This week’s stock progress has done little to persuade Federal Reserve policymakers that the continued stalemate in unemployment will change much in the upcoming year. The policymakers have been unmoving in their forecasts for modest economic growth for 2010 while been standing strong on their projections that economic improvements would not extend to radically chance rampant joblessness.
The Federal Reserve, at their monthly meeting in January, forecast economic growth 2.8 to 3.5 percent for the fourth quarter of 2010 but maintained that the unemployment rate would hover between 9.5 and 9.7 percent at the close of the year. The unemployment rate for last month was 9.7 percent.
Minutes from the January meeting, released on Wednesday, reveal growing numbers of bank heads looking to aggressively cut back Federal supports as soon as possible. Additionally, officials motioned to reconfigure public policy statements to indicate the discontinuation of the Fed injecting money into the financial market.
Additionally, one official put forth the possibility of the Fed announcing plans to for the central bank to remove capital from the financial system via selling a portion of the assets on its $2 trillion plus balance sheet. People would be informed in a preemptive statement. Many other Fed. heads felt that this would be too dramatic a measure.
Others still argued making a decision, which appears to lean in the way of no longer pursuing assets, was difficult as much of the information they were dealing with came off as potentially misleading.
Inflation was also discussed; however, most Fed policymakers felt that inflation would not present a major problem in the foreseeable future.
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