Fed's Williams: Rates should rise second-half 2015

Fed's Williams: Rates should rise second-half 2015

 San Francisco Federal Reserve Bank President John Williams said the U.S. central bank should start raising rates in the second half of 2015, but do so only gradually. "Given the economic outlook, and given also my view that we need accommodative policy relative to historical norms, we need to have relatively low levels of interest rates for quite some time," he said in an interview with Reuters that published late Wednesday. "My own view is it makes sense to start raising rates in the second half of 2015." That pace, he said, should be very slow, with rates ending 2016 well under the historical norm of 4% "with the first digit being a '2'," he said. Also Wednesday, Atlanta Fed President Dennis Lockhart said the first hike shouldn't come until the second half of 2015, while St. Louis Fed President James Bullard forecast the first rate hike will come in the first quarter of 2015