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The U.S. Federal Reserve Board has put the world on notice: It has moved interest rates onto the launching pad. The countdown to the long-awaited liftoff is on.

Despite recent sluggishness in U.S. economic indicators, and economic and financial-market uncertainties abroad, the U.S. central bank threw the door open like never before on a near-term increase in its federal funds rate – the most important interest rate in the world. Fed officials, led by chair Janet Yellen, have long suggested that the first rate increase since 2006 could happen before the end of the year; now they've put their money where their mouths are. Unless the U.S. recovery shows some pretty convincing signs of stalling, the Fed looks poised to raise the rate from its current zero-to-0.25-per-cent target range at its next policy meeting, in mid-December.

The signal came in Wednesday afternoon's regularly scheduled interest-rate-decision statement from the Fed's policy-setting Federal Open Market Committee. The FOMC's previous statement – indeed, the past eight statements – had talked about its conditions for "determining how long to maintain this target range." But in Wednesday's statement, that was changed to "determining whether it will be appropriate to raise the target range at its next meeting."

For anyone used to the minute tinkering of the statement's wording from meeting to meeting, that's a big shift. Sure, Ms. Yellen has said previously that every FOMC meeting is "live," that the Fed would be willing to make a rate change any time it felt it was necessary and appropriate, regardless of whether it had forewarned the markets. But this new wording is a pretty clear forewarning. The Fed is set to go, and no one can now claim to be surprised when it does.

Frankly, though, this change is itself something of a surprise. The day before the rate decision, the bond market was pricing in about a one-in-three chance that the Fed would raise rates at its December meeting. After the Fed statement, it's pricing the odds at nearly 50-50.

Crucially, the one big worry the Fed had expressed in its previous statement in September – that "global economic and financial developments" could constrain both growth and inflation – was purged entirely from the statement. If we take this at face value – that the Fed's only real worry about the high-pace U.S. recovery was that the rest of the world might break its stride, and that worry has largely passed – then the one big obstacle to its rate launch has been removed.

Despite this, most Fed watchers on Wednesday interpreted the statement as only a modest step closer to rate hikes; a misread, I would argue, but one that is understandable. Leading up to this rate decision, Fed officials sounded less confident about a December liftoff than the subsequent statement might suggest, and with good reason. The U.S. economic data leading up to this decision were hardly resounding, and did, indeed, suggest that stumbles in the global economy were weighing on U.S. activity.

Job growth, a critical indicator for the Fed, has slowed dramatically. Factory orders, durable goods orders, industrial production and wholesale sales all fell in the most recently reported month. Consumer confidence has declined. Frankly, it's been a pretty sobering month of U.S. economic data.

There has been a tendency to dismiss the weakness as merely a symptom of the rise of the U.S. dollar, which makes U.S. exports more expensive and therefore hurts demand. But lately that blame has looked overstated, if not outright misplaced. Measured against a basket of trade-weighted foreign currencies, the U.S. dollar has traded essentially sideways for six months now. Yes, certainly the impact of its sharp appreciation before then continues to linger, but after six months at current levels, you would expect that impact to be showing signs of fading, not strengthening.

So, perhaps the recent weakness in U.S. economic activity is a bit more homegrown than the Fed is yet willing to acknowledge. Having long ago established the end of 2015 as its target for rate liftoff, it's almost as if the Fed wanted to prove that it hasn't taken its eyes off that prize.

But if the Fed is willing to overlook sluggish economic data, or blame it on transitory currency growing pains, the one thing it won't overlook is a stalling labour market. Indeed, that was about the only new concern the Fed introduced in Wednesday's rate statement, noting high up that "the pace of job gains slowed." The one thing that could delay liftoff into next year is further disappointment on the job-growth front.

The Fed's brain trust has two more employment reports – the October data next week, and November's numbers in early December – to figure out whether the jobs slowdown is a blip or a trend. Those two reports – and, it would now appear, almost nothing else – should determine whether it pushes the launch button, or puts the markets in an uncertain holding pattern.

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