Brian Battle comments on the anticipated next steps from the Federal Reserve. "The Fed's not political. You have to know that," joked Brian Battle, a vice president with Performance Trust Capital Partners, a fixed-income trading firm in Chicago. "But can the Fed resist pressure to not do more if people start yelling about mortgage rates being too high?"
"The bond market would welcome an increase in the fed funds rate," Battle said. "There is no practical difference between rates at zero and rates at 0.5%, but it would signal that the Fed thinks the economy is really getting better and that it is reasserting its independence. That is what it needs to prove right now."
