By Luciana Lopez
BALTIMORE (Reuters) - The U.S. Federal Reserve may speed up or slow down the pace at which it winds down its massive bond-buying program, a top Fed official said on Friday, but only a sharp downturn in the data would justify putting the tapering process on hold.
"The door has to be seen as open" for changing the pace at which the Fed trims the program, Richmond Federal Reserve President Jeffrey Lacker told reporters after a speech here.
The Fed last month cut its monthly bond-buying by $10 billion, to $75 billion a month, and signaled it would wind down the program by the end of 2014.
"For me the data would have to be much weaker on a sustained basis to want to pause," said Lacker, who has been an opponent of bond-buying from its start.
(Reporting by Luciana Lopez; Writing by Ann Saphir; Editing by Leslie Adler)