U.S. unemployment is "disturbingly high," but it would be even higher had the Federal Reserve not undertaken a series of unprecedented steps to ease monetary policy, a top Fed official said on Thursday. Minneapolis Fed President Narayana Kocherlakota said he expects unemployment, which has stayed stubbornly above 9 percent all year, to drift down around the 8.5-percent range by the end of next year. "Even though unemployment is high today, disturbingly high, unemployment would be even higher if the Fed had not taken the actions that it did," he told the Minnesota Council on Economic Education. Kocherlakota was one ... (full story)