The Commerce Department reported that the U.S. economy grew at an annualized pace of 3.3 percent in the third quarter, up from an earlier estimate of 3.1 percent.
Meanwhile, the Federal Reserve Board, in its latest Beige Book summary, said the national economy "continued to increase at a modest to moderate pace in October and mid-November" across all twelve Fed districts.
So with the economy growing steadily, corporate profits at record levels, the jobless rate at a full-employment level and the total number of jobs rising, watch for the Fed to boost interest rates as a way of taking some of the wind out of the economy's sails.
The Fed has hinted at doing just that at its next meeting, in mid-December, to maintain a growth rate closer to 2 percent yearly.
The question now is whether the historically independent Fed will follow the president's wishes and keep interest rates low so the economy can "take off like a rocket," as the president urged, reaching growth rates of more than 4 percent or even 5 percent.
The current Fed Board of Governors chair, Janet Yellen, was passed over for renomination in favor of Jerome Powell, largely a Trump supporter. Nonetheless, Powell told a Senate committee that he favored continuity in the Fed's monetary policies. However, he also said some banking regulations could be eased, even as he called political independence vital for the Fed's role in helping to moderate the economy and prevent disastrous surges that lead to rapid "corrections," or crashes.
And he also hinted that the Fed would likely raise interest rates at its next meeting, in December.
That calls for a wait-and-see attitude as to whether the nation's leading banking and money supply regulator stays with its traditional independence or follows the Trumpian path toward trickle-down economics, which says tax cuts for major corporations and the wealthy will gradually, eventually, over time, trickle down to workers in the form of greater investment in productive capacity and thus more jobs.
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