Markets are responding to yesterday's surprise move by the Federal Reserve to raise the "discount rate." The dollar is gaining strength; stocks are down overseas; journalists are saying this is the beginning of the end of the cheap money that the Fed has been mainlining since late 2008.

I would put a contrarian spin on it. Hardly anybody uses the Fed's discount window, which is intended to provide emergency capital to member banks. The decision to raise the discount borrowing rate to 0.75 percent means absolutely nothing in the mechanics of finance. The Fed's main instrument is the overnight rate, which banks charge each other for overnight lending. Banks who need extra capital almost always get it from each other, not the discount window. And the Fed shows few signs of raising the overnight rate.

My take is this: The Fed is always under pressure to show it is vigilant against inflation. These days it is also under pressure to show it is vigilant against asset bubbles. So, as the recovery slowly proceeds, it feels like it must demonstrate that the watchdog is awake. On the other hand, the Fed's Bernanke knows that the economy is still in terrible shape and that tightening credit prematurely helped prolong the Great Depression.

To thread this needle, a Fed policymaker would do exactly what Bernanke just did: Make a purely symbolic move with the discount window to show that he's paying attention. But leave the policies that matter alone. Rather than signaling imminent tightening, I bet Bernanke is using the discount-rate increase to buy time to leave other monetary policy alone. Markets should calm down.