NEW YORK (CNN/Money) - Death, taxes...and a quarter-point Fed rate hike.
That the Federal Reserve will bump up interest rates again at its meeting Tuesday seems a near certainty.
But economists will be looking closely at the Fed's statement for clues to a more uncertain question -- when the nation's central bank will take a break on its path of measured rate hikes.
A quarter-point increase in the fed funds rate, a key overnight bank lending rate, to 1.75 percent would mark the third straight rate increase by the central bank this year, after nearly four years when the Fed did not raise rates.
Bets in the futures markets show investors believe the fed funds rate will be at 2.0 percent at year's end. But there is far less certainty as to whether the Fed will raise rates at the November or December meeting. There is no meeting scheduled for October.
Fed fund futures traded at the Chicago Board of Trade show roughly a 71 percent chance that rates will reach 2.0 percent after the November meeting. But the futures show traders believe there's little chance that rates will be up to 2.25 percent after the December meeting, so a move in November is viewed as most likely.
"Year-end financial markets can be difficult, and winter economic data is difficult to read," said Steven Wieting, senior economist at Citigroup. "It makes more sense that December will be month they skip. You don't want to be raising rates into what can be an illiquid market."
But some economists argue that Alan Greenspan and Co. should pause sooner rather than later.
John Silva, chief economist at Wachovia Securities, says that with inflation so low, there's no need for the Fed to keep raising rates at every meeting, and that it could take a break after Nov. 2 elections to assess the strength of the economy and the state of the nation's financial markets.
But it's important that the Fed give clear signals of what's to come -- investors could see an unexpected pause as an alert that the economy is in trouble.
"If this was the old days and the Fed didn't do anything, it would be no big deal," Silva said. "But the Fed has so thoroughly signaled its intention of measured rate hikes, that the market would worry, 'What is the Fed looking at?'"
A few months ago some investors and economists were arguing that the economy was growing so fast, and inflation was making such a comeback, that the Fed had fallen incurably behind in the fight against inflation.
Three straight months showing quiet readings on inflation, plus other signs of slowing economic growth, have for the most part quieted those voices.
Now some economists are arguing that the economic recovery has weakened so much that more rate hikes now are a bad idea -- and could do substantial harm to the economy, and the job market.
But even some of these analysts expect the Fed to raise rates at both the September and November meeting.
"They are desperately concerned about maintaining inflation fighting credibility. So the Fed is not focused on inflation, it's focused on inflation in the future," said Robert Brusca of FAO Economics, who has criticized the Fed for raising rates, even though, in his view, the economy is weaker than it appears.
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