Let’s forget the Federal Reserve for a moment. Instead consider China, its currency and a
piece of financial jargon known as “tail risk”. Tail, like many terms misappropriated by finance, has a former life in statistical mathematics where it refers, very broadly, to anything that does not happen very often.
Modern usage is different, however, and it now often means something like: “Damn it! We should have paid more attention.” So when three-quarters of investors told pollsters at Bank of America Merrill Lynch this month a recession in China was the greatest tail risk they faced, what it meant is they had noticed the slowdown in the world’s second-largest economy and were trying to decide what to think about it.