The Fed reiterated that expectation on Tuesday.īut economists who took part in the Reuters poll said there was still a significant 42.5 percent probability the Fed will need to hike rates before then, albeit revised down from 50 percent in February. The Fed has held rates at ultra-low levels since late 2008 and has said it expects rates will stay near zero until at least through late 2014. Federal Reserve will embark on a third round of bond purchases, known as quantitative easing, and buy more than the $2.3 trillion dollars it has already bought.Īfter a policy meeting on Tuesday, it gave no fresh clues as to the likelihood of any new moves to buy securities. The UK economy will avoid a return to recession and grow 0.6 percent this year and a healthy 1.6 percent next, the poll found.Īs economists revised up their growth forecasts, and as fears escalated that higher oil prices would stoke inflation, they cut expectations for further monetary easing. While the pace of economic growth is seen slowing in the first quarter compared to the final months of 2011, despite the stronger jobs numbers, it is expected to pick up steadily throughout the year.īritain’s dominant service sector grew in both January and February, as did the manufacturing sector, purchasing managers’ surveys showed, and the country’s goods trade deficit widened less than expected in January after touching its narrowest in two years at the end of 2011. “I think we’re pretty close to off and running, assuming we don’t get unlucky or nailed by some unforeseen event.” “I think it’s evolving into a self-sustaining expansion,” said Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics. data, including three straight monthly gains of more than 200,000 in non-farm payrolls, has bolstered optimism about underlying strength in the world’s biggest economy. The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) said this week economic conditions had improved in the euro zone and Britain while progress detected in previous months in the United States and Japan had continued.Ī string of better-than-expected U.S. That paved the way for euro zone ministers to give the final political go-ahead to a 130 billion euro package that aims to keep Athens financed until 2014, allaying fears the debt crisis would escalate further.Ĭentral banks have slashed interest rates to record lows and pumped trillions of dollars into the money supply in a bid to stimulate growth, and a recent slew of upbeat data suggest their efforts have paid off. Greece, the source of the currency bloc’s debt crisis, swapped its privately held bonds at the weekend for new, longer maturity paper with less than half the nominal value, cutting its debt by more than 100 billion euros ($131 billion). The surveys of over 250 economists, taken in the past few days, saw 2012 growth forecasts for the euro zone, Britain and Japan revised up, but left unchanged for the United States. LONDON (Reuters) - Developed economies will pick up steam this year thanks to an array of ultra-loose monetary policies from major central banks and amid new signs of progress in the euro zone’s debt crisis, Reuters polls found.
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