The First Warsh Hike?
Dissent Arithmetic, the Energy-Shock Reaction Function, and What the September Dots Say About 2027
The August prints split the September signal: final-demand producer prices rose 0.4 percent, while three-month annualised core CPI slowed to 1.97 percent., Three voters are declared for a hike and two are conditional, but the data move the meeting baseline to hold at 0.58 versus 0.40 for a 25 basis point increase.- The more durable event is the 2027 median: June's distribution was bimodal and one participant moving one notch can change the printed value.
| ID | Statement | p | Made on | Resolves by | Status | Outcome |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| CLM-2026-278 | The upper bound of the federal funds target range announced in the FOMC statement of 16 September 2026 is 4.00 percent. | 0.40 | 2026-09-11 | 2026-09-16 | Locked | |
| CLM-2026-279 | The median projection of the midpoint of the federal funds target range at the end of 2026, in the Summary of Economic Projections released 16 September 2026, in percent. | 3.8 to 4.4 percent, midpoint of the target range, appropriate policy path, year-end 2026 (central 4.1) | 2026-09-11 | 2026-09-16 | Locked | |
| CLM-2026-280 | At least two members of the Federal Open Market Committee are recorded as voting against the monetary policy action in the FOMC statement of 16 September 2026. | 0.65 | 2026-09-11 | 2026-09-16 | Locked | |
| CLM-2026-281 | The median projection of the midpoint of the federal funds target range at the end of 2027, in the Summary of Economic Projections released 16 September 2026, in percent. | 3.6 to 4 percent, midpoint of the target range, appropriate policy path, year-end 2027 (central 3.9) | 2026-09-11 | 2026-09-16 | Locked |
A claim is entered in the brief's own words and carries its publication date and the day it entered the ledger: the register's briefs on 8 September 2026, when the standard was first applied; the forward benchmark on the day it was locked. It resolves only against a dated public source. The scoring rule is on the Methodology page.
The September decision is being priced as a close call about one meeting, and the published record says it is a test of something that outlasts the meeting: whether the Committee still believes it can look through a supply shock, and, if it does not, what that implies for 2027 rather than for Wednesday. The evidence that the centre of gravity has moved is institutional rather than market-implied, and one leg carries the weight. The June SEP lifted the year-end 2026 median from 3.4 to 3.8 percent and the 2027 median from 3.1 to 3.6 percent, a shift by the median of eighteen participants and not by the three who dissented. The vote record and the discount-rate record corroborate that rather than confirming it independently: three of the four Reserve Banks whose directors asked the Board for a 4.00 percent primary credit rate are Cleveland, Minneapolis and Dallas, whose presidents then dissented, so the two records observe largely the same three institutions. What the record does not support is that the hawks have adopted a single supply-shock reaction function. The dissent is a coalition of two arguments: Hammack sees "inflationary pressures coming from the demand side of the economy, as well" and Logan states that "Labor, consumption and financial market conditions indicate that monetary policy is not restraining the economy", while Kashkari argues that policy has a role against "a series of successive supply shocks", a frame the July minutes attribute to several participants. That distinction is the practical one, because a stance argument does not unwind when energy prices fall and a successive-shocks argument does: on a decisive energy retracement the bloc thins from three to two rather than dissolving or holding whole. Neither argument resolves on Wednesday. Both resolve in the 2027 column of the dot plot, where the June distribution was already bimodal, with eight of eighteen participants at 3.875 percent or above, eight at 3.375 percent or below and only two in between. A brief that treats 16 September as the event is reading the wrong number.
Open-source intelligence current through 11 September 2026. The publication carries a 52-entry source registry, explicit confidence tags, limitations, and deterministic resolution rules for its forward claims.
The source tiers, estimative language, forward-claim rule, scoring, and corrections record are public on the Methodology page.