"We've seen good improvement in the labor market, there's no question in my mind about that"
- Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago President Charles Evans
Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago President Charles Evans, who is considered as the most vocal proponents of record monetary accommodation, said there are already signs of improvement in the labour market, suggesting that a tapering of Fed's third round of quantitative easing in September is possible. He expects the Fed to buy at least $1.2 trillion of bonds from January 2013 until the time, the programme can be finished in mid-2014.
In June, the Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke said the U.S. Central bank could begin pulling back from the its QE later this year, in case the economy performs as strongly as they expected. Considering significant improvement in economic conditions since September 2012, the QE is likely to end with the jobless rate somewhere around 7%.
Meanwhile, consumer borrowing rose less than expected in June following the biggest gain in three months as loans for education and cars increased, whereas credit card use declined by the most in the year. Total consumer instalment credit rose by $13.8 billion to $2.8 trillion, according to the Federal Reserve data on Wednesday. Nevertheless, demand for consumer lending strengthened across the board in three months to June.
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