Nearly 92% of economists surveyed this week by the Wall Street Journal expect that our eight-year experiment with unprecedented monetary easing from the Federal Reserve will come to an end at the next Fed meeting in December. Since we have had the monetary wind at our back for so many years, at least a few have begun to question our ability to make economic and financial gains against actual headwinds. But in reality, the tightening cycle that the forecasters are waiting for actually started last year. Sadly, the markets and the economy are already showing an inability to handle it.

While it’s true that we have yet to achieve “lift-off” from zero percent interest rates, rates have not been the only means by which the Fed has provided stimulus. We also have to account for the effects of Quantitative Easing (QE) and forward guidance of the Fed. Changes in those inputs over the past year have already created conditions of monetary tightening.

QE has been the process by which the central bank expands its balance sheet (otherwise known as printing money) to buy government and asset-backed bonds on the longer end of the duration spectrum. In so doing, it is able to help hold down long-term interest rates, a result that it would be difficult to achieve by changes in the federal funds rate. Zero percent interest rates represent a loose monetary policy, but once at the zero lower bound, QE is the way the bank eases even further.

Another big input is Fed “forward guidance.” This comes in the form of official and unofficial pronouncements from top Fed policy makers as to the possible trajectory of rates in the future. If the Fed communicates that rates will stay low, or QE will remain in place, for some time, then policy becomes looser still. Such assurances effectively remove near term interest rate risk, which stimulates financial activity. Ever since the Financial Crisis of 2008, the Fed has engaged in unprecedented forward guidance, without which monetary conditions could have been expected to be tighter.