High-level officials at the Federal Reserve have spent the last two weeks signaling strongly to the world that the Fed is going to raise rates at their March meeting next week. Unemployment, employment, labor force participation rates, and inflation are all relatively unchanged from before the presidential election. However, while President Trump and Congress are making excellent progress at reversing some of the worst and most recent of President Obama’s regulations and seem intent on reducing regulation in general, progress on the other fronts is less certain. One possibility is that the Federal Reserve believes both that President Trump and the Republicans in Congress support policies that are better for the economy than President Obama’s were and that they will get their plans implemented. The only other alternative to the idea that the Fed thinks President Trump and the Republicans will implement successful economic policy improvements is that the Fed simply dislikes President Trump and the Republicans and does not want to be as accommodating to them as it was to President Obama.

Source: Forbes March 09, 2017 14:00 UTC