Ben Bernanke is delivering a lecture at the London School of Economics in which he makes no attempt to sugar-coat the dire stat of the US and global economies. The bottom-line is that “novel” forms of monetary policy are here to stay for sometime while he says the Fed has additional tools at its disposal, should they become necessary. Bernanke advocates removing toxic assets from bank balance sheets, the original goal of the TARP. He looks ahead in his speech to the end-game in which the Fed has to unwind its extraordinary actions, something he says can happen quickly.
EUR/USD is a shade firmer, at 1.3290, after the headlines hit the screens.