Obviously, anything CAN happen.  But typically, rates would be on hold at a minimum until after the election in November - purely to avoid accusations that the Fed is favoring one party or another.  That said, and admitting that Nov is still a long way away, I'm in the camp that believes Fed-managed rates will be stable to lower by year end.  Despite all the goofyness that's said and printed to fill the financial news machine (its demands for filling tv minutes and column inches are incredible), the recent economic releases have been pretty punk.  What worries me the most are the recent artificial upward adjustments in payroll employment from the (business) birth/death model.  While I usually don't worry about it, that model "created" over 200,000 jobs last month!  And since payrolls tend to drive estimates of most other economic indicators in the month that follows, I fear we'll have a string of low economic prognostications and worse actual economic releases because this time, those 200,000 folks really were model phantoms (40k in construction, for example!), and they will NOT be spending their phantom wages consuming lots of goods and services. 

Regards, Dick