Likely wearing a nondescript blue suit, on Wednesday afternoon Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell will shuffle behind a nondescript podium in a nondescript press room at the Federal Reserve headquarters in Washington, D.C., to announce one of the most consequential monetary policy decisions of his central bank tenure.
Powell is not expected to defy financial markets operating under the assumption of an imminent 25-basis-point cut to the overnight borrowing rate for banks. Nor is Powell expected to heed the demands of President Donald Trump, who for months has waged a divisive rate-cut pressure campaign, at one point calling for the benchmark federal funds rate to be set somewhere between 0.25% and 1.75% instead of its current range of 4.25% to 4.5%.
In fact, Powell and his fellow central bankers are not expected to do anything surprising. As of Tuesday afternoon, just 4% of futures traders are predicting a jumbo…
