Fed confident on U.S. growth, leery of policy risks

Federal Reserve officials are increasingly confident the U.S. economic recovery is sustainable, even if they do not see employment picking up soon, minutes from their November meeting showed.

Senior Fed officials meeting on November 3-4 also expressed concern their plans to keep interest rates low for an prolonged period could have adverse repercussions, including possible unwanted speculative activity in financial markets.

Most participants now view the risks to their growth forecasts as being roughly balanced rather than tilted to the downside, according to the minutes, which were released on Tuesday and were accompanied by upward revisions to policymakers' growth forecasts.

Some negative side effects might result from the maintenance of very low short-term interest rates, including the possibility that such a policy stance could lead to excessive risk-taking in financial markets or an unanchoring of inflation expectations, they said.

The Fed comments helped U.S. stocks to pare losses.

The Fed cut benchmark interest rates to near zero in December and has pumped more than $1 trillion into the economy to beat back a severe recession and restore growth.

After their meeting earlier this month, policymakers repeated a pledge to keep rates exceptionally low for an extended period.

Many observers, including influential investors and some officials, have argued that the Fed's policy of rock-bottom borrowing costs may be driving investors to lever up their bets by using the falling U.S. dollar to fund their trades.

President Barack Obama, during a recent visit to Asia, was lectured on the subject by top government officials in China.

The Federal Open Market Committee, the U.S. central bank's policy-setting body, did not believe such speculative activity had taken place to date, contending that the dollar's decline had thus far been orderly.

Any tendency for dollar depreciation to intensify or to put significant upward pressure on inflation would bear close watching, the minutes said. The U.S. currency dropped to a 15-month low against a basket of major currencies last week.

Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke devoted an unusually long portion of a recent speech in New York to the dollar, saying he was keeping an eye on its movements but suggesting that it was not an overwhelming influence on policy for now.

NO INFLATION HERE

The minutes indicated policymakers are not widely concerned about inflation in the medium term.

This was already evident from a string of recent speeches, in which even the normally hawkish presidents of the Dallas and Philadelphia Federal Reserve banks showed little concern over the prospects for a sustained rise in consumer prices.

The central tendency forecasts of policymakers appeared slightly more sanguine on the economy's prospects, but not forcefully so. U.S. gross domestic product was expected to shrink substantially less this year, somewhere in a range of -0.4 percent and -0.1 percent. Before, the Fed expected a contraction between 1.5 percent and 1 percent.

Similarly, the jobless rate, currently at a 26-1/2 year high of 10.2 percent, was now expected to come down more quickly than policymakers believed back in June.

Nonetheless, there was a sense that any turnaround in the labor market would not happen quickly enough to stem the rising tide of joblessness.

The weakness in labor market conditions remained an important concern, the minutes said. The considerable decelerations in wages and unit labor costs this year were cited as factors putting downward pressure on inflation.

Core inflation was seen well within the Fed's presumed ceiling of 2 percent through 2012, suggesting increases in interest rates are a way off.

Still, some officials worried a recent spike in commodity prices, which some analysts say is a byproduct of the Fed's emergency liquidity measures, could hold the seeds of future inflation.

The Fed not only slashed interest rates sharply as the global financial crisis gathered pace last year, it also instituted a number of special lending programs to keep the financial system afloat.

TIMING IS EVERYTHING

Despite a general agreement on the prospects for a weak but enduring economic rebound, the minutes showed Fed officials had not yet reached consensus on how best to orchestrate an exit from their emergency policy measures.

Some favored selling some of the assets the Fed has accumulated back into the markets.

It has bought $300 billion in longer-term U.S. government debt and is on its way to purchasing more than $1.4 trillion of mortgage-related securities as a way to drive down borrowing costs with overnight rates already near zero.

Others thought asset sales would be disruptive, believing instead that the Fed should first employ other tools, like reverse repurchases agreements and the payment of interest on bank reserves, to draw money out of the financial system.

Such sales might elicit sharp increases in longer-term interest rates that could undermine attainment of the committee's goals, some members said.

Mortgage debt purchases, aimed at reviving housing activity by keeping home loan rates down, have bloated the Fed's balance sheet, which currently stands near $2.2 trillion.