A roundup of US economic situation.

The US FED had just increased its interest rate and would continue to hike another time in Dec 2018.  There will also be 3 interest rate increases in 2019 and 1 in 2020 as indicated by the dot plot chart.  However, the inflation data is still benign insofar.

Something must be wrong somewhere because the US FED is upping the interest rates without any telltale sign of inflation.  Actually, the US FED has noticed that the US economy is starting to overheat.  Where are the telltale signs?

The US trade deficit has been increasing tremendously despite the import tariffs.  This means the US imports are more than exports.  In other words, the US consumers are willing to spend because of the good economic growth that they're enjoying now.

https://www.cnbc.com/2018/09/05/us-trade-deficit-jumps-by-the-most-in-3-years.html

Next, the US FED has also taken cognizant of the money liquidity issues in the financial system.  In a nutshell, the economy is flushed with excess money and the money will be going after higher yield locally or overseas.  However, the US FED doesn't want this excess money to leave the country.  Thus, it has to increase the interest rate to retain the money in the US banking system.

The EFFR which is the interest rate that banks charge each other for the overnight loans to meet their reserve requirements has been trending higher over the years.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_funds_rate

https://apps.newyorkfed.org/markets/autorates/fed%20funds

The IORR and IOER have also trended higher over the years.  These 2 interest rates are at 2.2% now (2018) compared to 0.5% in 2016.

https://www.federalreserve.gov/monetarypolicy/reqresbalances.htm

This excess of money in the economy is created by all the quantitative easing measures taken by the FED over the years and will create an overheating economy in the end.

Therefore, the US FED has to increase the interest rate and also perform QE tapering even though the inflation is benign at this moment.