Fed publishes discount rate minutes for August and September

The Federal Reserve has published the minutes of its Board’s discount rate meetings of August 17, September 9 and September 16, the sessions at which the Board sets the primary credit rate charged to banks borrowing at the discount window.

Discount rate minutes are the quiet end of Fed transparency. They record the recommendations of the twelve Reserve Bank boards of directors, whose requests often telegraph regional sentiment on the policy path weeks before it shows up in FOMC debate, and they show whether the directors wanted the spread over the federal funds target changed or held.

This batch covers the meetings bracketing the September FOMC, published in the same week that September’s inflation data reset the argument about where the easing cycle ends.