Piyasa, Fed faiz artırımının tamamlanmış bir anlaşma olduğunu söylüyor. İşte bu yüzden sabit kalabilir.

The market says a Fed rate hike is a done deal. Here's why it might hold steady.

Jennifer Schonberger · Senior Reporter

Mon, September 14, 2026 at 1:00 PM GMT+3 7 min read

Markets overwhelmingly expect the Federal Reserve to raise interest rates this week for the first time in more than three years — but the decision is likely to be a closer call than investors' bets suggest.

"The probabilities in the market seem higher than I would necessarily assign at this point," Loretta Mester, former president of the Cleveland Fed, said in an interview. Mester pointed to recent arguments by key members of the Fed's rate-setting committee, New York Fed President John Williams and Fed Governor Chris Waller, suggesting that neither is convinced a rate hike is appropriate.

However, key inflation data released Friday boosted market expectations for a hike. The Consumer Price Index (CPI) for August showed monthly prices rose 0.3%, higher than the expected 0.2%, crossing a symbolic line in the sand drawn by a handful of Fed officials. Since Friday, traders have been pricing in between 85% and 90% odds the Fed will raise raise 25 basis points.

Waller has said that if August figures showed cooling inflation — specifically a 0.2% rise in core prices — he would support holding rates steady. But if inflation came in "hot," he would consider a hike. "Policy is currently only slightly restricting aggregate demand," Waller said on Sept. 3, "and it may not take much acceleration in inflation to nudge me into supporting tighter policy."

Meanwhile, Williams has argued that monthly Personal Consumption Expenditures readings — the Fed's preferred yardstick — must consistently hit 0.2% to prove inflation is truly coming down.

While the latest CPI data has made Adam Posen, president of the Peterson Institute for International Economics, less certain of a pause, he still thinks the central bank is more likely than not to hold rates steady.

"Ideally, the Fed should never be making up their minds based on one last-minute piece of data," Posen said. "This is why when you say 'I don't want to do forecasts,' it's self-defeating. Otherwise, you're just reacting to a backward-looking, inherently noisy reading."

Last month in Jackson Hole, Wyo., Fed Chairman Kevin Warsh laid out a cogent case for raising rates. He noted that June and July inflation reports failed to prove prices are on a convincing downward path, adding that he would be hard-pressed to describe broad financial conditions as "restrictive."

Yet, Posen maintains that a hike right now would require multiple board members to abruptly reverse their recent dovish stances. Doing so would also mean taking responsibility for "putting the Fed directly back in the crosshairs of Trump's political ire."

"If Waller and Williams were to say, 'Well, I was wrong, let's hike,' then you probably have enough votes for a clear majority," Posen said. Still, he said that failing to deliver what was guided in Jackson Hole could cause the bond market to throw a "tantrum" — another sub-optimal outcome.

Esther George, former president of the Kansas City Fed, also anticipates the central bank will hold rates steady this week. She argues that little has changed over the past few policy meetings to shift the center of the committee.

"What I hear from those who supported past decisions is that inflation isn't accelerating," George said in an interview. "I think 'acceleration' means prices are going up for reasons other than the [Iran] war and what I consider one-time supply shocks. If it's just those factors, I don't consider it an acceleration."

For policymakers preaching patience, George noted that wages are not yet driving inflationary pressure. Consequently, weighing the persistence of supply shocks may justify holding rates steady.

"Those who want to wait longer can look comfortingly at an August report that shows inflation isn't getting worse for new reasons," George added. Rather than hanging their decision on a single month of data, she expects officials to evaluate three-, six-, and twelve-month trends.

Institution vs. urgency

If the Fed holds rates steady, skeptics of Warsh's hawkishness — or his independence from President Trump — will gain fresh ammunition.

"Ideally, the Fed would decide strictly on the economics," Posen said. "Realistically, key figures, including the chair, are deeply concerned about the well-being of the institution. They will be reluctant to take that step when, if they delay by a couple of months, it isn't the end of the world."

Posen wouldn't be surprised by a hike, but notes that kicking the decision down the road to December — after the midterm elections — could "bail out" the central bank from political blowback.

"By December, there'll be no question in anybody's mind — except perhaps the president's — that you have to raise rates because inflation is surging," Posen said. At that point, he expects senators to be more willing to stand up and say the Fed must be protected to do its job.

"Alternatively, if you wait two or three months, Waller and Williams might be proven right that the inflation trend is headed down, which would be the best of all possible worlds," he added.

Mester, who used to sit on the rate-setting committee, notes that the politics do not change the conversation in the room at all.

That said, "It certainly is not helpful at all because if they hold, it's going to be perceived by some people that they caved to influence from the administration. That isn't the kind of perception you want out there because it's not true."

Warsh's communication challenge

Whatever choice the Fed makes this week, Warsh will have to explain it.

George warns that Warsh can no longer afford to give bare-minimum information as he did during his last two press conferences. His detailed economic assessment at Jackson Hole set a new baseline for communication.

If the Fed does hold rates steady, George said that will raise the bar for Warsh to reconcile his remarks at Jackson Hole, where he put a rate hike on the table. He will have to lay out a much clearer "reaction function" — an explicit map of how the central bank will respond to specific economic scenarios, George said.

"A pause will signal that the Fed is sitting tight for the rest of the year, waiting for geopolitical conflicts and tariffs to subside before making a final judgment on inflation and their rate policies," George said.

Mester agrees that if the Fed opts to hold, the onus is on them to justify it. "The question they must ask themselves is: Is the Fed Funds rate currently high enough to ensure inflation returns to 2%? I don't think you can answer that in the affirmative. They should be moving now to get back into restrictive territory."

A single hike won't suffice, Mester said, estimating the Fed will need to make roughly three quarter-point increases by the end of next year. "I would imagine you'd want to front-load that, starting this year into early next year, and then pause to see how the economy reacts. You have to be forward-looking."

Inside the dot plot

While individual policymakers will map out their interest rate projections in the quarterly "dot plot," Warsh has notably chosen not to participate, calling for the metric to be reformed.

George doesn't think each individual's interest rate projections will show a lot of "aggressiveness" around rate increases. Hawks like Cleveland Fed president Beth Hammack or St. Louis Fed president Alberto Musalem are not signaling that the central bank is way behind the curve and has to get ahead. She said she hears their comments as indicating they are not convinced that interest rates are restricting the economy enough and that rates need to move up by a quarter point or two.

"I don't even think it has to be back-to-back," George said of rate hikes. "I think it is the declaration of 'our policy is not getting the outcomes we want and the time frame we want, and so we're going to start nudging in a direction,' whether you think of that as taking back some of those risk management rate cuts from last year or actually trying to tamp down the demand."

Ultimately, George said she'll be watching the Fed's inflation forecast to see if near-term projections have moved higher due to the pop in oil prices — and how far into the future those high prices are expected to extend.

"There's been sort of a history of projecting it's going to come down. Are people now going to say, unless we do something to right-side this, inflation could hang on," George said.

Jennifer Schonberger is a veteran financial journalist covering markets, the economy, and investing. At Yahoo Finance, she covers the Federal Reserve, Congress, the White House, the Treasury, the SEC, the economy, cryptocurrencies, and the intersection of Washington policy with finance. Follow her on X @Jenniferisms and on Instagram.