All eyes are trained on the Federal Reserve as it prepares to announce another potential interest rate hike Wednesday afternoon -- exactly 10 days after the Biden administration stepped in with dramatic emergency actions to contain the fallout from two bank failures.

Is the Federal Reserve, charged with supervising the banks for which it is the primary regulator, too chummy or aligned with those banks to do its job?

The Federal Reserve will decide whether and by how much to raise interest rates this week at a moment when its path ahead is newly fraught.