Someday soon, maybe exactly one month from today, the U.S. Federal Reserve will raise interest rates for the first time in nearly a decade. How the bond market will react -- an entire generation of traders was in grade school the last time rates went up -- is a question that has a lot of people worried.
Whether this anxiety is justified is a separate question from what the Fed should do about it. To its credit, the Fed has been trying to head off any market disruption by painstakingly broadcasting its plans for more than a year. Markets have a habit of misinterpreting the central bank's statements, however, and it may well be that it and other regulators need to do more.
