WASHINGTON: To strengthen and boost the economy U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke on Friday defended the Fed’s recent action to buy more government bonds plan and called on Congress to approve and allow more fiscal stimulus.

He asserted, high unemployment could persist for years, without more stimuli. The Fed on Nov. 3 declared a 600-billion dollar plan to purchase government bonds, which aroused huge criticism both internationally as well as domestically, the so-called second round of quantitative easing (QE2).

While aiming to the lower public expectations, Bernanke argued that the Fed itself cannot fix all of the economy’s problems. He said, “There are limits to what can be achieved by the central bank alone”. “A fiscal program that combines near-term measures to enhance growth with strong confidence-inducing steps to reduce longer-term structural (budget) deficits would be an important complement to the policies of the Federal Reserve.”

To promote faster job creation and reduce the risk that very low inflation could turn into deflation, Bernanke said that the Fed’s Treasury bond purchases are required. Here deflation is further prolonged and there is a destabilizing drop in prices of goods and services, along with wages and values of assets like stock or homes.

A United States core consumer price which does not include food prices as well as volatile energy, in October increased only upto 0.6 percent, on a year-on-year basis, according to the latest data released by the United States Labor Department. The rate of unemployment was not expected to fall significantly, which is currently at 9.6 percent.