From Jon Hilsenrath at the WSJ: Fed Officials Worry Interest Rates Will Go Up, Only to Come Back Down
Federal Reserve officials are likely to raise their benchmark short-term interest rate from near zero Wednesday, expecting to slowly ratchet it higher to above 3% in three years.
But that’s if all goes as planned. Their big worry is they’ll end up right back at zero.
Weekend:
• Schedule for Week of December 13th
• FOMC Preview and Review of Projections
From CNBC: Pre-Market Data and Bloomberg futures: currently S&P futures are unchanged and DOW futures are up slightly (fair value).
Oil prices were down over the last week with WTI futures at $35.62 per barrel and Brent at $37.93 per barrel. A year ago, WTI was at $58, and Brent was at $61 – so prices are down almost 40% year-over-year.
Here is a graph from Gasbuddy.com for nationwide gasoline prices. Nationally prices are at $2.01 per gallon (down about $0.55 per gallon from a year ago). Prices should fall under $2.00 per gallon soon.