The latest from Jon Hilsenrath in the Wall Street Journal (gated):
- Federal Reserve meeting next week is likely to see officials “affirm their plan to start raising short-term interest rates in 2015″
- Could begin the run-up to liftoff by dropping their assurance that rates will stay low for a “considerable time”
- Senior officials have hinted they’re looking at dropping this closely watched interest-rate signal, which many market participants take to mean about six months
Hilsenrath cites Fed Vice Chairman Stanley Fischer in an interview with The Wall Street Journal last week:
- “It’s clearer that we’re closer to getting rid of that than we were a few months ago”
Well, yeah … given the inexorable passage of time and such, it is clearer.
And, more:
- New York Fed President William Dudley has avoided using the phrase in recent speeches and instead said the Fed should be “patient” before raising rates
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Earlier today:
- Fed’s Lockhart urges patience on liftoff: Not in a rush to drop ‘considerable time’ phrase from the statement
- Fed’s Williams: mid-2015 is a ‘reasonable guess’ for lift-off – MNI
