Some analysts said the minutes reflected a sea change in Fed thinking. I view them as a slight adjustment to the tiller. For forward-looking markets, the suggestion that the Fed might, as the minutes put it, "vary the pace of asset purchases, either in response to changes in the economic outlook or as its evaluation of the efficacy and costs of such purchase evolved," may have been enough to warrant caution.

Market participants forget that the Fed is neither omniscient nor a very good forecaster. What it is is the sole proprietor of the printing press. If the hint of cutting back on its hours of operation is enough to frighten the stock market, then the Fed really has to be concerned by what it hath wrought.