Central Banks Likely to Stay Easy in 2015 as Normalcy Is Elusive

The world’s central bankers could be forgiven for thinking that things are never going to get back to normal. More than six years after the financial crisis plunged the world into recession, monetary policy looks nothing like it did before those events.

Even as economists predict that the U.S. Federal Reserve and Bank of England will finally begin to raise benchmark rates in 2015, the central banks are unlikely to push borrowing costs anywhere near pre-crisis, inflation-fighting levels. And even though the Fed in October ended the bond-buying campaign it undertook when the U.S. economy was weaker, it isn’t shedding the assets it bought. The European Central Bank and Bank of Japan, for their part, are stepping up purchases.