US Fed officials expect to pull back on stimulus

US central bankers expect to start pulling back on stimulus measures this year, if the economic recovery continues, according to the minutes of the July policy meeting released Wednesday.

While the discussions showed some division among Federal Reserve officials on the prospects for inflation and employment, with few exceptions they see a slowdown in the massive asset purchases in coming months.

But they also recognized the challenges facing policymakers, as well as the uncertainty about the outlook amid rising Covid-19 infections driven by the Delta variant, as well as the global supply chain bottlenecks hurting businesses.

The Fed slashed interest rates to zero at the start of the pandemic in March 2020 and began buying huge amounts of bonds to provide liquidity to the world’s largest economy and support the recovery.