Lacker Sees Inflation Rising to Fed Target Despite Oil, Dollar

A top Federal Reserve official on Friday said the drop in oil prices and a strong U.S. dollar were not impacting his view that inflation expectations would rise toward the central bank's 2 percent target.

Richmond Fed President Jeffrey Lacker, speaking to reporters here after appearing at a conference, said consumer views on prices were more telling than a falling market measure of inflation expectations known as break-evens.

"The decline in the break-evens has definitively gotten my notice. But survey measures, when you ask people what they expect inflation to be – these are consumers, man on the street – those (expectations) are rock steady so far. So I don't see the break-evens as necessarily signaling an un-anchoring of inflation expectations," he said.

Lacker told reporters that the dollar's strength had only a marginal impact on inflation. He surmised that oil price moves were only transitory.

"I don't see the effects of oil price declines as materially affecting my confidence of inflation trending back to 2 percent," he said.

(Reporting by Michael Flaherty; Editing by Paul Simao)