The past week was highlighted by the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) meeting on Wednesday followed by the Bank of Japan meeting on Thursday, both of which ended in each central bank refraining from any fiscal action or offering any additional monetary stimulus. Many consider the Federal Reserve the world’s central banker, and that assertion might have some degree of credence when looking for fiscal policy leadership. The U.S. central bank is already on the other side of the quantitative easing effort, looking to normalize interest rates in the year ahead, albeit at a slower rate than Fed leaders originally hoped.

The Bank of Japan (BOJ) has been trying to stimulate the Japanese economy in one form or another for the past 20 years. Despite anemic inflation and global growth, the central bank held pat on further immediate stimulus, which sent the yen spiking to a two-year high that clouds an already tough outlook for a country dependent on strong export growth. These decisions come a week after the European Central Bank (ECB) made no changes in its program to revive the euro zone economy as it expressed slightly more optimism about the prospects for growth in the region.