Fed Officials Could Wait Longer to Raise Rates

Federal Reserve officials have made clear they won’t raise interest rates at their policy meeting Tuesday and Wednesday. And they’ve stopped using phrases such as “considerable time” and “patient” to signal how much longer they’ll wait to start lifting borrowing costs.

So the only suspense this week surrounds how their post-meeting statement will characterize the winter slowdown in U.S. growth. Several officials have said recently they think it was probably a temporary soft patch, and they expect to see a rebound in coming months.

A small number of policy makers still want to start raising their benchmark short-term interest rate from near zero this summer, but others sound increasingly inclined to wait until the fall or even later to act. Two say they want to wait until next year.

Attached are some key excerpts from Fed officials’ public remarks since their March meeting.

WSJ

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