A lone dissenter on the Federal Reserve's policymaking committee warned Friday that the central bank's monetary strategy could backfire and touch off a new boom-and-bust cycle. Thomas M. Hoenig, the president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, dissented Tuesday when the Federal Open Market Committee voted 9-1 to invest proceeds from the Fed's mortgage-bond portfolio in longer-term Treasury debt. The decision was the Fed's clearest signal yet that its confidence in the pace of the recovery was waning. 'Monetary policy is a useful tool, but it cannot solve every problem faced by the United States,' Hoenig told local Chamber of Commerce members in a speech at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln. 'In trying to use policy as a cure-all, we will repeat the cycle of severe recession and unemployment in a few short years by keeping rates too low for too long.' Hoenig added: 'I wish free money was really free and that there was a painless way to move from severe recession and high leverage to robust and sustainable economic growth, but there is no shortcut.' While Hoenig's view is far from the mainstream, the timing of his comments -- coming three days after the committee's vote -- signals the difficulties the Fed's chairman, Ben S. Bernanke, will probably face in forging a consensus on monetary policy especially in a climate that Bernanke has called 'unusually uncertain.' As president of the Kansas City Fed since 1991, Hoenig is the longest-serving of the 12 district bank presidents. He is known as an 'inflation hawk,' meaning that his foremost concern tends to be preventing inflation, the Fed's traditional enemy. Among his allies in that position are several other presidents -- Charles I. Plosser of Philadelphia, Richard W. Fisher of Dallas and Jeffrey M. Lacker of Richmond. None of the three currently vote on the Federal Open Market Committee, where 11 of the 12 Fed presidents share four voting seats through an annual rotation. (The New York Fed president is a permanent member.) Right now, inflation has been running well below the implicit Fed target of around 2 percent -- so low that a few committee members fear that the economy could instead be at risk of tumbling into deflation. Deflation is a spiral of declining wages and prices, akin to what Japan has experienced since the 1990s. 'In judging how we approach this recovery, it seems to me that we need to be careful not to repeat those policy patterns that followed the recessions of 1990-91 and 2001,' Hoenig said. 'If we again leave rates too low, too long, out of our uneasiness over the strength of the recovery and our intense desire to avoid recession at all costs, we are risking a repeat of past errors and the consequences they bring.' The Fed has kept its benchmark short-term interest rate -- the federal funds rate, at which banks lend to each other overnight -- near zero since December 2008. Starting in March 2009, the Fed has stated that the rate is likely to remain 'exceptionally low' for 'an extended period.' Voting on the committee, Hoenig has dissented since January, arguing that the 'extended period' language had the effect of setting unsafe expectations in the markets. 'To be clear, I am not advocating a tight monetary policy,' Hoenig said in his speech Friday. 'I am advocating a policy that remains accommodative but slowly firms as the economy itself expands and moves toward more balance. I advocate dropping the 'extended period' language from the FOMC's statement and removing its guarantee of low rates. This tells the market that it must again accept risks and lend if it wishes to earn a return.' Peter N. Ireland, a professor at Boston College and a former economist at the Richmond Fed, said he was unconvinced. 'While there are risks, certainly, of higher inflation down the road, I agree with the consensus that deflation is much more of a concern,' he said. 'The policy he is calling more is quite off the mark.' Ireland said he feared that Hoenig's comments might inadvertently complicate efforts by Bernanke and other officials to present a unified message. 'There's a tremendous amount of confusion right now, amongst the public and in the financial markets, as to what the Fed is seeing vis-a-vis the economy right now,' he said. 'This is not to say that dissent is not allowed, but just to say that the way the dissent is being presented to the public seems highly counterproductive right now.' 