Rosengren Says Fed May Keep Interest Rate Near Zero Until 2016

The Federal Reserve will probably keep its main interest rate “quite low for quite some time,” possibly until 2016, amid languid economic growth, Boston Fed President Eric Rosengren said.

“You could easily imagine if we have relatively slow growth in the overall economy, even though it picks up from where we are now, that it could be 2016,” Rosengren, who votes on monetary policy this year, said today on CNBC television. “You’d certainly need to have growth 3 percent or faster if you’d want to see short-term rates rising at that point.”