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Fed keeps baseball in mind ahead of expected rate hike

The US Federal Reserve has baseball on its mind as it gears up for a meeting this week that analysts expect will result in the ninth successive hike to US interest rates.

There is no doubt among economists that the benchmark federal funds rate will rise by 25 basis points to 3.25 percent when the Fed's Open Market Committee (FOMC) concludes a two-day meeting tomorrow.

The question is rather, how near is the Fed to ending its tightening cycle?

Is the US in the eighth and penultimate innings of a baseball match, as Dallas Fed president Richard Fisher suggested at the start of the month? Or has the game got some way to run yet?

"We have the ninth inning coming up at the end of June; we feel strongly we have been getting good, fast hard pitches coming right down the pipe," he said back on June 1.

But opinion is divided over whether chairman Alan Greenspan and his colleagues on the FOMC see victory in sight in their year-old campaign to quell inflation brought about by record-high oil prices.

If indicators such as falling unemployment and rising factory orders are to be believed, the US economy is ticking along nicely despite a surge in crude that on Monday took futures prices over US$60 a barrel for the first time.

In fact, Greenspan may be afraid that the economy is doing too well in some areas, such as the red-hot property market. The doomsayers warn that real estate is the next bubble set to pop, after the late 1990s "dotcom" mania.

"The Fed's rate announcement is unlikely to be much of a surprise," Lehman Brothers economists wrote in a research note.

"This would be the Fed's ninth rate increase in the current cycle, and despite hints from Dallas Fed president Fisher, this game is not over yet," they said, warning of "froth" in the housing market.

The Fed has been describing its monetary policy as "measured" and "accommodative."

In the absence of debate over whether rates will go up, attention will be focused on whether those buzz words are changed in the FOMC statement set for release at 6:15pm GMT tomorrow.
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