PIMCO's Bill Gross: Quantitative easing will continue through “at least the end of the year.”

From Credit Writedowns:

This morning PIMCO’s Bill Gross wrote on Twitter that the “Fed will never sell what they now own but will stop buying more @ some point. Question is when? Growth dependent. We est. Jan 2014.” Gross also told Bloomberg Television yesterday that quantitative easing would continue through “at least the end of the year.” This is important given the relative hawkishness that people took away from the Fed’s January FOMC minutes.

Fed watchers like University of Oregon’s Tim Duy believe the January minutes show the Fed wavering on its commitment to QE and he believes this would imply an equally less-committed stance to low rates, if true. My view is that the Fed has always had doubts about QE, first because it has only been known to be effective in raising asset prices and has not had unequivocal results on interest rates, employment or the real economy. Moreover, there is considerable political pressure on the Fed to adopt a more hawkish stance in order to fight inflation. And lastly, many Fed officials, especially regional Fed presidents are rightly concerned that low interest rates and quantitative easing aka loose and easy will have a negative impact on credit quality that leads to increased loan losses when the credit cycle turns down....MUCH MORE