Kashkari Says Minneapolis Fed Has Delayed Its Return to Office

(Bloomberg) -- The Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis has delayed its return-to-office plans amid the spreading coronavirus delta variant, the bank’s president, Neel Kashkari, said.

“The delta variant is a risk,” Kashkari said Tuesday while answering questions during an in-person town hall event in Montana.

“We had planned to bring our 1,100 workers back into our facilities in mid-September. We’ve now delayed it by at least a month,” he said, noting the decision would also affect the businesses and shops around his office building. “There are going to be broader economic implications.”

A growing number of companies across industries in the U.S. have delayed return-to-office plans and enacted new safety measures amid a renewed upsurge in Covid-19 cases in many parts of the country.

The U.S. central bank’s policy-setting Federal Open Market Committee, on which Kashkari sits but does not vote on decisions this year, is currently deliberating over when to begin winding down the crisis-era bond-buying program it revived in early 2020 at the onset of the pandemic.

Kashkari, who has long been one of the FOMC’s most dovish policy makers, said during the town hall event that a decision to begin tapering asset purchases at the end of this year or the beginning of next year seems “reasonable,” depending on how the labor-market recovery progresses.

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