We look forward to a week filled with data including CPI, the Empire Manufacturing report, Housing Starts, Industrial Production, and Existing Home Sales – not to mention the important primary election contests in Ohio and Florida tomorrow. But at the top of the list of important events is the FOMC meeting on Wednesday.

The consensus of Wall Street economists right now is that the FOMC will leave interest rates alone. The consensus is almost universal that the Fed will choose to skip this week’s meeting. So, in keeping with my general role as a gadfly, I want to give some reasons why the Fed might very well choose to raise rates.

One place to start is by examining the arguments for not raising rates. Before I do that, let me assure readers that I have not changed my opinion that this is the most dovish Federal Reserve in history. But, since they have broken the skin on the milk we can no longer consider the possibility that there is no way this Fed would ever hike rates. Prior to the December meeting, it was plausible to think that the hurdle for hiking was very high and that it was possible that 2016 might end with rates still at zero. The question is, though, no longer whether the Fed is willing to hike rates, but whether they currently want to hike rates…and when.

Here are what I see as the main arguments for skipping a rate hike at this meeting:

(1) While the US economy is doing okay, the global economy is weak especially in Europe.

I will take here a somewhat different tack than some other observers might. The standard answer here is “the Fed is not responsible for the global economy, but for the US economy.” This is true, but since I don’t think changing interest rates 25bps in an environment of abundant liquidity has any meaningful effect on domestic or global growth my perspective is different. The ECB just lowered rates, in large part to put downward pressure on the Euro versus other currencies and hence to help Euro growth and inflation. By raising rates, the Federal Reserve would actually reinforce that move, since doing so would tend to strengthen the US dollar and other pegged or semi-pegged currencies against the Euro and other units. So in my view, if the Fed wants to help other economies and is not worried about the domestic economy so much…the solution is actually to raise rates, not to keep them stable or lower.