Wow: 51 days of press releases, speeches, rumors and innuendos, and what does the Fed do when it comes down to the wire?

Nothing, nada -- zip.

Not that they aren't working very hard. After all, constantly furrowing one's brow in concern can be very tiring.

They are concerned with inflation. (Not that there is any, mind you.) Rather, they are concerned with the possibility of nonexistent inflation getting out of hand.

They are also very concerned with an economic collapse. Not that there is one (hey, that sounds familiar). Rather, we are faced with a remarkably robust economy that may at some time in the unspecified future slow into a soft bottom.

And so they do nothing. (Hey, there's that sense of déjà vu again.)

In fact, since his elevation to the big chair at the end of the table, Mr. Bernanke has presided over eight FOMC meetings, which have generated endless reams of material -- and three quarter-point moves.

After the overwhelming activism of his predecessor, libertarians across the country are celebrating Mr. Bernanke's pacifism. Maybe they are right to wish that the central bank apparatchiks had never put their fingers in the free market gears in the first place.

But they have -- for good or ill - been doing so for most of the past century. And now the system is so thoroughly out of whack that it may be too late to stop.

And quite frankly, more than a few observers are starting to wonder if the current chairman is boggled by the scope of the problem, or perhaps, being primarily an academic, he is simply constitutionally unable to sort out conflicting opinion.

Maybe he'd rather head back to his office for a glass of milk and a long afternoon nap. Heck, the announcement came out at 2:15 p.m. There's still time to catch some zzz's before the evening news.

Market-wise, WOW reader's model portfolio was already positioned for this move. In fact, of the three possible outcomes, raise, drop and nothing, only a raise could have hurt us. We are expecting to issue a round of fresh Max gain announcements over the next two weeks.

Even better, perhaps with this non-event off the calendar, the market will actually begin to react to first-generation stimuli, rather than endlessly pondering how the Fed will interpret things. Because we already have the answer to that: they will be concerned.