"I'm in the peculiar position of thinking the Fed should not raise rates, but it should not listen to the President, which is a hard position," Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman said Monday on CNN's Quest Means Business. "There's a pretty good case for not raising rates now. But to not raise rates in this meeting would look like they're allowing themselves to be bullied."

To underscore the weak magnitude and geographic unevenness of new business formation, consider that the country as a whole contained only 52,800 more business establishments in 2016 than it did in 2007. Five counties alone surpassed that, with a combined 55,500 more businesses in 2016 than before the recession: Los Angeles, CA; Brooklyn, NY; Harris, TX (Houston); Queens, NY; and Miami-Dade, FL. Without those five counties, the U.S. would still contain fewer active business establishments than it had before the recession.