US stocks and Trea­sury prices plunged yes­ter­day af­ter Fed­er­al Re­serve pol­i­cy­mak­ers said they were wor­ried about a slow­down in hir­ing and ap­peared to re­sist buy­ing more bonds to help the econ­o­my. The Dow Jones in­dus­tri­al av­er­age was down as much as 133 points af­ter the Fed re­leased min­utes of the March meet­ing of its Open Mar­ket Com­mit­tee, which sets in­ter­est rates and mon­e­tary pol­i­cy. It had been down 45 points be­fore the min­utes were re­leased.

The Dow bounced back by the close to a de­cline of 64.94 points, or 0.5 per cent, at 13,199.55. The Stan­dard & Poor's 500 in­dex fell 5.66 points, or 0.4 per cent, to 1,413.38. The Nas­daq com­pos­ite in­dex dropped 6.1, or 0.2 per cent, to 3,113.57. The Fed min­utes showed that pol­i­cy­mak­ers fear hir­ing could slow if eco­nom­ic growth doesn't im­prove. The coun­try added an av­er­age of 245,000 jobs per month from De­cem­ber through Feb­ru­ary, the strongest three months since the Great Re­ces­sion.

On­ly two of ten vot­ing com­mit­tee mem­bers on the Fed com­mit­tee said they would sup­port an­oth­er round of bond pur­chas­es. For that to hap­pen, the econ­o­my would have to weak­en sig­nif­i­cant­ly. The re­lease of the min­utes re­duced de­mand for gov­ern­ment bonds, dri­ving prices down and yields up. The yield on the bench­mark ten-year Trea­sury note to 2.28 per cent from 2.16 per cent ear­li­er yes­ter­day.

AP