Most Fed members anticipated a December rate hike at Oct. meeting

By Joseph Lawler, Joseph Lawler

Published December 20, 2015

Most members of the Federal Reserve's monetary policy committee expected that the central bank would raise interest rates in December barring surprising bad news, notes from the central bank's October meeting released Wednesday showed.

The minutes of the October meeting stated that "most participants" in the committee thought that the conditions for a rate hike "could well be" met by December, with the caveat that news that changed the outlook for the economy as a whole could affect that decision.

While an unspecified number of officials did not think that the economy would be strong enough by December for an increase in rates, others thought that it was already past time for rates to go up.

The minutes also said that Fed members included a reference to the possibility of raising rates in October's announcement to ready the public for the possibility that they would "initiate the normalization process" – Fed jargon for beginning to raise interest rates.