The Fed Has Not Moved Rates All Year. Its September Meeting Began Today, and This One Carries Projections.

The Federal Open Market Committee started its two-day September meeting on Tuesday. The decision is published Wednesday. Four of the eight scheduled meetings each year carry a Summary of Economic Projections, and the Fed's own calendar marks September 15-16 as one of them, alongside March, June and December.

A year without a rate change

The last change to the target range was a quarter-point cut on December 11, 2025, which took it to 3-1/2 to 3-3/4 percent. The implementation note attached to every 2026 decision has repeated the same instruction since.

Undertake open market operations as necessary to maintain the federal funds rate in a target range of 3-1/2 to 3-3/4 percent.

That sentence is identical in the notes issued after the January 27-28, March 17-18, April 28-29, June 16-17 and July 28-29 meetings. Nine months of policy, one number.

The July vote

Holding was not the unanimous view. The July 29 statement recorded a 9-3 vote, with three participants dissenting in the same direction.

Beth M. Hammack, Neel Kashkari and Lorie K. Logan, who preferred to raise the target range for the federal funds rate by 1/4 percentage point.

The statement described economic activity as expanding at a solid pace despite elevated uncertainty, said job gains had kept pace with the workforce, and said inflation remains elevated relative to the Committee's 2 percent goal.

What the target range is not

The target range is a range, not a rate. The Committee sets the band and the Open Market Desk operates to keep the market rate inside it. Two other numbers sit alongside it, and neither is the same thing.

• The effective federal funds rate is the rate actually transacted. The H.15 release published September 14 shows it at 3.63 percent on every business day from September 7 to September 11.
• Interest on reserve balances was set at 3.65 percent in the July 29 implementation note. The primary credit rate - the discount window - was 3.75 percent.
• The bank prime loan rate was 6.75 percent across the same week. H.15 describes it as the rate posted by a majority of the top 25 insured US-chartered commercial banks by domestic assets. The Fed does not set it.

H.15 describes the daily effective rate as a volume-weighted median of transaction-level data collected from depository institutions. It is a measurement of the market, not an announcement.

What a projections meeting adds

On projection meetings the Committee publishes participants' individual forecasts for growth, unemployment, inflation and the appropriate path of the federal funds rate. Those are individual submissions, not a Committee forecast and not a commitment. The minutes follow separately: the Fed states that minutes of regularly scheduled meetings are released three weeks after the date of the policy decision.

This article describes the mechanics of a scheduled policy meeting and is not investment advice.