There Was Nothing Political About the Fed’s Big Interest Rate Cut

Was it “political” for the Federal Reserve to cut interest rates less than two months before the presidential election, as Donald Trump has charged? Not a bit. Not cutting rates is what would have been political.

On Wednesday, the Fed’s rate-setting Federal Open Market Committee cut the target range for the federal funds rate — the short-term interest rate it controls — by half a percent. A cut that big was at the high end of forecasters’ predictions. More often the Fed moves a quarter-point at a time, but the committee members apparently wanted to make sure that they didn’t fall behind the curve and allow the economy to slip into a recession.