Initial Thoughts...

As you might know, we not only have a new F_E_D chairwoman, but several new voting members rotating in, on whole they are more hawkish than the member's rotating out.

The F_E_D seems concerned about low inflation, however to my ears on the whole, the talk about RAISING RATES by mid 2014 seems to be way AHEAD of what the bond market was expecting. There was talk about guidance because rates were originally guided to be raised AFTER QE ends and when unemployment hits 6.5%, we are at 6.6% right now so we are very close.

The meeting seems to want to address that guidance, but there was no mention of how they'd do so (as far as I know without reading the minutes).

However the one thing that has really spooked the market even more than tapering is the prospect of rate hikes, I didn't expect talk about possibly hiking rates by mid 2014, I always had the feeling it would be out to 2015, maybe even 2016 so even though this may have just been a handful of member's talking about this, I can't imagine the market is going to take this well, I think they may have expected guidance that told them, "Don't worry about the 6.5% unemployment rate threshold, we are going to keep rates low for an extended period", but that's not what we got, in fact all it seems we got is talk about "Talking about" forward guidance regarding the unemployment threshold and rate hikes.

Remember Yellen already said last week (after the meeting) that QE would continue on pace, so whatever was said in the minutes probably is not that important being Yellen has spoken out in the interim.

My take is net market negative, but often we get a knee jerk before those fears show up in market discounting.

More on the inflation concerns as I get a chance to read the actual minutes.