US Federal Reserve (Fed) believed at their September meeting that more
interest rate increases would be needed to make sure inflation remained under
control, according to the minutes of the Fed's policy-making meeting which was
released on Friday.
In the minutes of the September 21 meeting of the Federal Open Market
Committee, US Fed's policy-making body, Fed officials said that the recent
evidence on US economic growth and the labor market had "boosted their
confidence that moderate economic growth would continue and that inflation would
be contained."
It said that the Fed officials believed that economic demand would be
expanding at least as rapidly as the US economy's abilityto produce goods and
services in coming months and for that reason policy-makers continued to see a
need for further rate increases.
"However, in the view of many members, policy actions would need to be
increasingly keyed to incoming data," the minutes also said.
The Federal Open Market Committee meets eight times a year to decide whether
to change interest rates and has raised rates by a quarter-point at every
meeting since June.
