New York Times (08/20/14) Binyamin Appelbaum
A vocal minority of U.S. Federal Reserve officials are urging the central bank to retreat more swiftly from its stimulus campaign, which they say has lost its ability to improve economic conditions. Fed officials believe the economy is gaining strength, but a majority of officials and chairman Janet Yellen favor a slow retreat from efforts to encourage job creation, because inflation remains weak and millions of Americans still cannot find work. Some officials say the economy has improved more quickly than expected in recent months, and the minutes from the latest Fed meeting indicate that, “Participants differed…in their assessments of the remaining degree of labor market slack and how to measure it.”