US interest rates are going nowhere fast despite upbeat news at home

The latest turbulence in global markets and fear of doing anything that might send the economy back into recession will stay the Fed's already wary hand

Central bankers have their own lingo. They tend to speak in tortured prose that obscures more than it illuminates. Given the choice, they favour a gnomic utterance over plain speaking.

Bill Dudley, the president of the New York Federal Reserve and the second most important US central banker after Janet Yellen, has just provided a masterclass in central bank-speak. Asked what the latest turbulence in the financial markets meant, Dudley replied that recent economic data had been "pretty positive".