Against a backdrop of turbulent markets,

Dear 800orDie,
Very interesting. I'll make a few comments.

First, the OA, (D). It's interesting that this appeared in The Economist. Their writing is usually of exceptionally high quality. This is an unusual sentence, for them: a bit more casual, a bit off in an "ear-catching" journalistic way. Perfectly understandable for a news magazine that depends on a general readership for revenue, but not quite up to the standards of the GMAT. Ultimately, any news publication, no matter how highbrow, is not going to be as sophisticated as an academic source: any news source ultimately depends on widespread popularity for its revenue, and this dependence is categorically not true for academic journals. The Economist is very good, and some sentences in that high-quality periodical could be sentences on the GMAT SC, but not all of them----it's not an automatic assumption. Also, it's perfectly understand that The Economist would refer to the US Federal Reserve as "the Fed," but this would never happen on the GMAT SC.

The "right now" in (B) could refer to immediacy and urgency, but as I read it, it could be a synonym for "this time," a somewhat more emphatic synonym.
The Fed voted 9-1 to hold rates right now.
The Fed voted 9-1 to hold rates this time. (Either contains a strong implication that the next time would be different!)
This emphasis is a little different from the OA of (D) but it could be read into the prompt, choice (A). This is one tricky thing about starting with a correct sentence and changing it: whatever wrong choice winds up as (A) must have the exact same logical implications as the OA. I am not sure that this is case here.

As for (C), yes, "by voting" in a way implies a mechanism. I don't know whether the stem supports this implication, but in point of fact, this is exactly the mechanism by which the prime lending rate changes. The prime lending rate remains perfectly fixed until the US Federal Reserve board casts a vote, and it is precisely by voting that this rate is changed. By statute, the vote of the US Federal Reserve board is, in fact, the sole mechanism by which the prime lending rate can change. Again, whether this implication is supported by the prompt is debatable, but it is indubitably supported by the facts.

I think we agree that (E) is clearly wrong. I don't recall making any comparison of this to any other answer choice: among the answer choices, this is the only one that can be eliminated instantly. I don't know whether you appreciate the basic features of item response theory. An answer choice that is exceptionally easy to eliminate quickly does not serve the overall question quality. A truly high quality question has one unambiguously right answer, and four answer that are quite tempting even though they are unambiguously wrong. This is an incredibly lofty standard, which I sometimes hit in my own question creation. I am simply astonished by how often the official questions are at that level.

I applaud your efforts at question creation. If this becomes an exercise in refining your own thinking, so that it more closely matches the mindset of the test makers, then this endeavor would be well worthwhile.

Mike

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