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Rosengren would delay U.S. rate hike until inflation evident: WSJ

[January 15, 2015]  (Reuters) - Boston Fed President Eric Rosengren said he lacks confidence that inflation will soon rise, and he wants to see more evidence of a rebound in wages and prices before the Federal Reserve hikes interest rates, according to the Wall Street Journal.

In an interview with the newspaper, Rosengren, a dovish U.S. central banker who does not vote on policy this year, said: "If we don't see any evidence in wage and price data for a year, then I'd wait a year before I'd be doing something."

The vast majority of Fed officials expect to tighten policy for the first time in nearly a decade later this year, with surveys of economists pointing to mid-2015. Last month, the Fed said it can be "patient" in contemplating a rate hike; it noted that inflation remained weak but was expected to rebound.

Rosengren was quoted as saying he was "not particularly confident" inflation was moving back toward the Fed's 2-percent target, from about 1.5 percent now, citing some market-based price measures.

"My expectation is that if we continually undershoot we won't raise rates as quickly as we would have ... if we don’t start seeing wages and prices moving in the direction that we expect," he said. "That is the implication of patience."

(Reporting by Jonathan Spicer; Editing by Nick Zieminski)

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