Stephanie Flanders: Important lessons have already been learnt this year

When everyone seems to agree on what is going to happen, you can be pretty sure some part of that conventional wisdom will turn out to be wrong. We have learned that lesson early in 2014. In the first few weeks of the year, very little in the financial markets has gone according to plan. Stock markets are down, when the global recovery was supposed to be sending equities further up. Government bond yields are also down, in a year when nearly everyone thought the gradual normalisation of monetary policy in the US would see long-term interest rates creep higher. Does this mean we should...