Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke said additional monetary stimulus may be warranted because inflation is too low and unemployment is too high.

“There would appear — all else being equal — to be a case for further action,” Bernanke said today in the text of remarks given at a Boston Fed conference. He said the central bank could expand asset purchases or change the language in its statement, while saying “nonconventional policies have costs and limitations that must be taken into account in judging whether and how aggressively they should be used.”

He didn’t offer new details on how the Fed would undertake those strategies or give assurances the central bank will act at its Nov. 2-3 meeting.

Bernanke and his central bank colleagues are considering ways they can stimulate the economy as the unemployment rate holds near 10 percent and inflation falls short of their goals. After lowering interest rates almost to zero and purchasing $1.7 trillion of securities, policy makers are discussing expanding the Fed’s balance sheet by purchasing Treasuries and strategies for raising inflation expectations, according to the minutes of the Federal Open Market Committee’s Sept. 21 meeting.

“At current rates of inflation, the constraint imposed by the zero lower bound on nominal interest rates is too tight” and the “risk of deflation is higher than desirable,” Bernanke said. “High unemployment is currently forecast to persist for some time.”

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(Read More: Bloomberg)