‘Something’ Is Still Out There

In January 2016, just as the wave of “global turmoil” was cresting on domestic as well as foreign shores, retired Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke was giving a series of lectures for the IMF. His topic wasn’t really the so-called taper tantrum of 2013 but it really was. Even ideologically blinded economists like Bernanke could see how one might have followed the other; the roots of 2016 in 2013.

In May and June of that year, in my capacity as Fed chair, I publicly raised the possibility that the central bank could begin “later this year” to slow the pace of its asset purchases, initiated in the round of quantitative easing known as QE3. Although I was careful to say that short-term interest rates would remain low for a long time even after the “tapering” of asset purchases had begun, some market participants evidently interpreted statements by me and others at the Fed as signaling a possibly imminent rise in rates. The market volatility resulting from this shift of expectations—the “tantrum”—was felt particularly strongly by emerging-market economies. Emerging markets also experienced sharp outflows of financial capital (“hot money”), as international investors sought greater safety. The U.S. economy did not seem to be much affected by these developments, as growth continued in late 2013 and 2014, but some emerging-market economies came under stress, especially the so-called “fragile five”: Turkey, Brazil, India, South Africa, and Indonesia.

Though Janet Yellen declared it “transitory”, by early 2015 it was clear to most that there was something to this. Not even the “cleanest dirty shirt”, as the US economy was described, was going to just speed through it unscathed. After the events of that summer and their repeat later in the year, it seems pretty clear why Bernanke was lecturing on the topic to begin 2016.