As the world waits for Governor Yellen to decide whether to raise interest rates, one of America’s leading economists is pointing out that the New York Times has been rewording the law governing the Federal Reserve. David Malpass, who runs Encima Global, has sent out a wire alerting his readers to the dispatch by Times’ Binyamin Appelbaum on how the central bank will have to rely on a new system whenever it is ready to raise interest rates. “The stakes are huge,” the Times reports. “The Fed is in charge of keeping economic growth on an even keel: minimal unemployment, moderate inflation.”

From where did that statement of the law come? Not from the law itself, Mr. Malpass notes. The Federal Reserve Act establishes three goals: “stable prices,” “maximum employment,” and “moderate long-term interest rates.” Here is the full sentence: “The Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System and the Federal Open Market Committee shall maintain long run growth of the monetary and credit aggregates commensurate with the economy’s long run potential to increase production, so as to promote effectively the goals of maximum employment, stable prices, and moderate long-term interest rates.”

How did the Times get from there to the canard that the Fed is in charge of “keeping economic growth on an even keel: minimal unemployment, moderate inflation.” How did “maximum employment” become “minimal unemployment”? How did “stable prices” become “moderate inflation”? And what in Sam Hill happened to “moderate long-term interest rates”? Mr. Malpass asks whether this change in language is coming from the New York Times (maybe it misread, or failed to read the law) or from the sources at the Federal Reserve that the Times was consulting.

Mr. Malpass is intrigued by this question because, he writes, “the change would make it easier for the Fed to hike this week because, arguably, growth is on an even keel (just very slow).” He also notes that official unemployment is at 5.1%. “With the participation rate low,” Mr. Malpass writes, “it’s easier for the Fed to claim minimal unemployment than the ‘maximum employment’ concept in the law.” He’d have made a terrific newspaper editor; in any event, his wire will be a memorable marker if it turns out that the Fed does go ahead and raise interest rates at its meeting today.

“Melodrama” is the word the Wall Street Journal uses, in its lead editorial this morning, to describe the months of suspense over this question. It has, after all, been five years since Chairman Bernanke assured CBS News’ Scott Pelley: “We could raise interest rates in 15 minutes if we have to.” It is true that at the time he said that, Mr. Bernanke warned that it could take four or five years for things to a “more normal unemployment rate.” But the Journal suggests that the Fed is “trapped.” It’s a moment to remember that the average unemployment rate under the Bretton Woods gold exchange standard was 4.7%.