Reuters
Powell places faster bond-buying taper on Fed’s Christmas table
(Reuters) -U.S. central bankers in December will discuss whether to end their bond purchases a few months earlier than had been anticipated, Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell said on Tuesday, pointing to a strong economy, stalled workforce growth, and high inflation that is expected to last into mid-2022. Powell twinned his remarks, whose hawkish tone took some analysts by surprise, with an observation that the economic risk from an emergent variant of COVID-19 will be better understood by the Fed’s Dec. 14-15 policy meeting but will in any case be far less than in the spring of 2020 when the pandemic erupted. High inflation, now running at more than twice the Fed’s flexible target of 2% annually but which the central bank has for months characterized as “transitory,” is only expected to ease in the second half of 2022, Powell said.
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