Bloomberg NewsJames Bullard, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. LouisBroad expectations the Federal Reserve will start raising short-term interest rates next summer are being driven not so much by economic considerations as they are by quirks in how the U.S. central bank conducts its policy meetings, and that’s a bad thing, a top Fed official said Thursday. In an interview that expressed continued confidence the Fed can raise short-term rates off currently near-zero rates next spring, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis President James Bullard said markets are in large part betting on a June 2015 rate increase because that’s one of the four meetings scheduled to be followed by a press conference by Chairwoman Janet Yellen. “The probabilities about when the Fed would move off the zero bound are all piling up on this June meeting” because the U.S. central bank has led observers to believe major policy actions can only happen at meetings with a press conference to explain what just happened, Bullard said. The Fed’s talk about “being data dependent isn’t as credible as it should be” given this situation, he said. The Fed could fix this by having a press conference after all of the eight policy meetings scheduled for 2015, which would provide the institution far more latitude to act when it needs to, Bullard said. WSJ.com