The slowdown in China, the world’s second-biggest economy, and a bout of financial turmoil as Chinese equities tumbled, also troubled Fed policy makers, the minutes showed.

“It used to be just Australia that would catch a cold when China sneezed, but the Chinese sell-off is far more infectious than initially thought”, said David Madden, market analyst at IG.

Those concerns have been heightened since the last Fed meeting in July, before China unexpectedly devalued its currency last week in a move seen as created to boost slowing exports.

The FTSEuroFirst index of 300 leading European shares fell 1.3 per cent and Germany’s DAX fell 1.2 per cent to its lowest since January, putting it down about 6.7 per cent so far this month.

“I’m a bit surprised by the market reacting as much as that”, said Vassili Serebriakov of BNP Paribas.

One of those economic conditions is the rate of inflation. However, several noted that “some noticeable margins of slack remained”, including a high share of employees working part time because full-time jobs were not available.

The concerns about events overseas have been exaggerated, they argued, pointing out that the committee “did not allow foreign developments to sway their baseline assessment about the timing or pace of rate normalization”. “The economy is nearing full employment, productivity has stalled, yet inflation shows no signs of taking off”, he said.

“We don’t come away from the minutes feeling more confident about our call for a September rate hike as we might have hoped”, said Michelle Girard, an economist at RBS.

“There were enough caveats to make us think that September was most likely off the cards”.

“Because if they raise rates while the inflationary pressure is not there, and it’s too low, it could slip down and become deflation, and when this happens the Fed runs out of ammunition”, she says. Many Fed officials, including the Fed chairwoman Janet Yellen, has repeated that it’s appropriate to raise the benchmark interest rate this year.

Fed officials also noted that the job market still had room for improvement, particularly on the wage front.

The most active gold contract for December delivery rose $11, or 0.98 percent, to settle at $1,127.90 per ounce on Wednesday, Xinhua reported. The Consumer Price Index edged up 0.1 percent in July after advancing 0.3 percent in June, marking the sixth straight month of increases, the Labor Department said Wednesday, marking the sixth straight month of gains.