FINANCIAL TIMES: …In a marked change of language, the rate-setting Federal Open Market Committee highlighted an improvement in the US labour market. Dropping its previous view that there was “significant underutilisation” of labour resources it said instead that this was “gradually diminishing”.
This signals a big shift in the Fed’s horizons away from aggressive monetary stimulus via its third round of asset purchases, or quantitative easing, and towards the need for an eventual rise in interest rates from their current level close to zero…
The Fed voted for the statement by a majority of 9-1. In a sign of how much tougher the statement was, the dissenter was not one of the ‘hawks’, but Narayana Kocherlakota of the Minneapolis Fed, a ‘dove’ who wanted the Fed to commit to a longer period of low rates… (more)
