Alloway: QE2 up to $2000bn by 2011

Oct 19 (Reuters) – Atlanta Federal Reserve Bank President Dennis Lockhart said on Tuesday that further easing by the Fed has to be large enough to help boost demand, and purchases of $100 billion of securities a month would be a possibility.

“If we’re going to pursue another round of quantitative easing, it has to be a large enough number to make a difference,” Lockhart said in an interview on CNBC.

“As a monthly number ($100 billion) is fairly consistent with what we did before, and so I think it would certainly be in the range of numbers one might consider … but if you were talking about $100 billion as simply the overall program, I think that’s too small,” he said.