It will be a surprise to many people if the Federal Reserve Bank takes any action on interest rates Tuesday or Wednesday simply because of the timing.
The Fed is expected to lower interest rates this year, perhaps by a full point, but with few alarm bells going off about the state of the economy, there may be no incentive to do anything right away.
"Right now there's a less than one-percent chance that they do anything other than just stay right where they are," says economic analyst and Heritage Asset Advisors principal Pat Shinn.
"Perhaps the most important thing they'll do is hold a press conference, [Chairman] Jerome Powell talking about the balancing act they're currently under, which is a very slow-growth, slow-to-hire, slow-to-fire environment they're under," he notes.
It's likely the US economy doesn't need immediate intervention by the Fed to set things (such as inflation) right, despite the fact that we're in a place "where inflation is still above the Federal Reserve's target of two-percent."
Shinn says the fed is walking a tightrope so perhaps it's just wait and see time.
"The market is pricing in that the Federal Reserve will lower interest rates two times this year -- I don't know if this is data driven, I don't know if the market is necessarily clairvoyant to say that inflation is necessarily going to drop substantially or that the unemployment rate is going to go up and force their hand to lower rates," he says.
But perhaps most important, Mr. Shinn says, "I do think that the Fed is going to have a new Fed chairman who's going to be a little towards cutting rates if he can and I think that'll be the case."
So the Fed will drop rates, but the question is by how much, and when?
The answer appears to be: at least half a point, and not until later this year.