Fed's rate decision will be affected by numbers, history

TAKE a look at the newspaper headlines reporting on the last meeting of the Federal Reserve policymakers, and you get a sense of the dilemma that is facing Fed chair Janet Yellen and her colleagues at the US central bank: to raise or not to raise short-term interest rates, which the Fed has held near zero since the end of 2008.

More specifically, while the majority of the Fed's policymakers expect interest rates to be raised this year, they still cannot agree whether that should take place sooner (in June?) or later (in September?), although the conventional wisdom is that it would not happen in April or May.

Hence, after deconstructing the statement issued by the Fed following the meeting of its Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) on Wednesday, as well as after trying to decipher the comments by Ms Yellen during a brief press conference, several newspapers underlined the decision by Ms Yellen to drop from the statement the Fed's earlier pledge to be "patient" before raising interest rates.