Will it be another sleeper year for federal policy?

Caroline Baum is a columnist for Bloomberg News. With the quadrennial presidential election behind us and the permanent political campaign in the US at its cycle low, policy is becoming paramount again. Disturbing the Peace The Fed is aiming to turn the economy into the wind in an effort not so much to slow growth but to restore interest rates to a non-inflationary setting. If you block out the peripheral noise in the minutes from the 14 December meeting, the central message comes through loud and clear. Even with the increase in the funds rate to 2.25% last month, "the current leve...