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Comment by Kye | Hacker News Reader

Fun trivia: a basis point is 0.01%. So 50 basis point is half a percent (0.50%).

I wouldn’t call that trivia, as it is central to understanding what actually happened :)

Trivia would be: “The basis point is named after Theodorus Basis, the grand-nephew of the first chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank.”

That Basis is the basis of basis is basically a surprise to me. TIL.

It's basically bullshit is what it is - basis in basis point comes from the same root as basis in cost basis, apparently.

Infamous for creating a paradox when he picked up a dollar from the ground.

Another fun trivia: a less frequently used name for 0.01% is a permyriad[1].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basis_point#Permyriad

Well you see now you've made it ambiguous. Basis points are unambiguously absolute points. But if you say half a percent increase you could mean 50 basis points or you could mean the the new value is 1.005x the old value.

How does that relate to their statement:

"the Committee decided to raise the target range for the federal funds rate to 4-1/4 to 4-1/2 percent."

That looks like a 1/4 percent raise, but then the language is weird to me (_to_ 4-1/4 to 4-1/2 percent", wouldn't one say from 4-1/4 to 4-1/2 percent)

The key phrase here is "target range"---it's not an exact number, but a range.

The previous statement[1] was .50% lower on both ends of the range:

> the Committee decided to raise the target range for the federal funds rate to 3-3/4 to 4 percent

[1] https://www.federalreserve.gov/newsevents/pressreleases/mone...

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