Federal Reserve officials were clearly taken aback by the selloff that was unleashed in global financial markets when the central bank's chairman, Ben Bernanke, warned that the Fed's bond-buying program would likely be scaled back this year.
But they can take an increasing level of comfort from having guided Wall Street to a view of future monetary policy that is closer to their own, and the sense that a messy adjustment now is much less harmful than a more violent turn later.