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# 90% Chance Fed Hikes Today
- URL: https://askablackman.me/the-fed-hikes-today-and-for-the-first-time-in-20-years-nobody-got-a-script/
- Published: 2026-09-16T15:08:14.000Z
- Updated: 2026-09-17T15:58:47.000Z
- Description: Kevin Warsh's Fed is expected to raise rates to 3.75%-4.00% this afternoon, the first hike since 2023. The bigger story is a chairman who killed forward guidance, and what that costs everyone who borrows.
- Author: Free Game News
- Tags: Finance, Business, Politics

At 2 p.m. Eastern today, the Federal Reserve is expected to do something it has not done since July 2023: raise interest rates. A Reuters poll of 101 economists found 86 expecting a quarter-point increase to a range of 3.75% to 4.00%, with a majority of forecasters penciling in at least one more hike by the end of March. Futures markets put the odds around 92%.

Barring a shock, the decision itself is the least interesting part of the day. What matters is everything around it: a new chair who has torn up the communications playbook, a bond market doing the Fed's dirty work, a White House that wanted the opposite outcome, and an inflation problem that interest rates can only partially touch.

The path here was fast. As late as early September, two-thirds of economists polled by Reuters expected the Fed to hold. Then the August CPI report landed on September 11: prices up 0.4% in a single month, core inflation running hotter than forecast, gasoline costs rebounding as the Iran war energy shock ground on. The consensus flipped within days. Deutsche Bank strategists told clients this week that if the Fed held anyway, it would be the biggest dovish surprise at a scheduled meeting since the FOMC started announcing decisions in 1994.

That whiplash is a feature of the new regime, and Kevin Warsh would tell you so himself. Confirmed in May on a near party-line vote after President Trump spent years demanding lower rates, Warsh used his first Jackson Hole keynote in August to declare that forward guidance, the practice of telegraphing rate moves so markets are never surprised, had "overstayed its welcome." He described a "hall of mirrors" in which the Fed watches markets and markets watch the Fed until everyone is blind to what is actually happening. He cut the post-meeting statement down to a single page. He told his colleagues to have a "good family fight" over the data instead of agreeing on a script in advance. His stated goal is a quieter Fed that reacts to reality rather than narrating it.

Here is what the experiment has produced so far. Warsh himself conceded in July that yanking guidance may have helped drive a sharp rise in Treasury yields. The 10-year note touched 5.04% this week, its highest level since 2007\. The 2-year sits near 4.65%, far above the policy rate, which means the bond market has already hiked rates on the Fed's behalf. Bank of America analysts framed the committee's choice bluntly: "hike or risk large bond spike."

That is the trade ordinary people should understand. For two decades, forward guidance let the Fed tighten financial conditions gently, with a schedule everyone could plan around. Warsh's approach lets markets set the pace instead. Wall Street desks hedge this kind of uncertainty for a living, and they have priced four hikes by mid-2027\. A family shopping for a car or carrying a credit card balance has no hedge. When guidance dies, the volatility shows up in the rates quoted at the dealership and on the monthly statement. The average credit card APR is already around 22%, near a record, and card rates track the fed funds rate almost mechanically.

Warsh's counterargument, made in that Jackson Hole speech, is that the old system quietly did the same damage. When the Fed gets inflation wrong while markets nap on its guidance, he argued, the worst harm lands on people without financial assets. Fair enough, and five-plus years of inflation above the 2% target gives him a real case. But the burden-sharing question cuts both ways, and today it is borrowers, not bond traders, who absorb the surprise.

Then there is the politics. Trump nominated Warsh expecting cuts, and as recently as Sunday, NEC Director Kevin Hassett was saying the Fed does not need to raise rates. A hike two months before midterms, delivered by a chair confirmed partly on suspicion he would be a dove, reads as an assertion of independence. It also carries a risk Warsh cannot escape: standing pat when markets expect a hike would have looked like caving to the man who appointed him. He had almost no clean options, which is perhaps the point of pricing the move at 92%.

The deepest tension is the one the Fed cannot fix. Bloomberg's own preview put it plainly: the Fed's main tool will do little to restrain the forces pushing up prices right now. Rate hikes cool demand. They do not reopen shipping lanes or end a war. Core PCE inflation was still running 3.3% in June, with tariffs and energy doing much of the work. The Fed is raising the price of money to fight a supply shock, which means households pay twice: once at the pump, and again on their balances.

Watch three things at 2 p.m. and 2:30\. First, the statement, which under Warsh will be short. Second, the dot plot: June's showed one hike this year, and futures now expect two. Third, the press conference, where Warsh will try to explain a hiking cycle without promising anything about the next one. TD Securities called the balancing act correctly. If he hikes and hints at more, he has recreated guidance under a new name. If he hikes and says nothing, December becomes a coin flip priced into your mortgage.

## Free Game Takeaway

Act on the parts of this you control. Variable-rate debt is the front line: credit card APRs already near 22% will reprice upward within a billing cycle or two of today's decision, and HELOC and adjustable mortgage rates will follow. If you carry a card balance, a 0% balance-transfer offer or a fixed-rate consolidation loan is worth more this week than it was last week, and will be worth still more if the dot plot shows a second hike this year. If you are shopping for a car or home, get a rate lock rather than waiting for clarity, because Warsh has told you, on the record, that clarity is not coming. On the other side of the ledger, savers finally get paid: high-yield savings and CD rates will drift up, and locking a longer CD now captures yields near cycle highs if the war de-escalates and the hiking cycle proves short. For investors, the signals that matter are the September dot plot versus June's one-hike projection, whether the 10-year Treasury holds above 5%, and the next CPI report. A Fed that refuses to guide makes every inflation print a live event, so expect volatility around data releases rather than around meetings. Finally, watch the December 8-9 meeting: futures currently price roughly a 30% chance of a second hike by then, and Warsh's handling of that question today will tell you whether the no-guidance era is a genuine philosophy or just a pause between scripts.