, Columnist
Ending an Unhealthy Obsession With the Fed
People focus on the central bank's next move because they don't understand its goals.
Object of much attention.
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Why are markets and the media so obsessed with the timing of the Federal Reserve’s next interest-rate increase? The sheer intensity of their attention, I think, reveals a deeper problem: They don’t understand what the Fed is ultimately trying to achieve.
In Fed-watching lately, the calendar is king. Investors are focused on what will happen at the central bank’s next policy-making meeting in June -- and minutes from the April meeting, released last week, have led many to expect a quarter-percentage-point rate increase. Fed officials, when they speak at public events, inevitably face questions about the likely number of interest-rate hikes in 2016 and 2017.