Federal Reserve Board/FlickrEconomists detect a more hawkish mood at the Fed.Here’s a roundup of reactions to the latest Federal Reserve decision. “The portion of the policy statement describing economic conditions was revised to read more hawkishly than previously and more so than markets expected. The statement led off citing “solid job gains and a lower unemployment rate”, and that “a range of labor market indicators suggests that underutilization of labor resources is gradually diminishing.” Also, while acknowledging that inflation continues to “run below the Committee’s longer-run objective”, it was also stated that “the Committee judges the likelihood of inflation running persistently below 2% has diminished somewhat since early this year.” — Josh Shapiro, MFR. “After getting knocked off its mark by recent equity market volatility, the FOMC has apparently returned to form, namely a slow but steady shift towards a more hawkish trajectory on policy. What better way, in fact, to get the equity market to rally in the face of eventually higher interest rates than to be more bullish on growth and shifting the focus of potential action from the secular issue of labor utilization to waiting for inflation to rise once lower energy prices are no longer pulling down price indexes.” — Steve Blitz, ITG Investment Research.• “The statement seemed to downplay the recent slide in the Fed’s 5y5y inflation expectations measure noting that “Market-based measures of inflation compensation have declined somewhat; survey-based measures of longer-term inflation expectations have remained stable.” This suggests the Fed is not over-reacting to the former (note: we think the use of the word “compensation” rather than “expectations in the former provides good insight into the FOMC’s thinking that this development could be more of a market-pricing event rather than a de-anchoring of inflation expectations).” — Michelle Girard, RBS Securities.• “We were also struck by the fact there was no specific mention of Europe’s weakness or of the recent downward forecasts of global economic activity. This tells us that [Janet] Yellen believes the U.S. economy has effectively decoupled from the rest of world economy for now--- and that monetary policy will be based on employment and inflation trends here in the U.S.” — Bernard Baumohl, The Economic Outlook Group.• “This is where it is disappointing to us, the FOMC statement failed to keep open the question of more QE and note the need for continued management of economic risks by controlling expectations of U.S. rates, in light of recent inflation weakness and market volatility. [Minneapolis Fed President Narayana] Kocherlakota was the only dissenter favoring continued QE, because he feels there is not enough defence of the inflation target and inflation expectations in the Fed’s control over monetary conditions.” — Lena Komileva, G+ Economics.Steve Goldstein