Every chairman of the US Federal Reserve seems to get hit by a crisis in their first year. For Paul Volcker in 1979 it was raging inflation. For Alan Greenspan it was the 1987 “Black Monday” meltdown. And for Ben Bernanke in 2006 it was the bursting of the US housing bubble. Whatever might blindside Janet Yellen, she starts off with a problem that affected none of her predecessors: the Fed has run out of ammunition. Moreover the one remaining weapon the Fed thinks it has – the hocus-pocus of “forward guidance” – is a gun that fires blanks.
似乎每屆美聯儲(Fed)主席都會在上任頭年遭逢一場危機。1979年保羅?沃爾克(Paul Volcker)遇到的危機是通脹飆升。艾倫?格林斯潘(Alan Greenspan)在1987年遭遇了被稱之為“黑色星期一”的股市崩盤。2006年的本?伯南克(Ben Bernanke)要面對美國房地產泡沫破裂。無論珍妮特?耶倫(Janet Yellen)遭受何種意外打擊，她都會首先面臨一個其前任從未遇到的問題：美聯儲耗盡了“彈藥”。此外，美聯儲認為自己依然擁有的一件武器——所謂“前瞻性指引”(forward guidance)的把戲——其實只是一把啞火的槍。