Jerome Powell, in his days on the Fed board before he was elevated to the chairmanship, urged Ben Bernanke to announce a pullback in efforts to stimulate the economy, even though he sensed that there might be more than a little bit of volatility in financial markets, according to transcripts of the 2013 Federal Reserve meetings released Friday. “We’ve got to jump,” Powell told Bernanke and his colleagues. At issue was the third round of the Fed’s asset purchase program, known as QE3, that had been underway since the prior September. The Fed was buying $85 billion a month in Treasuries and mortgage-backed securities ... (full story)