Fed President Charles Plosser Says Fed Is Helpless To Reverse Sharp Decline in House Prices

``"How do you use monetary policy to burst a bubble in Las Vegas real estate, where house prices were appreciating at a 45 percent annual rate by the end of 2004, without damaging the Detroit market, where prices were increasing at less than a 3 percent annual rate? Because monetary policy is such a blunt instrument, asking monetary policy to do what it cannot do, such as seeking to deliberately influence the evolution of asset prices, risks creating more instability, not less.''