Today, Thursday September 17, 2015, the most anticipated decision in all of financial history was made.
Or not made, as it turned out.
We are referring, of course, to the Fed’s long awaited move to (finally!) raise interest rates. Something, anything, to show that they were finally going to move off of the saver-punishing, mal-investment promoting, zero rate money policy of the past 6 years.
Instead, for the 55th time in a row, they decided to do nothing saying:
- **FOMC: NO POLICY CHANGE, 0-0.25% TARGET 'REMAINS APPROPRIATE'
- **FOMC: GLOBAL ECON,FIN EVENTS 'MAY RESTRAIN ECON ACTIVITY'
- **FOMC: VOTE 9-1; LACKER DISSENTS, WANTED 25 BPS HIKE
Fed meetings happen every 6 weeks. For the past 55 of those Fed meetings, no rate hike has happened. Inquiring minds would like to know: Why the hell not? What are they afraid of?
For those of us tracking this all very closely (perhaps too closely), the Fed has offered up a steady diet of different reasons for taking no action and a similarly moving set of new targets for when they might.
For a while, they were going to wait until ‘economic conditions warranted’ a rate hike. Later, the milestone was going to be after unemployment dropped below 6.5%. Uh, unless inflation was below 2.5%, then they might not. But if inflation was over 2.5%, then, for sure.
All of their prior ‘targets’ have been hit. And then exceeded.
by agent700 
