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The Federal Reserve should wait until it has a lot of confidence that U.S. economic recovery can be sustained before raising interest rates, a senior U.S. Fed official said Wednesday.
"We should be exceptionally patient in adjusting the stance of U.S monetary policy -- even to the point of allowing a modest overshooting of our inflation target to appropriately balance the risks to our policy objectives," Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago President Charles Evans said during a conference on the U.S. labor market slack held by the Peterson Institute of International Economics, a Washington-D.C. based think tank.
"Before the Fed raise rates, we should have a great deal of confidence that we won't be forced to backtrack on our moves and face another painful period at the zero lower bound," Evans said, referring to the fact that U.S. benchmark short-term interest rates have been near zero since December 2008.
"Past experience with the zero lower bound also counsels patience," the senior Fed official said, citing the examples of the Great Depression of the 1930s in the United States and the past 20 years of stagnation in Japan.
"I believe that the biggest risk we face today is prematurely engineering restrictive monetary conditions," Evans said, adding that the U.S. economy is currently "undershooting both our employment and inflation goals."
"I am very uncomfortable with calls to raise our policy rate sooner than later. I favor delaying liftoff until I am more certain that we have sufficient momentum in place toward our policy goals," Evans said.
At its latest monetary policy meeting last week, the Fed decided to continue trimming its monthly asset purchase program by 10 billion U.S. dollars, on track to halt it completely in October. It also reiterated that the central bank expected to keep interest rates near zero for a "considerable time." Most market participants expect the Fed to wait until mid-2015 before raising interest rates.
