ALL, literally ALL the economic data is showing the economy is trashed. No growth, no production, no manufacturing, nothing. All of those industries have already borrowed into the future - they were at max storage and production last year. There is no demand for all the production caused by the free credit boom.
On the flip side of the coin, all the corporations have bought out their own stocks at highs to give CEOs a nice bonus at the expense of regular shareholders. Add that to the fact that financials are so heavily leveraged that a rate hike will bankrupt every bank in the world.
I don't think they can raise rates with this much over-production, corporate buybacks, and investment bank leverage. The only thing they can do is go deeper negative and hope for war.
They can raise rates and they will. They did it in December 2015 when guys like Schiff said they couldn't. And now again, the same people are saying they can't, but they can and they will. And the markets will tank and things will suck for a while but there's always a way out when you can create unlimited capital. It's simply a matter of finding creative ways to inject it into the system.