Chicago Fed President Charles Evans voiced pessimism about the prospects for the America economy in the year ahead. He believes the economy will grow only 2.5% this year, as measured by gross domestic product. Evans gave the usual reasons for this: high household debt, high national debt and high unemployment.

As he spoke at the Asian Financial Forum in Hong Kong, Evan said, according to BusinessWeek:

[H]e expects interest rates to stay low until 2015. If the U.S. adds 200,000 jobs per month for several months, that would be an indicator that the Fed could end asset purchases in line with its pledge to continue until it sees “substantial improvement” in labor markets, he said.

“That would be consistent with substantial improvement.That’s going to be on the order of 1 million to 1.5 million jobs over the next six months to a year. That would be indicative that we could stop.”

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