FOMC minutes reveal members pitching for 2014 end to bond buys

WASHINGTON: Several Federal Reserve officials said the central bank should begin tapering its quantitative easing (QE) programme later this year and stop it by year end, minutes of their March meeting showed.

The Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) members "thought that if the outlook for labour market conditions improved as anticipated, it would probably be appropriate to slow purchases later in the year and to stop them by year-end," according to the record of the March 19-20 FOMC meeting released this morning in Washington ahead of the regularly scheduled 2 pm.

Fed officials, who met before a labour department report last week showed that payroll growth in March was the slowest in nine months, debated how and when to curtail asset purchases that have swollen its balance sheet to a record $3.22 trillion.

The committee, led by chairman Ben S Bernanke, decided at the gathering to press on with $85 billion in monthly bond buying until the labour-market outlook has "improved substantially."

"You have to take this with a really large grain of salt," said John Herrmann, director of US Rate Strategy at Mitsubishi UFJ Securities in New York, because the meeting was held before the March jobs report.

That report showed "the economy doesn't quite yet have the momentum to consistently grow near the Fed's objectives.