Rate’s not going

Cautious Yellen signals no June hike

Janet Yellen to Wall Street: I want to go slow.

The Federal Reserve chair signaled in a talk on Monday that the jobs market is too weak and global risks are too dangerous for the central bank to raise borrowing costs this month.

The comments seem to back off from a recently voiced Yellen position in which the central banker said an interest rate hike would be appropriate “in the coming months” — a vagueenough timeline that led Wall Street to believe it would happen by the end of the summer.

But last Friday’s lousy jobs report has changed things.

“Recent signs of a slowdown in job creation bear close watching,” Yellen said, referring to the Labor Department’s report that the US economy added just 38,000 jobs in May.

The chair’s Monday comments put a damper on any hopes of a rate hike anytime soon.

Wall Street lowered the odds of a July rate hike to 21.6 percent after her most recent comments, down from a 58 percent chance just before Memorial Day weekend, according to the Fed funds futures rates.

A June rate hike was pretty much taken off the table after Friday’s May jobs report, and Wall Street lowered the odds of a hike to 2 percent. Overall, Yellen was upbeat. “I see good reasons to expect that the positive forces supporting employment growth and higher inflation will continue to outweigh the negative ones,” she said.

Other than the jobs reports, a June 23 vote by the UK to leave the European Union — something that, if it were to happen, many economists believe would hurt the global economy — will play into the Fed’s decision to raise rates, Yellen said.

The central bank has kept rates at 0.5 percent or lower since 2008 to spur greater borrowing and investment.

The Fed raised its benchmark interest rate in December for the first time in nine years, to 0.5 percent.

Markets fell during Yellen’s speech, but bounced back afterward. The Dow Jones industrial average closed Monday at 17,920.33, up 113.27 points.