If you like semi-artificial excitement, this has been an excellent week to read the financial press carefully. The American central bank will pop off a quarter-point interest rate increase this afternoon, or it won't.
More expert words than we can count with a Cray have been expended on predicting one result or the other. Closer to the real world -- but in fact not very close at all -- more money than you and I could possibly imagine has been gambled.
As a public service I offer my own conclusion, to wit, I don't know how Janet Yellin will massage the Federal Funds Rate at 2 p.m. today, and I have arranged my investments accordingly by doing nothing. The inaction is based partly on fear of being wrong and losing capital, probably enough of my hard-won savings to pay for a day or two of Janet's fresh-squeezed orange juice served by a smiling civil servant in a starched white jacket.
And also partly by general disgust that our official medium of exchange still has no objective value beyond the promises of politicians and the guesses of tea-leaf readers who happen to work at the Federal Reserve building rather than on the carnival midway.
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