided in mid-October … a collapse of the global financial system which would have led us into a truly deep and very [long] economic crisis,” Bernanke told the panel. The Fed chairman acknowledged that at some point, economic growth would start to pressure prices, and he said that would mean reversing Fed policy to prevent the enormous increase in the U.S. money supply from creating inflation. “It is very important for us, once the economy begins to recover—as usual, the Fed would have to begin to tighten policy—it is very important for us to begin then to unwind our monetary expansion,” Bernanke said.
