Another round of easing by the Federal Reserve is “almost a done deal,” says Bill Gross, co-founder of Pimco and manager of the world's largest bond fund, and investors should “buy what the Fed is going to buy and buy what the Fed is going to affect.”
“What the Fed minutes told us is additional easing might be warranted ‘fairly soon’ unless the incoming data pointed to a sustainable strengthening of the economy," Gross tells CNBC.
“I think we need to see months of 3 percent or better gross domestic product growth before the Fed backs off that particular provision."
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Gross expects the Fed will create “a relative open-ended program in terms of size, in terms of time and in terms of what the asset class is that they buy,” and says such open-endedness will work well “even in the face of a strengthening economy.”
The Federal Open Market Committee meeting minutes showed that the bank's policy-setting team was leaning toward implementing new liquidity measures "fairly soon" to prop up the economy, should growth slow further.
However, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis President James Bullard says that the minutes covered the Fed's July 31-Aug. 1 meeting and are a bit "stale" because the U.S. economy has appeared to improve in the last month.
If the economy can pick up the pace just a bit, Bullard tells CNBC, expect the Fed to consider staying on the sidelines.
"If we were to resume, and I think we will, 2 percent growth, maybe a bit stronger than that in the second half of the year, unemployment ticks down through the rest of the year, that's not a great outcome but that's a good enough outcome to keep us on hold," Bullard says.
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