Hurry up and wait. Hurry to the announcement by the Federal Reserve Board’s monetary policy committee, and then wait for the next one. After 2,417 days of keeping its key interest rate at zero, on Wednesday of last week the Fed policy team decided that a few more weeks or months at that level might be a good idea. The Fed knows that zero is not a sustainable level for interest rates, but also wants to be certain it doesn’t abort the none-too-robust recovery. My guess is that Fed chairwoman Janet Yellen knows she has to move soon, but figured that doing so right before key data releases in the next few days and next week just wasn’t worth the risk of announcing an increase and then wishing she hadn’t. She was quickly proved right.

The day after the Fed announcement the Commerce Department reported – preliminary, to be revised — that the economy expanded at an annual rate of 2.3 percent in the second quarter, and that its first-quarter estimate of a 0.2 percent decline had been revised to a positive 0.6 percent. The good news is that consumers have returned to the shops and the malls to share with some of their savings from lower petrol prices with retailers. In part this consumer bonanza is the result of falling energy prices due to the fracking revolution and the return of Iran to the oil market as a major seller offering discounts in order to regain market share from its sworn enemy, Saudi Arabia.