US needs medium-term economic growth strategy, Fed's Bullard says

Policymakers in the US need to look beyond measures aimed at providing immediate stimulus to the economy, with an eye to boosting the country's long-term economic prospects of the economy, a top central bank official said overnight.

Ahead of an event at the Federal Reserve bank of St.Louis, president James Bullard said: "the U.S. needs a medium-term growth strategy which is less oriented toward stabilization policy, stimulus ideas, and is more oriented toward, 'what kinds of things would improve the medium- and long-term growth prospects of the United States'."

"Tax reform is probably in that category. Education reform is probably in that category. Even immigration reform, I would say, is in that category," he said.

"There are a whole host of things that you could do" which might not have much of an immediate effect on the economy's rate of expansion, but which "might have handsome payoffs" in future years.