Boston Fed President: Near-Zero Interest Rates May Last to 2016

On Tuesday, Boston Federal Reserve President Eric Rosengren told CNBC that he foresees a scenario wherein the Federal Reserve keeps U.S. short-term interest rates at near zero levels into 2016. 

“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,” said Rosengren. “It depends on how the economy evolves.” 

Rosengren said he views 3% growth metric as a minimum requirement for letting short-term interest rates rise. 

“You certainly need to have growth of 3 percent or faster if you wanted to be seeing short-term rates rising at that point,” said Rosengren.