Need small scale tapering of bond buys when it starts: Fed's Bullard

Federal Reserve policymaker James Bullard said on Thursday that the bank should wind back its support slowly when it starts the process.

Speaking to reporters after a speech in London, Bullard said the Fed was likely to start tapering its bond purchases if the economy continued to improve and inflation picks up, and that he would be happy with reducing the buying slowly, by $15-20 billion a month.

"What I would like the committee to do is to think about relatively small moves that more-or-less correspond to a 25 basis point Federal Funds rate move in normal times, so we are not is a position where we are having to make decision about cutting the whole program in half or bringing the program to a halt in a short period of time."

(Reporting by Marc Jones; Editing by Toby Chopra)