Markets remain restless, their forward antenna sensing the end of an era of easy money, and having to adjust portfolios, but without a well delineated parting timetable.

The talk is about what is to come, and endless agonizing as to timing and pace. Refined hairsplitting second-guesses policy personalities and options, teases data and tries to imagine what lies ahead.

Yet reality doesn’t allow itself to be captured that easily.

Japanese policy aggression is least questioned. It is fully engaged and has some considerable time to run. Yet there is great division as to what it will achieve.

The quietest of all has been the ECB. After buying a few distressed peripheral sovereign bonds at the height of the European crisis, the ECB has kept its bond-buying ammunition dry, instead preferring to cheaply lend long to banks (they in turn doing the bond buying-equivalent of what the Fed has done in the US).

Recent data shows European banks this year have bought over â‚¬500bn of sovereign debt while lowering their exposure to corporate debt by just less than€500bn.

For the past 18 months, European banks have also repaid the ECB over â‚¬300bn of their excess liquidity, thereby very quietly shrinking its balance sheet even as the Fed during this period still expanded its balance sheet by over $1 trill.

Chalk and cheese.

Yet the European economy is hardly yet a house on fire. It is still skirting recession (low decimal point gains can’t be called growth). Worse, its inflation keeps eroding, last month falling to 0,7%.

The lack of European growth dynamic should not be so surprising, with the banking credit channels still shrinking and yet to be stabilized, while governments keep cutting back their fiscal support.

With credit tight, unemployment over 12% and youth unemployment varying from 25% to 50%, and commodity import prices falling and global trade competition cutthroat, it should not come as a surprise there is no pricing power and inflation is steadily being eroded.

Indeed, both growth and inflation dynamics are such that market observers are becoming convinced the ECB will act again soon, likely from December.

Instead of only providing yet another infusion of cheap long term funding to banks, sentiment is also favouring a cut in the 0.5% official interest rate.

This by itself would not necessarily be a massive change as a simple Taylor Rule suggests interest rates should by now be -2%. Still, the psychological impact of the ECB relenting and starting another round of easing would be highly significant in a world preoccupied with central banks imminently exiting their unconventionally generous support policies.

Certainly there is no sign of policy exiting yet in either Japan or Europe.

All of which still makes the Fed the global lynchpin. Its balance sheet is currently $3.8 trill and set to reach $4.2 trill by the time Janet Yellen takes over from Ben Bernanke as Fed Chairman come February.

Over the past year, speculation has been intense as to when and how fast the Fed will start its exit, focused as much on the strength of US data warranting this as the possible unintended consequences of continuing bond buying, suggesting dialing back is now in order.

Yet inflation is, if anything, still receding (though psychologically well anchored near 2%) and asset price gains are at least partially underwritten by earnings flows rather than only bubbly-like.

Asset price reflation at the start of a new cycle of expansion isn’t out of the ordinary, and the US and the world are engaged in a decade-long withdrawal from crisis-induced austerity, with many idled resources still to be reabsorbed, and business profits high and rising.

The unintended consequences of a too accommodative monetary policy on these scores (inflation and asset prices) seem overstated and very premature.

In contrast, it is the real performance of the US economy, and world economy, that has to yet achieve satisfactory levels.

Though the US economy has been growing steadily since 2009, its re-absorption of idled labour has been very slow and remains inadequate from a longer perspective.

Though banks have come back and housing has bottomed these two key sectors are hardly overreaching even as government keeps reducing its fiscal deficit.

These remain steady headwinds or slack tailwinds, as is the caution that can be observed throughout private businesses, where companies prefer to increase their cash balances and maintain conservative hiring rather than becoming more adventuresome with leveraging their balance sheets and expand their productive capacities.

These remain uncertain times, regionally and globally, and business prefers to keep watchfully to the sidelines for the time being until greater clarity can be obtained.

In the process, the slow growth dynamic is becoming semi-permanently embedded at home and abroad, and it is for the policymaker to show a greater willingness to lead from the front, preferably in micro policy reform, but not neglecting macro.

US politics at present does not allow government this role, as Republicans and Democrats remain engaged in a long-standing jostle about policy choices and direction.

By default the mantle falls on the Fed, and it has had pro-active leadership from Bernanke. His successor Janet Yellen has over a lifetime shown similar tendencies and the expectation is that she will not shirk the role now being allocated to her.

Don’t just stand there, do something.

This Keynesian bend is well developed. Though there are Fed elements that worry deeply over what lies ahead, there is as yet no indication as to a collective failure of nerve.

The US economy can proceed with its limited growth dynamic at least partly because Fed bond-buying support has kept the yield curve low (until it started to lift this year) and wealth effects supportive.

Without these the US economy would likely have been weaker, at least according to official reckoning. With the data focus firmly on the full reabsorption of labour skill sets and easing inflation in the presence of a fiscally retreating government, the Fed senses its job far from done.

This does not mean the Fed would condone overreaction the other way, such as too lively asset markets, and too much of a Dollar hit to other economies rebounding on the US.

Yet the data does not suggest such overreaction in the works even as the labour and inflation underperformance remains evident.

None of this prevents market speculation about an imminent start to Fed tapering of its bond-buying, and ending its balance sheet expansion sometime later in 2014. But in this roving speculation one senses the dog increasingly chasing its own tail rather than sticking strictly with the facts facing Yellen and Friends.

The US and world economy remain slow pokes warranting policy support which isn’t any longer forthcoming from governments (except in Japan).

The central banks involved remain cautiously inclined to sustain their support as long as idled resources and inflation warrant such action and asset markets and credit leverage are clearly not overreacting.

For now this seems to be the order of business, and events may surprise as to how long it will remain so.

Neither Yellen or Draghi would want to misread this situation either way, not wanting to overstay their support nor prematurely end it.

At least the very, excruciatingly slow response dynamic of their respective economies and the global prospect affords them the luxury of gravely studying the facts, with probably limited danger of suddenly being caught out by an unexpected turn of events.

Central bank policy is likely to remain balance sheet-supportive and rates low for long, with only a very gradual turn eventually coming into focus.

Global bond markets are likely to remain preoccupied with the longer term end destination (yield curves having to lift more) even as risk assets in the short to medium term may continue to benefit from carry-trade yield-seeking with a slow grind higher in growth not equity unfriendly.

This post-crisis era has yet to end, and the Great Exit towards policy normalization yet to start in earnest.

It may well be 2014 could prove to be the watershed, but it may well be a very slow reversal of tides, and late rather than early in its start.

The world is simply too impatient, given the state of its real sector patient and private confidence and risk-taking (or rather the lack of it).

Central banks, on the other hand, remain primly data dependent.