Fed’s Kocherlakota: Low Rates May Last 5-10 Years

MarketWatch, April 18, 2013. All Rights Reserved.

WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) – Financial market conditions requiring the Federal Reserve to keep rates unusually low may persist for the next five to 10 years, said Narayana Kocherlakota, the president of the Minneapolis Fed Bank on Thursday. This low-rate environment, and Fed policy, in turn, can be expected to "be associated with financial market phenomena that are seen as signifying instability," such as inflated asset prices, high asset return volatility and heightened merger activity, Kocherlakota said, in a speech at the Levy Economics Institute of Bard College. This instability is best addressed through effective supervision and regulation, Kocherlakota said. However, the Fed may have to confront the dilemma of whether to raise rates to reduce the risks of a financial crisis with the certainty that any tightening would lead to lower employment and prices, he said. The Fed is in a better position to address this challenge than it was in 2007, he said.