Fed not ready to back off stimulus measures, Bernanke says

Haruhiko Kuroda showed Wednesday he’s following in the footsteps of Ben Bernanke and Mario Draghi as he swung the Bank of Japan from incremental moves to unprecedented stimulus at the governor’s first policy meeting. The BOJ will double the monetary base by the end of 2014 through buying government bonds, the central bank said in Tokyo, in Japan’s biggest round of quantitative easing. JPMorgan Chase & Co. said the Japanese and U.S. central banks are now “in the same camp” when it comes to monetary stimulus.

Mark Thoma sends us to Neil Irwin on Bernanke and Yellen versus Stein:

With second-quarter GDP growth revised to an anemic 1.6% rate, Federal Reserve chief Ben S. Bernanke says the central bank "will do all that it can do to ensure continuation of the economic recovery." But he says the recovery has not slowed enough to warrant action.Faced with fresh evidence that the economic recovery is faltering, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S.

WASHINGTON — U.S. employment grew faster than expected in November, but a drop in the jobless rate to a near-four year low as people gave up the search for work suggested the labor market was still tepid. Nonfarm employment increased by 146,000 jobs last month, the Labor Department said on Friday, defying expectations of a sharp pull back related to superstorm Sandy. However, job gains for both September and October were revised to show 49,000 fewer jobs created in those months than earlier reported.