According to the minutes of the meeting released on February 16, Fed policy makers attending the meeting believe that the pace of monetary tightening this time is likely to be faster than the previous time when interest rates were raised and the table was tightened. The minutes signaled a possible rate hike in March, but did not hint at the possibility of a big rate hike in March and did not mention more details such as the timing of the contraction.

Recently, a number of big Wall Street banks have published estimates of the extent and speed of interest rate increases. Banks generally expect the Federal Reserve to raise interest rates by 25-50 basis points in March, Goldman Sachs Group, Bank of America and Deutsche Bank are expected to raise interest rates by 175bp for the whole year, and UBS and Citigroup are expected to raise interest rates by 150bp for the whole year.