The U.S. Federal Reserve announced the long-anticipated beginning of what has become known as the "taper" Wednesday. The press conference announcing the decision, the last by outgoing Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, allowed a peek into the mindset of an institution that has an almost mythical place in global economics. The Federal Reserve controls the dollar, and the dollar rules the world, or so the story goes. Indeed, the Federal Reserve has an enormous influence on increasingly complex and volatile global capital markets, which has very real implications for countries all over the world. Despite its global impact, the Fed is only really able to take into account the state of the domestic U.S. economy in its calculations, and even that is done in an environment of mercurial data and with no ability to affect fiscal decision-making.