Fischer said the Fed won’t raise rates until the U.S. expansion “has advanced far enough,” and emerging markets should be able to weather the increase.
“Tightening should occur only against the backdrop of a strengthening U.S. economy and in an environment of improved household and business confidence,” he said.
Chicago Fed President Charles Evans said his own preference is to hold back on raising rates “until we have an awful lot of confidence that things are taking off.”
“We’re at a point where we need to get inflation up,” he said.
The Fed’s preferred measure of prices, the personal consumption expenditures index, rose 1.5 percent in the year to August and hasn’t exceeded the Fed’s 2 percent target since March 2012.