Ben Bernanke questions whether sharp drop in unemployment can be sustained without faster growth The combination of an improving labour market and rising inflation has strengthened the opposition of some at the Fed to any further QE. James Bullard, the president of the Fed's St. Louis branch, said late last week that monetary policy may be at a turning point and that the first increase in interest rates could come at the end of next year. That resistance to further QE was echoed today in Paris by Charles Plosser, who runs the Fed's Philadelphia branch. "Granting vast amounts of discretion to our central banks in the expectation that they can cure our economic ills or substitute for our lack of fiscal discipline is a dangerous road to follow," Mr Plosser said. While neither Mr Plosser or Mr Bullard have votes this year on the Federal Open Market Committee - the US central bank's equivalent of the Monetary Policy Committee in the UK - their comments reflect the division among economists on how to intepret the recent run of better data from the US. In a further defence of the Fed's current policy, Mr Bernanke said that the majority of unemployment could be put down to cyclical, rather than structural, causes, giving monetary policy a role in reducing it. "Further significant improvements in the unemployment rate will likely require a more-rapid expansion of production and demand from consumers and businesses, a process that can be supported by continued accommodative policies," Mr Bernanke said.