Fed: manual steering, tunnel vision

Despite various downside risks and jittery markets, the current situation in the US economy may not worry the Fed to the point of postponing the widely expected policy rate hike next week. With help from the oil price, inflation will moderate temporarily in early 2019. Since the Fed wishes to abandon the auto pilot of one rate hike at the end of each quarter, this will give it an excuse to postpone the next increase beyond March. In the meantime, we will see whether the increasin...