Federal Reserve press conference, 2015-09-17 — Chair Janet Yellen

Question (Michael Derby, Dow Jones Newswires): Mike Derby with Dow Jones Newswires. One of your colleagues in the dot plots said they’d like to see negative interest rates—didn’t expect to see that. What do you make of negative interest rates as a potential source of new stimulus if the Fed were to have to do something more, you know, as opposed to maybe going to QE? Does negative interest rates have any part—does it—is it—should it be part of the Fed’s toolkit, essentially?
Answer: So, let me be clear that negative interest rates was not something that we considered very seriously at all today. It’s—was not one of our main policy options. But one participant in the Committee would like to see additional accommodation, is concerned by the inflation outlook, and thinks that we need additional stimulus, additional accommodation to provide that, and proposed doing so by moving interest rates negative. That’s something we’ve seen in several European countries. It’s not something we talked about today. Look, if—I don’t expect that we’re going to be in a path of providing additional accommodation, but if the outlook were to change in a way that most of my colleagues and I do not expect and we found ourselves with a weak economy that needed additional stimulus, we would look at all of our available tools, and that would be something that we would evaluate in that kind of context.