Risk: “The possibility of suffering harm or loss.” (American Heritage Dictionary, 3rd edition)

In his opinion piece in the March 5 issue, The Central New York Business Journal’s editor-in-chief, Adam Rombel, wrote about uncertainty in the business community. The result of this uncertainty is employers’ continuing reluctance to take risks.

To say the job market has been slow to recover is a vast understatement. Even though the economy grew for the entire second half of last year — 2.2 percent in the third quarter and 5.9 percent in the fourth quarter — employers have continued to cut jobs and have been reluctant to hire.

On Feb. 19, the Federal Reserve Board raised the discount rate from one-half to three-quarters of 1 percent. This change of one-quarter of a percentage point in the little-used primary credit window resulted in an immediate leap of the U.S. dollar to nine-month highs. Overnight, the value of the dollar rose 0.82 percent and 0.31 percent against the Euro and the Yen, respectively.