"One big group it will help … will be those people with adjustable rate mortgages -- ARMs, so called," says Dr. Walden, a specialist with the North Carolina Cooperative Extension Service, "because this will mean the rates on those mortgages will stop rising, at least for now. That will be very helpful.

"Another group that might want to look into this is investors, who may want to go ahead and lock in interest rates on things like CDs [certificates of deposit]. The expectation may be that we could see a decline in interest rates later this year," he adds.

"Now many credit card rates are tied to the prime lending rate, so those will stop rising because the prime rate tends to go up when the Fed raises its interest rates," Walden says.

"Probably car buyers aren’t going to be helped because the rates there are already tied to incentives, but it could make those incentives more generous."