This is a

This is CBS Eye on the World.

Here's John Bachelor.

The Federal Reserve surprising everyone to my understanding by making the decision

to lower the cost of money a half a point when the market and everyone else, punditocracy was expecting a quarter point.

I take this mystery to Joseph Sternberg, my colleague, he's a member of the

editorial board of the Wall Street Journal, he writes

political economics, he's in London, and his most recent column

about it is about the Federal Reserve and its

decision-making, especially when it comes to dissent.

Joe, a very good evening to you. The record of dissent that you've published for us in

your most recent column suggests there's not much at the Federal Reserve.

Is that a good thing, Joe? Good evening to you.

He, John, I think it's actually a pretty bad thing.

So we're talking about this because, you mentioned the Federal Reserve or more precisely the Federal Open Market Committee, which is the policy-making body within the Fed, last week surprised everyone when it reduced interest,

the short-term interest rate by half a percentage point. This was a big decision.

It was kind of surprising and a little bit puzzling because there's a lot of ambiguity about the economic data that the Fed might or might not have been responding to.

But the other news item that emerged from this is that there was a dissenting vote.

Michelle Bowman, who's a member of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve.

There are seven of these governors, including the Chairman Jerome Powell, voted against the decision

because she only wanted to cut interest rates by a quarter percentage point instead of the half.

And there was a lot of attention to this because this is actually a pretty rare phenomenon that a member of the governor of the Board of Governors would vote against a policy decision. The last time it happened was 19 years ago in September of 2005.

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