Fed Tapers $10 Billion Optimistic About Economic Recovery

The Federal Reserve said growth is bouncing back and the job market is improving as it continued to reduce the monthly pace of asset purchases.

“Growth in economic activity has rebounded in recent months,” the Federal Open Market Committee said today in a statement in Washington. “Labor market indicators generally showed further improvement.” Business spending “resumed its advance.”

The FOMC trimmed bond-buying by $10 billion for a fifth straight meeting, to $35 billion, keeping it on pace to end the program late this year.

Chair Janet Yellen and her fellow policy makers are debating how long to keep interest rates near zero as the U.S. labor market improves and inflation moves closer to the Fed’s 2 percent goal.

The policy-making FOMC repeated today that it’s likely to “reduce the pace of asset purchases in further measured steps” and that it expects rates to stay low for a “considerable time” after the bond-buying ends.

The Fed repeated that inflation “has been running below the committee’s longer-run objective, but longer-term inflation expectations have remained stable.”

The personal consumption expenditures index, the Fed’s preferred inflation gauge, rose 1.6 percent from a year earlier in April, the most since November 2012. The consumer price index, a separate inflation measure, rose 2.1 percent in May.

via Bloomberg

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