The U.S. central bank upgraded its outlook for the country’s economy at the latest meeting, although the improvement was not enough to deter officials from pursuing a second round of quantitative easing, according to The Wall Street Journal. On Thursday, the Federal Reserve released the minutes from the January meeting of the Federal Open Market Committee that showed policymakers lifted their forecast for U.S. growth in 2011 to a 3.4% to 3.9% in the country’s gross domestic product. In November, the group’s forecast ranged from 3.0% to 3.6%. Officials cited stronger consumer spending and a boost from the recent approval of a package of tax-cuts for the upgrade in the outlook.
The FOMC remained committed to the Fed’s $600 billion bond-purchase program, voting unanimously to keep the program since, “The pace of the recovery was insufficient to bring about a significant improvement in labor market conditions, and measures of underlying inflation had trended downward.” The members of the FOMC remained supportive of regular reviews of the stimulus program, but the minutes revealed that some officials felt “it was unlikely that the outlook would change by enough to substantiate any adjustments to the program before its completion.”