The Federal Reserve is widely expected to announce on Wednesday the end of its latest bond-buying program, known as quantitative easing (QE), the New York Times reported today. Fed officials say that the purchases served to strengthen job growth, and the economic recovery no longer needs quite so much of the central bank’s support. “The exit protocol has been so well documented for the last nine months that the market has fully priced it in,” said Barbara J. Cummings, who manages a $3.5 billion fixed-income portfolio for the Boston Private Bank & Trust Company. The decision, expected at the end of a two-day meeting of the Fed’s policy-making committee, would cap a six-year period during which the central bank has expanded its holdings of Treasury and mortgage-backed securities to almost $4.5 trillion, from less than $1 trillion in mid-2008.
