– The author is a Reuters Breakingviews columnist. The opinions expressed are his own –
By Edward Hadas
LONDON, Feb 19 (Reuters Breakingviews) – The Federal Reserve deserves some sympathy. The U.S. central bank did everything it could to stage-manage its minimal tightening moves, announced late on Feb. 18. But markets reacted as if to serious bad news.
The changes really are small. The main one was to increase the Fed’s discount rate, which is not currently crucial to the financial system, by a token quarter of a percentage point.
That widens the spread between the policy interest rate, currently zero, and the discount rate, which is used for emergency lending to banks, to half a percentage point. Before the crisis, the gap was a full percentage point.
The Fed tried to keep markets calm. It had hinted the move was coming and the press release announcing the changes started by explaining that they were a response to the “continued improvement in financial market conditions”. To hammer the point home, the Fed added that the moves “do not signal any change in the outlook for the economy or for monetary policy”.
