On December 16, 2014, U.S. zero-interest-rate policy (ZIRP) entered its seventh year.

Happy belated birthday, ZIRP!

And on Wednesday, the federal reserve noted that it can be “patient in beginning to normalize the stance of monetary policy.”

Thankfully, after six long years of this emergency measure, the Fed is going to remain “patient.”

A slight tweak in language within the latest monetary policy statement was cheered by traders and investors, as the S&P 500 proceeded to skyrocket 4.5%, the largest two-day rise since November 2011. The markets clearly have an unhealthy obsession with the pronouncements of central bankers.

But let's not forget that the Fed has a horrific track record in forecasting economic variables and has appeared blind to obvious asset bubbles in the past.

I'm actually not sure which is more terrifying: a clueless Fed in charge of the short-term cost of money as well as banking system supervision, or a Fed that perpetually provides a dishonest assessment of the situation.

Either way, here's my own evaluation of where the economy is headed in 2015.

Waiting for Godot

The current U.S. economic expansion is now 66 months old, compared to an average post-war expansion length of 58 months.

The chart below shows real final sales of domestic product, a measure that is similar to the popular GDP but excludes the effects of inventory builds and drawdowns.

I'm showing growth for each quarter relative to the quarter one year prior.

As measured on this basis, the U.S. economy grew at a 2.5% annual rate in the third quarter of 2014.

The Fed's central tendency for 2015 growth is 2.6% to 3%. Meanwhile, the median economist estimate is currently 3%.

So the Fed and Wall Street economists are forecasting that this aging economic expansion will accelerate to a rate it hasn't reached in the past nine years.

Not only that, but this swift rate of expansion – which we haven't seen in nearly a decade – will sustain itself for an extended period of time.