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The Fed's effort to pump money into the financial system by buying up Treasury bonds has sparked fears it will feed asset bubbles in emerging markets and generate domestic inflation.

Atlanta Fed President Dennis Lockhart took issue with the idea pressed repeatedly by top economic officials in countries like China and Brazil that the easing was a backdoor effort to jumpstart exports through a weaker dollar.

"There is no monetary policy intent to engineer specific values -- or even a direction-- for the dollar," Lockhart said in a speech before the Alabama World Affairs Council. "This policy was not undertaken to prompt dollar depreciation."

Others struck a similar chord.

In an interview with the Wall Street Journal, Charles Evans of the Chicago Fed said the central bank's primary concern must, by definition, the performance of the American economy.

After emerging last summer from its deepest recession since the Great Depression, the U.S. economy has grown unevenly. It registered a modest 2 percent annualized rate of growth in the third quarter.

Unemployment remains stuck at 9.6 percent and inflation is running at below the levels preferred by Fed policymakers.

"I would continue to want to apply accommodative monetary policy until I had some confidence that that situation was changing," Mr. Evans was quoted as saying in the Journal interview. He said $600 billion is a "good place to start" the easing program.

U.S. producer prices excluding food and energy unexpectedly fell in October to post their largest decline in more than four years.

"It suggests that the Federal Reserve's fight ... may be tougher than we might have thought," said Hugh Johnson, chief investment officer at Hugh Johnson Advisors in Albany, New York.

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Boston Fed President Eric Rosengren , who, like Evans, is considered one of the more dovish members of the Federal Open Market Committee that sets official U.S. interest rates, was even willing to consider additional purchases.

"As long as the economic outlook doesn't improve dramatically I would expect that we will purchase the entire amount," he told the Wall Street Journal. "If the economy were to weaken and we were to get further disinflation and a higher unemployment rate, then we would have to reflect on whether we should take additional action."

Lockhart, the Atlanta Fed President, also indicated he expected the full $600 billion program to be completed through its June deadline.