Reuters
Fed officials expect to start bond-buying taper this year, minutes show
The bulk of the Federal Reserve’s policy-setting committee is coalescing around a plan that would see the U.S. central bank start trimming its bond-buying program later this year, and reduce purchases of Treasury securities and mortgage-backed securities (MBS) “proportionally” so they end at the same time. Minutes from the Fed’s July 27-28 meeting, which were released on Wednesday, showed policymakers remained somewhat at odds over how fast to taper the asset purchases, with “many” of them keen on making sure bond-buying ends before interest rate hikes may need to begin, and “several” preferring a more gradual approach. “The only thing that is now clearer than it was prior to the release of the Minutes is that the hawkish crowd that has publicly been calling for an ‘early and fast’ tapering does not represent the majority view,” Jefferies economists Thomas Simons and Aneta Markowska said in a research note after the release of the minutes.
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