The most interesting question heading into last Wednesday's Federal Open Market Committee meeting — at which the FOMC ended up announcing the first reduction in the Federal Reserve's quantitative easing program — was how the decision would affect short-term interest rates. Back in the pre-crisis days, moving short-term interest rates up and down was the standard tool that the Fed used to stimulate or cool down the economy. Short-term interest rate futures can be used as a proxy for the market's expectations of where policy rates — e.g., the fed funds rate that the Fed manipulates to provide the economy with monetary ... (full story)