Fed's Evans says timing of rate hike will depend on inflation outlook
Credit: Reuters/Jonathan Ernst
An eagle tops the U.S. Federal Reserve building's facade in Washington, July 31, 2013.
Fed policymakers began in April to lay groundwork for an eventual retreat from their extraordinarily easy monetary policy with a discussion of the tools they could employ to accomplish the task, but no final decisions were taken, according to minutes of the session released last month.
'The expectation is that tapering will be completed by the end of this year,' Evans told the conference.
Evans also said the Fed's 2 percent inflation target should not be seen as a ceiling and could be higher.
Fed officials have been worried that inflation is running well below the central bank's 2 percent target. But there are signs it is starting to tick up. Prices rose 0.2 percent in April, pushing the year-on-year reading up to 1.6 percent - the largest gain since November 2012.
Evans said that labor force participation had declined more than expected and that an uptick in the U.S. unemployment rate would not be a surprise, but that this is incorporated in the central bank's outlook.
(Reporting by Asli Kandemir and Seda Sezer; Writing by Nick Tattersall; Editing by Hugh Lawson)
Post a Comment for "Fed's Evans says timing of rate hike will depend on inflation outlook"