Tapering was always going to be a damp squib

We weren’t surprised by the Fed’s decision to begin tapering its monthly asset purchases, but we didn’t anticipate that it might not halt those purchases completely until late next year. As the tapering process will be more gradual than expected, it follows that the first rate hike will come later too. Indeed, the Fed has said that lift off now won’t happen until late 2015, although it could still be forced to begin raising rates sooner than that.