Boston Fed’s President Makes Case for Interest Rate Hikes<br />In an interview on Saturday at the Boston Fed’s annual conference, Mr. Rosengren said he favored raising the Fed’s benchmark rate later this year, and<br />that the rate should rise to about 2 percent by the end of 2018.<br />I would say particularly the natural rate of unemployment has tended to go up when we’ve<br />had high unemployment rates and go down when we’ve had low unemployment rates.<br />If at the end of the next year we were at the point where inflation was around 2 percent<br />and the unemployment rate was below 4 percent, I’d be concerned if we hadn’t moved to remove accommodation.<br />Unless the data turns out otherwise, based on what I’m expecting I would think that a rate increase by the end of the year would be appropriate.
