The markets seemed to like what the Fed had to say yesterday, including the part about definitely, for sure, no kidding around this time raising interest rates in December. Especially elated were currency traders, who bid the US dollar up on the news.

Somewhat less enthusiastic, however, are the corporate executives who have seen their firms’ sales and earnings squeezed by a strong dollar of late. If rising rates make the dollar even stronger — as theory says they should — then presumably that makes corporate earnings even weaker. The media has been wrestling with various aspects of the dollar/corporate earnings/Fed policy connection for a while, and a consensus seems to be forming that there’s a conflict between aims and results in current monetary policy that another couple of months probably won’t resolve: