(FORTUNE Magazine) – Federal Reserve policy meetings used to be big news events, preceded by drum rolls of market speculation over whether chairman Alan Greenspan and his pals were about to raise or lower interest rates. For most of the past year, though, they've come and gone with barely a mention. The markets expect the Fed to leave interest rates unchanged. The Fed indeed does leave rates unchanged. End of story. It happened yet again in late March.

But that doesn't mean that monetary policy hasn't been changing. Interest rates have certainly been flat: the three-month Treasury rate has been hovering in a narrow band just over 5% for two years. But real interest rates--short-term rates less inflation--have been rising sharply over the past year, as inflation has continued to wither away.

Changes in real rates certainly don't affect most people's decisions about whether or not to buy a new car, but they do affect business decision-making and, ultimately, the path of the economy. Today real rates are higher than they've been since the last recession, meaning that the Fed has in effect been tightening monetary policy even as it appeared to sit tight.

--Rob Norton