As the Federal Reserve gears up for its first policy meeting of 2011, its leaders face the challenge of making sense of an economic picture that is encouraging - including upbeat reports Thursday on housing and unemployment - yet still unnerving.
Private economists are generally expecting U.S. economic growth to accelerate a bit in 2011, perhaps to 3.5 percent or so from a pace last year below 3 percent. At their meeting Tuesday and Wednesday, Fed officials will present their own forecasts, which will be made public in mid-February, and discuss the prospects for growth in 2011.
The Fed is almost certain to maintain the policy it announced late last year of trying to encourage growth by buying about $75 billion in Treasury bonds each month through June. Those purchases would ultimately expand the Fed's holdings by $600 billion.
"In the near term, the policy decision is easy - they'll just keep things on track," said Julia Coronado, chief U.S. economist at BNP Paribas. "They have a lot more to do in laying out their views, tone and outlook for the economy that will be presented to the public. They want to acknowledge some of the promising signs but not give some sense that they're getting ahead of themselves."
The latest readings Thursday seem to show the economy is gradually healing. The number of people filing new claims for unemployment insurance benefits fell to 404,000 last week, the Labor Department said, the second-lowest level since 2008. That figure suggests that a spike in such claims in the first week of January was an aberration.
And sales of previously owned homes jumped 12 percent in December over November, showing some signs of life in the moribund housing sector.
Fed leaders are pleased - and even a bit relieved - that growth seems to have accelerated beyond the roughly 2.5 percent pace at which job creation is just enough to keep up with population and productivity growth, and at which the unemployment rate, as a result, would remain stuck at its high level. In particular, they view the chances of a new recession as much lower than a couple of months ago.
"We see the economy strengthening," Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke said in a panel discussion last week. "It's looked better in the last few months. And we think that 3 to 4 percent type of growth number for 2011 seems reasonable."
The Fed's bond purchase program, its signature initiative to try to help the economy get on track, was controversial both inside and outside the Fed when it was announced Nov. 3. At the first Federal Open Market Committee meeting of 2011, two of the most frequent detractors of the program within the Fed, Dallas Fed President Richard Fisher and Philadelphia Fed President Charles Plosser, will gain votes on the panel as a result of its rotating membership.
Read more at The Washington Post.