Federal Reserve Chairman Janet Yellen said Friday that the central bank would "probably" raise interest rates in the coming months, a move that would indicate that America's economy had successfully weathered the global financial turmoil earlier in the year.
Yellen said the recovery appears to be picking up steam after losing momentum in the first quarter of the year. Fears of a slowdown in China and emerging markets, falling oil prices and a rising dollar had sent financial markets into a tailspin. But the U.S. economy continued to expand and add a healthy number of jobs. On Friday, the government increased its estimate of growth in the first quarter to 0.8 percent. That number is forecast to jump to 2.9 percent in the second quarter, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta.
"The economy is continuing to improve," Yellen said during a discussion at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University. She emphasized that the Fed would move "gradually and cautiously" in raising its influential interest rate and that "probably in the coming months such a move would be appropriate."
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