Ace bond investor Jeffrey Gundlach, CEO of DoubleLine Capital, expects the Federal Reserve to raise interest rates in 2015, as do many other experts.
But many others believe it will be strong economic growth and rising inflation that push the Fed to act. Gundlach offers a different scenario.
Inflation won't be high enough to justify a rate hike, he told CNBC. The Federal Reserve has an inflation target of 2 percent.
Yet the consumer price index rose only 1.7 percent in the 12 months through October. And the Fed's favored inflation measure, the personal consumption expenditures price index, climbed just 1.4 percent in the 12 months through September.
"The Fed should not be raising interest rates, and yet they don't want to be at zero," Gundlach said. The central bank's federal funds rate stands at a record low of zero to 0.25 percent.
"They're in a conundrum. They might raise rates just to see what happens," Gundlach said.
He also predicted that oil prices will continue their decline.
As for the Fed, Peter Schiff, CEO of Euro Pacific Capital, really diverges from the consensus view. He thinks the central bank will ultimately revive the quantitative easing that it's ending this month.
"Now that QE is apparently a thing of the past, it is alarming how little anxiety has been sown on Wall Street," Schiff writes on Real Clear Markets.
"Most economists recognize that to normalize policy the Fed must reduce the amount of securities it holds. Logical analysis should lead you to believe that stocks would not fare well."
And when stocks fall, "the Fed will go back to the well as soon as the markets scream loud enough for support," Schiff says.
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