Pulling the plug on cheap money: exit plans sorely needed

Tokyo

WHATEVER happened to the great tsunami of money - several trillion dollars of it - which was unleashed on the world's major economies by central banks after the Global Financial Crisis on 2008? Now that this liquidity is being withdrawn, will the global economy and financial markets be left high and dry?

This question receives remarkably little attention now, given that the mere mention of monetary "tapering" by the US Federal Reserve a couple of years ago sent markets into a tailspin. They have since recovered, but tapering or tightening on a much larger scale is now becoming the order of the day.