Economists were divided on whether the Fed would act now, with 35 percent of 46 respondents saying the easing step would come today and 39 percent predicting a move at the next meeting Sept. 20. Fifteen percent saw a potential decision at the Nov. 1-2 meeting, and the remaining 11 percent said sometime after the Dec. 13 session.

The Fed is likely to start a third round of asset purchases, and "they certainly should do something right away," said Kenneth Rogoff, a Harvard University economics professor and former Fed researcher who attended graduate school with Bernanke. It's not clear if Bernanke would have the support of the Federal Open Market Committee, Rogoff said.

'More Decisively'

"It's going to move more decisively" than in the first two rounds, Rogoff said in an interview with Bloomberg Television. He recommended the Fed say it's trying to create "moderate inflation" and avoid repeating that officials are trying to boost stocks.

The survey of 58 economists was conducted Aug. 5-8 by e- mail and completed at around noon yesterday. Given the opportunity to change answers after S&P cut the U.S.'s AAA credit rating on Aug. 5, one respondent altered a forecast.

The Fed's meeting comes two days after central bankers and finance ministers from the Group of Seven nations pledged to "take all necessary measures to support financial stability and growth." The officials said they would pump money into the global economy and take other steps if warranted.

The G-7 statement followed a pledge by the European Central Bank to "actively implement" its bond-purchase program. The ECB started buying Italian and Spanish assets yesterday in its riskiest attempt yet to tame the continent's sovereign debt crisis.

Third Round

While Fed officials may weigh whether to undertake a third round of government bond purchases to spur growth, they probably won't announce a new program today, respondents said. In fact, a majority of economists said in the Bloomberg survey that a third round of quantitative easing won't happen.

Forty-two percent of 52 respondents said more bond purchases are very unlikely, and 29 percent see them as somewhat unlikely. Of the 29 percent who see such a move as likely, 13 percent say the probability is more than 75 percent, and 15 percent say the chance is 50 percent to 75 percent. In Bloomberg's June survey, 7 percent of analysts said a third round of bond buying, or QE3, was likely.

Such a step may backfire because it could panic investors by signaling the economy is in worse shape than the Fed thought, said Lynn Reaser, chief economist at Point Loma Nazarene University in San Diego, California, and a board member of the National Association for Business Economics.

Bond Purchases

The Fed in June completed a $600 billion Treasury bond- purchase program aimed at reducing long-term borrowing costs on everything from car loans to mortgages and boosting share prices.