Fed Funds Effective Rate

The rate banks actually paid each other for overnight money last month, averaged across the month.

Higher means the Fed is leaning on the economy; lower means it is easing. It is the floor under every other borrowing rate in the country.

A reading is not a verdict. The Scan phase of Woodring’s Loop collects the signal; the Story phase asks what futures it is consistent with, and only the Stake phase turns that into a decision. This page does the first part.

Tests: the cost-of-capital line in every 2027 budget, and whichever rate path the plan quietly assumed.

Write the assumption down, name the reading that would break it, and put a date on when it has to be argued again. That is the 18-Month Sunset applied to one line of a budget. The Last Annual Planshows what this season’s moves have already done to the common ones.