Maven: Fed Coverage Rates Highly

Has a media-wide plot been hatched to keep The Business Press Maven happy as the summer winds down? The main culprit causing this unaccustomed feeling of good cheer to keep washing over him is the continued good coverage of the Federal Open Market Committee meeting notes.

As you loyal readers know, The Business Press Maven wanted to poke sticks in his eyes earlier in the year, so badly was the business media misunderstanding the basics of these Federal Reserve committee notes.

Like the general public, the business media had grown so accustomed to lower rates that they let themselves become almost willfully ignorant of the Fed's intentions. Poring over the Fed's notes, the Wrong-Way Corrigans -- uh, I mean the business media -- kept saying that the Fed was done raising rates.

Such promise didn't exist in the text, even between the lines. In fact, at one meeting, Ben Bernanke, then the incoming Fed chairman, hadn't even taken his seat yet, meaning that what came from the meeting had little long-term relevance. Still, the business media assuredly told us, things were cool with rates. They weren't going up. And as long as there was this level of misunderstanding in the market, stocks were not going anywhere. Truth, that old bugbear, eventually comes out and gets woven into stock prices.

But now The Business Press Maven is hurtling toward everlasting happiness. That's because almost everywhere he has looked, both this morning and last, he finds evidence that the business media read the Fed minutes accurately. It was a close call, but the Fed decided to leave rates where they were for -- and this is the key realization -- the time being. The Fed governors are doing this -- for the time being -- in the hope that inflation will ease, uh, easily and the economy will slow but not stall.

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