Emerging markets still in the driving seat

China is bearing some short-term pain in the form of lower growth for long-term gains and more sustainable growth.

The highly anticipated rebound in the US economy is at least another year away. Yet the US Federal Reserve is ending its QE program and preparing the market for interest rate hikes in 2015. Clearly, the Fed expects growth, but the US economy has seen many false dawns in the past seven years, and there is still a lot of slack in the US labor market. So, the increase in policy rates will have to be very gradual.

For the global economy and financial markets, much will depend on the actions of the European Central Bank. In a recent paper, we (Standard Chartered) calculated that the impact ECB actions have on global liquidity is very close to that of the Fed. What the ECB does therefore has significant implications, and the ECB will have to do more.

Would this save the eurozone economy? Probably not, but such a development would be positive for global liquidity and therefore markets.

Asset prices have been rising across the world despite disappointing growth rates in the US and Europe. Low interest rates and the efforts of central banks to boost liquidity are increasingly becoming the driving forces of asset performance. If the ECB does go ahead with more QE - and the Fed is very careful with its normalization of monetary policy - this may well continue in 2015.

The author is global head of macro research, Standard Chartered.