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.
似乎每届美联储(Fed)主席都会在上任头年遭逢一场危机。1979年保罗•沃尔克(Paul Volcker)遇到的危机是通胀飙升。艾伦•格林斯潘(Alan Greenspan)在1987年遭遇了被称之为“黑色星期一”的股市崩盘。2006年的本•伯南克(Ben Bernanke)要面对美国房地产泡沫破裂。无论珍妮特•耶伦(Janet Yellen)遭受何种意外打击，她都会首先面临一个其前任从未遇到的问题：美联储耗尽了“弹药”。此外，美联储认为自己依然拥有的一件武器——所谓“前瞻性指引”(forward guidance)的把戏——其实只是一把哑火的枪。