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Washington - Minutes of the Federal Reserve's latest policy meeting released on Tuesday showed the bank's nervous agnosticism about the recovery, with policymakers reticent about declaring victory or launching new stimulus.
Details of the Federal Open Market Committee's mid-March meeting showed central bankers took better news on employment, housing and financial markets with a large pinch of salt, meekly describing the data as "positive, on balance".
"Meeting participants agreed that the information received since the committee's previous meeting, while mixed, had been positive on balance, and suggested that the economy had been expanding moderately," the minutes showed.
Despite the cautious tone there was limited mention of further measures to juice the world's largest economy.
That slightly surprised investors and professional Fedologists, who had expected the bank to tee-up a decision on a new round of purchases later this month.
"(The) minutes confirmed that there was a significant movement away from additional stimulus," said Stephen Stanley, an economist with Pierpont Securities.
Stanley added that a solid unemployment report this Friday would probably be "the final nail in the coffin" of plans for new measures.
The meeting minutes reiterated the Fed's standard position that it could intervene more in the market "as appropriate", but support for that move appeared to be waning.
"A couple of members indicated that the initiation of additional stimulus could become necessary if the economy lost momentum or if inflation seemed likely to remain below its mandate-consistent rate of 2% over the medium run," the March 13 minutes noted.
Wall Street sank after the news, as traders adjusted to the idea of the Fed pulling away the stabilisers, at least in part.
But if the Fed now seems less likely to act, it also shows no sign of overconfidence.
For every positive development seen over the past few months, there seemed to be members of the Fed committee warning of statistical anomalies or mitigating factors.
A recent downtick in unemployment was weighed against the weather.
"Several participants noted that the unseasonably warm weather of recent months added one more element of uncertainty to the interpretation of incoming data, and that this factor might account for a portion of the recent improvement in indicators of employment and housing."
"In a contrasting view, the improvements registered in labour market indicators could be seen as raising the likelihood that GDP (gross domestic product) data for the recent period would undergo a significant upward revision."
Inflation, meanwhile, "had been subdued of late, although the recent increase in crude oil and gasoline prices would push up inflation temporarily".
