There appears to have been a significant slowdown in the second quarter. In particular we saw the pace of job creation slowed to a pace of 75,000 per month in the second quarter down from 226,000 in the first quarter and there are also concerns about slowing growth globally, beyond Europe but also in the emerging world and China, which was highlighted in the minutes (to the June meeting) this week. So, where do you think we’re headed? Are we just going to remain in a soft kind of pace? Are there upside risks to growth? Are there downside risks to growth?

Growth has definitely softened. The data are unmistakably weaker in the second quarter than we had hoped they would be. I think everyone recognized the first quarter and the end of last year were a little bit stronger than we might be able to sustain in the middle of the year but it’s definitely come in softer than I’d expected.

It’s an arcane economics debate with all-too-real implications for U.S. monetary policy: Is high unemployment primarily the result of “structural” factors like skills mismatches and difficulties relocating, or is it largely due to insufficient consumer demand in a weak economic recovery?

The answer to that question may help determine how much further the Federal Reserve is willing to push its unconventional measures to bring down the jobless rate, currently stuck at 8.2 percent. If unemployment is cyclical, economists say, it would be more likely to respond to looser monetary conditions.

Ellen Freilich contributed to this post

The Fed did the twist. Will it shout as well? There has been some debate among economists about whether the U.S. central bank might launch a third round of outright bond buys or QE3 given that it just prolonged Operation Twist.

But a truly grim report on the U.S. manufacturing sector from the Institute for Supply Management, if coupled with further evidence of a deteriorating labor market, could certainly induce policymakers to press their foot to the monetary accelerator.

Simon Johnson is on a mission. The MIT professor and former IMF economist is trying to push JP Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon to resign his seat on the board of the New York Fed, which regulates his bank. Alternatively, he would like to shame the Federal Reserve into rewriting its code of conduct so that CEOs of banks seen as too big to fail can no longer serve.

Asked about Dimon’s NY Fed seat during testimony this month, Bernanke argued that it was up to Congress to address any perceived conflicts of interest.

So much for policy coordination. Just days after the Treasury published a note touting its progress in lengthening the average maturity of its outstanding bonds, the Fed decided to extend Operation Twist – a policy aimed at doing the exact opposite. By selling an additional $267 billion in short-dated bonds to buy long-term ones, the Fed is trying to take Treasuries with longer maturities out of the market, to lower yields and entice investors to take on more risk.

In a narrow sense, the Treasury’s approach is perfectly reasonable: U.S. interest rates are at historic lows, so it stands to reason that the government should lock in that low cost of borrowing for the longest period possible. However, in the context of an economy that remains exceedingly weak – and where the only source of stimulus appears to be a reluctant central bank – the move could be viewed as somewhat incongruous.

The Bank of England is finally catching a break. With Britain’s economy officially in recession, the BoE had been constrained from further monetary easing by a stubbornly high inflation rate. But as the global economy stumbles and Europe’s crisis rages unabated, UK price pressures may be giving way.

Barclays economist Chris Crowe argues:

We expect the MPC to announce an additional £50bn in QE at the July policy meeting.

Ben Bernanke appears to be reluctantly gearing up for a third round of large-scale Federal Reserve bond buying, so-called QE3. Millan Mulraine of TD Securities captures just how likely further monetary easing is becoming following the Fed’s decision on Wednesday to expand Operation Twist.

The burden of proof may now be on the incoming data to prove that a third round of large-scale asset purchases may not be necessary.