Minutes of June 23/24 Fed Meetings

(HT Drudge) Jeannine Aversa, an AP economics writer reports on the Fed's latest forecast for the economy in "Fed: unemployment will top 10 percent this year," Yahoo! News, July 15, 2009.

WASHINGTON – The Federal Reserve expects the economy this year will sink at a slower pace than it previously thought, but that unemployment will top 10 percent, according to a forecast released Wednesday.

The Fed now predicts the economy will shrink between 1 and 1.5 percent this year, an improvement from its old forecast issued in May. At that time, the Fed projected the economy would contract between 1.3 and 2 percent.

The upgrade comes from the expectation that the economy's downhill slide in the first half of 2009 wasn't as bad as previously thought. The Fed said the economy should start growing again in the second half of this year, although the pace is likely to be plodding.

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