The Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) sets or manages several interest rates related to monetary policy. The FRED Blog has discussed this before. Today we tap into some recently added FRED data to describe how the Federal Reserve System keeps the effective federal funds rate (the FOMC’s preferred monetary policy instrument) between its upper and lower target range limits.

The FRED graph above shows two different categories of rates.

• An interest rate set by financial markets
  • Solid red line: The effective federal funds rate, which is set by financial institutions who charge one another for overnight loans in what is known as the federal funds market.
• Interest rates set by the FOMC
  • Dotted orange lines: The targeted upper and lower limits of rates for trading in the federal funds market, described above.
  • Dashed dark blue line: The Discount Window primary credit rate, which is the overnight rate charged to financial institutions that borrow from Federal Reserve Banks.
  • Dashed light blue line: The Standing Repo Facility minimum bid rate, which is the minimum bid rate accepted by the New York Fed for propositions in Standing Repo (repurchase agreement) Facility operations. Repo transactions add short-term liquidity to financial markets.
  • Dashed purple line: The reverse repo (repurchase agreement) award rate, which is the minimum bid rate accepted by the New York Fed for propositions in reverse repo operations. Reverse repo transactions withdraw liquidity from financial markets.

In short, Federal Reserve Banks (which manage the discount window in their own Districts) and the New York Fed (which manages daily repo and reverse repo transactions) generally maintain the effective federal funds rate within the target range set by the FOMC.

The New York Fed’s website has more detail about daily financial markets and monetary policy implementation.

Notes: Don’t worry if you can’t separate some of the lines in the graph: Both the Discount window’s primary credit rate (in dark blue) and the Standing Repo Facility minimum bid rate (in light blue) are closely linked to the top of the target range (in orange). Similarly, the reverse repo award rate (in purple) is closely linked to the bottom of the target range (in orange). These relationships are a matter of choice, not rule.

How this graph was created: Search FRED for and select “Federal Funds Target Range – Upper Limit.” Click on the “Edit Graph” button and select the “Add Line” tab to search for “Discount Window Primary Credit Rate.” Don’t forget to click on “Add data series.” Repeat the last two steps to search for and add the other four series: “Standing Repo Facility Minimum Bid Rate”, “Federal Funds Effective Rate”, “Overnight Reverse Repurchase Agreements Award Rate”, and “Federal Funds Target Range – Lower Limit.”

Suggested by Diego Mendez-Carbajo.

Celebrating Halloween is becoming more popular in some European countries. Wearing costumes can be fun anywhere, but there may be differences in the cost of giving away candy, depending on the country. Happily, FRED has consumer price inflation data for Europe that can help us go trick-and-treating around this question.

The treat

The FRED graph above shows the change in the harmonized index of consumer prices for sugar, jam, honey, chocolate, and confectionery for four European countries currently using the euro as their domestic currency. To make comparisons easier, we start the data in September 2015, when the index had a value close to 100 for all these countries. As of September 2025:

• Estonia (solid blue line) had the highest inflation for all things sweet: 101.6%
• Belgium and Luxembourg (dashed green and orange lines) had treat-price inflation rates closest to the Eurozone median value of 41.8%
• Ireland (solid purple line) had steady deflation between 2015 and mid-2022 and a cumulative 7.6% treat-price increase over the past decade.

The trick

Bulgaria is scheduled to join the euro area in January 2026. Beyond the convenience of using a single currency to shop for candy in nearby countries using the euro, using a common currency could also temper some recent inflationary pressure in Bulgaria. However, as shown above and discussed earlier in the FRED Blog, using the same currency in multiple countries does not mean the inflation rate will be the same everywhere.

How this graph was created: Search FRED for and select “Harmonized Index of Consumer Prices: Sugar, Jam, Honey, Chocolate and Confectionery for Estonia.” Click on the “Edit Graph” button and select the “Add Line” tab to search for “Harmonized Index of Consumer Prices: Sugar, Jam, Honey, Chocolate and Confectionery for Belgium.” Don’t forget to click on “Add data series.” Repeat the last two steps to search for and add the corresponding price index data for Luxembourg and Ireland.

Suggested by Diego Mendez-Carbajo.

There are many price indices for the US economy. Most people focus on the consumer price index (CPI) because it’s relevant to individual members of the economy. Another index, often misunderstood,* is the producer price index (PPI). In short, the CPI is what consumers pay and the PPI is what sellers receive.

You might think that what the producer gets would equal what the consumer pays, but our FRED graph above makes it clear that the CPI and PPI are different things.

1.  The difference between the two sets of prices includes shipping, taxes, retail costs, and retail margins. (The profit margin of the retailer acts like a cushion that absorbs some of the spikes and fluctuations in the PPI.)
2. The covered items are also different. The CPI includes consumer items such as rent, insurance, imports, and administrative fees that aren’t in the PPI. The PPI includes goods for export and goods not for household consumption, such as government purchases and investment by businesses, that aren’t in the CPI.
3. Finally, there’s a big category in the PPI that isn’t in the CPI: intermediate goods. These are sold to other business for further processing. In fact, the PPI allows us to make the distinction between final and intermediate demand; the latter can even be separated into the various stages of the production process, as shown in our FRED graph below.

How these graphs were created: First graph: Search FRED for “PPI.” Click on “Edit Graph,” open the “Add Line” tab, and search for and select “CPI.” Open the “Format” tab to select logarithmic scaling. (The period shown in the graph—CPI since 1947 and PPI since 1913—is so long that it makes sense to turn on the logarithmic scale so that similar percent increases early and late in the period appear similarly. Second graph: Go to the release table (find it in the notes of any of its series), check the series to display, and click on “Add to Graph.”   

*The PPI used to be called wholesale price index, but it incorporates all types of producer prices, so the name was changed.

Suggested by Christian Zimmermann.