James Bullard, the president of the St. Louis Federal Reserve Bank and a new member of the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC), said in a Monday suggestion that the central bank can help foster economic growth by keeping short-term interest rates low till 2012.

However, Bullard also added that the central bank can introduce some new monetary tools, like “quantitative easing,” to curb excessive inflation, keep interest rates low and to propel ready cash, or liquidity, into the financial system.

The “quantitative easing” measures essentially complement the FOMC’s key policy mechanism: setting the Federal Funds rate, the short-term benchmark interest rate banks charge one another for sudden borrowing.

During the peak of the economic crisis, the FOMC had slashed the Fed Funds rate to almost zero, where they still remain at present.

Noting that a quick U-turn on the Fed Funds rate might adversely affect the still-fragile financial market recovery, Bullard, talking about any likelihood of raising the Fed Funds rate, said: “If you look at…how the FOMC has behaved in the past, it’s been two-and-a-half to three years before we’ve raised rates after the end of a recession. So if you think the recession ended in the summer of 2009, two-and-a-half-years later is a long way—it’s all the way to 2012.”