Though it was pretty much status quo for the Fed today, that may not be the case in October, so MoneyShow's Jim Jubak breaks down the different scenarios that may play out after the proposed 2015 increase in interest rates goes into effect.

Today was Fed Day. Again.

And once again the financial markets went into today's meeting of the Fed's Open Market Committee trying to predict what the Fed would say about when it will start to raise interest rates. And trying to figure out what the effect of the eventual increase in rates will be on the financial markets.

The first effort was focused on guessing if the Fed would tweak its "considerable time" language. So far, the Fed has pledged to keep rates low for a "considerable time" after it ends its program of purchasing Treasuries and mortgage-backed securities. The expectation is that the Fed will end those purchases completely in October.

Going into the meeting, economists were about evenly divided, with 53% of those surveyed by Bloomberg saying that the Fed would retain the current language. The argument for changing the language is that a shift would give the markets more time to adjust to a change in policy. The argument for keeping the current language is that a shift would unsettle the markets, perhaps unnecessarily if the Fed really is waiting to see more data before it moves.

In any event, the Fed kept that "considerable time" language intact today. In her post meeting press conference, Fed chair Janet Yellen repeatedly stressed that nothing had changed in the Fed's policy. That "no change" extended to the poll of projections by Fed members on future economic conditions. For example, at its June meeting, the consensus at the Fed was looking for GDP growth of 2.1% to 2.3% for 2014. After this meeting, the consensus was 2.0% to 2.2% for 2014.

The focus on the "considerable time" language is really a discussion about timing. The consensus is that the Fed will start to raise interest rates sometime in 2015 and the effort on each Fed day is to try to find clues about whether the first increase will be in the first quarter (unlikely, most think) or the third quarter, or the second quarter (increasingly the favorite time frame).

In the short-term, timing can move the markets but this first guessing game is actually less important to the prices of stocks and bonds than guessing game Number Two.

If the Fed is going to raise rates-and just about everyone thinks they will-what is the likely effect on asset prices?

Here opinions currently divide into two camps.

The first boils down to "Higher interest rates aren't good for asset prices and rising rates will spell the end of the current bull market." The more extreme version of this opinion expects higher interest rates to usher in a long-term downward trend in the prices of stocks and bonds.

The second camp is occupied by those who argue that the historical record shows a significant number of periods where higher interest rates are compatible with rising stock prices. Higher interest rates don't have to doom the current bull market, this group of opinion holds. The more extreme version of this opinion expects higher asset prices after the Fed starts to raise rates.

My read of the historical record suggests that both camps are right: The effect of rising interest rates depends on the speed with which rates increase and the reason for the increase.

On the one hand, the higher rates mean lower asset prices-folks have a point. The record shows episodes like that in the early 1980s when extremely rapid rate hikes instituted by Fed chairman Paul Volcker to fight inflation caused a recession. As you might expect, the combination wasn't good for stocks. The price of the Standard & Poor's 500 index (SPX) fell 9.73% in 1981. (Which actually is much less of a drop than you might have expected considering the short-term Fed Funds rate went from 9.03% in July 1980 to 19.01% in June 1981.)

The record also shows that much smaller moves can panic the financial markets if 1) they're unexpected, and 2) they are fast enough. From May 2, 2013 to July 5, 2013 the yield on the 10-year Treasury rose from 1.63% to 2.72% in slightly more than 60 days. That was the fastest rate increase in the shortest time since the 1960s. The Fed, in this case, hadn't actually done anything to raise rates-the financial markets scared themselves by anticipating an early end to its purchases of Treasuries and mortgage-backed securities. From the beginning of May to the end of June, the S&P 500 fell 1.3%. That works out to an annualized loss of 14.4%, if the trend had continued. (It didn't, of course, and the price of the index rose 29.6% in 2013).

But increases in interest rates can be compatible with higher asset prices if 1) the case for higher interest rates is based on an improving economy and 2) the increase in interest rates is relatively modest and relatively slow.

The 2015 increase in interest rates from the Fed is indeed likely to be relatively modest and relatively slow. The most recent consensus projection from Fed members is looking for 1.34% at the end of fiscal 2015 and 2.46% at the end of fiscal 2016.

But the Fed's interest rate increases aren't predicated on runaway grow or rampaging inflation. The Fed is looking for GDP growth of 2% to 2.2% in 2014 and 2.6% to 3% in 2015. Inflation by the Fed's favorite measure will run at a 1.5% to 1.9% in 2014 before zooming all the way up to 1.6% to 1.9% in 2015.

Instead, what we're looking at here is a set of interest rate increases that are based on the Fed's determination and need to get back to something resembling normal from a period of extraordinarily low rates that was driven by the need to rescue the global economy from the global financial crisis.

What we're looking at here isn't a normal set of interest rate increases. And I think it's only reasonable to look to the historical record of the relationship between rate increases and asset prices if you, unlike the Federal Reserve, think we're going to see an outbreak of inflation that will eventually justify higher interest rates (bad for stock prices) or an increase in GDP growth that will eventually justify higher interest rates (good for stock prices).

Instead, what we're looking at here is a set of interest rate increases intended to gradually unwind the liquidity explosion during the global financial crisis. The unwinding is likely to be slow if you believe the Fed-the Fed today talked about taking until the end of the decade to restore the Fed's balance sheet to pre-financial crisis levels. (I think that's incredibly optimistic-six years to take $3.5 trillion off the Fed's balance sheet seems unlikely.)

And because this is a liquidity-based set of interest rate increases, I think investors need to pay especially close attention to the effects of monetary policy in other major developed economies. The Fed is the only major developed economy central bank that is on a course to raising rates in the near term. Higher US rates will drive up the dollar and-along with stronger economic growth-make the US financial markets a magnet for overseas cash. That, in turn, is likely to create a steady flow of cash into US financial assets that will work to depress US interest rates for longer-term assets even as the Fed raises the short-term rates it controls.

If you think this is a recipe for some pretty chaotic movements in domestic and global assets prices, I'd have to say I agree with you.

The danger, at the moment, is that the Federal Reserve is projecting a gradual and orderly reaction by global markets and economies to a controlled set of interest rate increases. And the market seems to be buying that projection. If anything, the financial markets seem to think these interest rate increases and the market reaction will be even more orderly and gradual than the Fed does.

There's not much room in either the Fed's or the market's thinking for the unexpected. And to the degree that I think it's possible to project anything about the global economy and global markets, it's that we can expect the unexpected.

The Fed meets next on October 28-29.