Atlanta Federal Reserve Bank President Dennis Lockhart Thursday said it is a "close call" on whether the sluggish U.S. economic recovery is in need of more support from the Fed, but said he believes additional stimulus would have a positive, albeit limited, effect. "I continue to believe that we could see some benefit -- but limited benefit -- for limited risk, and I think manageable costs over the longer term," Lockhart said in an interview on CNBC. "I'm not overly concerned with the longer term costs of more action but at the same time I see limited benefit from more action," he added. Lockhart is a voter on the Fed's policymaking Federal Open Market Committee this year, and he was asked if conditions bad enough to warrant a further easing of monetary conditions by the Fed. "I think it's a close call," Lockhart said. "If we were to see a deterioration from this point -- let's say a persistence of job-growth numbers that were well below 100,000 a month ... or if we were to see signs of disinflation that could signal the onset of deflation, then there wouldn't be much of a question about policy." As for his assessment of economic conditions, Lockhart said this is "a really good time to take stock" with a longer term perspective. The economy has been growing at a rate of around 2% since the recovery began, he said, a pace that Lockhart described as "modest," and "not the kind of growth that's likely to bring great progress in bringing down unemployment."