Bernanke: Fed will take action if economy falters

In this article Ben Bernanke says that the Federal Reserve will take steps to avoid the nation going into a "self-reinforcing price decline". The article specifies that there are three ways that the fed could prevent this. One is that the Fed could purchase more long-term securities. The second is that they could keep their benchmark interest rate near zero, and convince investors that it would stay there for a long period of time. And finally they could reduce the interest rates they pay banks to keep reserves.