Fed would consider negative rates if economy soured: Yellen

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Federal Reserve would consider pushing interest rates below zero if the U.S. economy took a serious turn for the worse, Fed Chair Janet Yellen said on Wednesday.

"Potentially anything - including negative interest rates - would be on the table. But we would have to study carefully how they would work here in the U.S. context," Yellen told a House of Representatives committee.

This would happen if the economy were to "deteriorate in a significant way," she said, adding that she believed negative rates "would have some at least modest favorable effect on banks' incentives to lend."

(Reporting by Jason Lange; Editing by James Dalgleish)

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