Fed's dreaded 'taper' may not hurt after all

For all the hang-wringing on Wall Street about the Federal Reserve's expected "taper," you'd think the central bank was considering a ban on helicopter flights to the Hamptons.

Take a deep breath. For most of the rest of us, the Fed's "tapering" of its massive money flows into the U.S. economy could actually spell good news.

The "tapering" you may have heard about refers to a gradual easing up on the central bank's response to the financial collapse of 2008. Beginning in November that year, the Fed began buying up hundreds of billions of dollars' worth of Treasury bonds -along with dodgy mortgage debt-in exchange for cash that it conjured out of thin air.

Unlike you and me, the Fed can take a pile of debt, swap it for cash, and then hang onto that debt until it reverses the process later, which takes cash back out of the economy. The idea..

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