Boston Federal Reserve President Eric Rosengren told CNBC on Friday the economy was close to hitting full employment and close to the Fed’s 2 percent inflation target, so interest rates should rise “slowly and gradually.”
“We tended to move around the time that the chair has a press conference. So the next press conference meeting is in December. There’s a much higher probability in December,” he said on “Squawk Box.”
The futures market implies odds of about 65 percent for a hike at the central bank’s December meeting.
“To me, that seems quite appropriate,” said Rosengren, a voting member this year on the central bank’s policymaking panel and one of three dissenters at the September meeting, when the Fed held rates steady.
“GDP growth looks like it’s going to be strong enough in the second half of the year to … [keep] the unemployment rate drifting down,” he said, adding he’s not worried about inflationary dangers from rising wages and prices.
