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NBK: Fed chair reiterates tightened monetary policy

KUWAIT, March 4 (KUNA) -- US Fed Chair Jerome Powell iterated on the Fed's path to gradually tighten the monetary policy amid the accelerated growth of the US economy, National Bank of Kuwait (NBK) said.
In his testimony in front of congress, Powell voiced confidence that with the unemployment rate at a historically low level and the labor participation rate not moving up much, wage growth would pick up and that the recent shortfall in inflation would prove transitory, NBK said in a report on Sunday.
The Fed chairman emphasized the need to revisit various aspects of the tighter financial regulation adopted in the aftermath of the global financial crisis, including leverage ratios.
Looking at the debt market, US treasury yields retreated last week as the 10-year treasury yield reached a low of 2.807 percent after President Donald Trump sparked fears of a trade war announcing tariffs on steel and aluminum.
Globally, the tensions escalated between the EU and the UK after EU officials published their draft on the Brexit deal to the UK, it indicated.
UK Prime Minister Theresa May said that she will never accept the drafted Brexit agreement, fueling the prospect that the negotiations are heading for a tougher period, the NBK report.
Meanwhile, the Bank of Japan will start thinking about how to exit its massive QE program around the fiscal year starting April 2019, tge reoirt concluded. (end) fnk.ht.mt