Minutes of the last Federal Reserve meeting released Wednesday showed several members said the central bank should begin tapering its bond-buying program later this year and
The Fed released the minutes of its March 19-20 meeting ahead of the previously scheduled time after they were inadvertently sent to some individuals Tuesday afternoon. The individuals on the distribution list were primarily congressional employees and employees of trade organizations, the central bank said in a statement.
The central bank currently buys $85 billion of Treasury and mortgage debt a month in its so-called quantitative easing program to spur the economy by putting downward pressure on borrowing costs.
Members of the Federal Open Market Committee “thought that if the outlook for labor market conditions improved as anticipated, it would probably be appropriate to slow purchases later in the year and to stop them by yearend,” according to the record of the FOMC’s March 19-20 meeting released today in Washington.
Payrolls grew by 88,000 workers last month, the least in nine months, even as the unemployment rate declined, the Labor Department said April 5. Economists in a Bloomberg News survey had forecast a rise of 190,000.
The economy added an average of 179,000 people a month to nonfarm payrolls in 2011 and 2012, Labor Department data show. The jobless rate had stayed above 8% since February 2009 until it broke the trend in September.
