Fed Chair says taper could start in 2021, with no rush on rate hike

Powell said US economy continued to make progress towards the central bank's benchmarks for reducing its pandemic-era emergency programs, but stopped short of signaling the timing for any policy shift

Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell said the central bank could begin reducing its monthly bond purchases this year, though it won’t be in a hurry to begin raising interest rates thereafter.
 

The economy has now met the test of “substantial further progress” toward the Fed’s inflation objective that Powell and his colleagues said would be a precondition for tapering the bond purchases, while the labor market has also made “clear progress,” the Fed chief said Friday in the prepared text of a virtual speech at the Kansas City Fed’s annual Jackson Hole symposium.

At the Fed’s most recent policy meeting