The Federal Reserve

In a possible preview of a speech Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen will give Monday, a close ally said Friday that the Fed should be in no hurry to raise interest rates, especially after a bleak U.S. jobs report.

The U.S. job market is healthy. The stock market is up. Home prices are rising. Yet as the Federal Reserve prepares to meet this week, it seems in no mood to resume raising interest rates from ultra-lows.

The Federal Reserve said Wednesday that the economy kept expanding in late February and March, despite weakness in the energy sector and a slowdown in exports of some factory and farm products because of global weakness and the strong dollar.

Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen said Tuesday that the Fed still envisions a gradual pace of interest rate increases in light of global pressures that could weigh on the U.S. economy.

The Federal Reserve is keeping a key interest rate unchanged in light of global pressures that risk slowing the U.S. economy.

It's not about what it will do. It's about what it will say.

Federal Reserve officials believed last month that the economic conditions needed to trigger the first interest rate hike in nearly a decade could "well be met" by their next meeting in December.

A voting member of the Federal Reserve cautioned Friday that the Fed has yet to decide when to raise interest rates even though it issued a statement this week that said a rate hike was possible in December.

So what will it take for the Federal Reserve to finally raise interest rates?

The Federal Reserve is keeping U.S. interest rates at record lows in the face of threats from a weak global economy, persistently low inflation and unstable financial markets.