Than they have in years. But whether global economic growth exceeds 4% this year will depend on central bankers’ ability to strike the right monetary-policy balance.

want to export more than just commodities and manufacturing inputs to China, and companies around the world are jockeying for access to China’s massive domestic market.

All told, forecasts projecting global GDP growth of 4% or more for 2018 seem credible. I would not be surprised to see sell-side forecasters lifting their numbers even further in the next two months. The International Monetary Fund almost certainly will at its annual spring meeting, if not sooner.

So, what’s not to like in the global economic picture for 2018? For starters, as a veteran of financial markets, I am usually wary of a strong consensus. While many oft-cited concerns in 2017 turned out to be unwarranted, that doesn’t mean economic risks have disappeared.

In contrast to a year ago, people are increasingly acknowledging that the global economy is stronger than they had thought. But if growth continues to accelerate, the US Federal Reserve might end up hiking interest rates more than markets anticipated. And the other major central banks, particularly the People’s Bank of China, the European Central Bank, and the Bank of Japan, might reverse their exceptionally loose monetary policies.

To be sure, if the global economy is truly returning to relatively high and stable growth, monetary-policy tightening need not be harmful – and may even be less harmful than waiting for stronger evidence of inflation to emerge. Nevertheless, the world’s major economies have enjoyed remarkably generous monetary policies for a decade – and for far longer in Japan’s case. At the end of the day, no one really knows what the consequences of higher interest rates will be.

For my part, I suspect that productivity growth will accelerate in a number of places, which would justify monetary-policy adjustments and make rising interest rates more tolerable. But that is just a hunch, based on my reading of tentative wage and productivity data in the UK and the US, among other places.

One final concern is that, while not having gone full circle, the global mood has shifted from fear about political risks to obliviousness, even though many such risks still loom large. The potential fallout from poor US leadership in the Middle East and on the Korean Peninsula cannot be ignored; nor can the long-term challenges still confronting Europe. I have long believed that, at least for financial investors, it is better for everyone to be worried about everything than for a small minority to be worried on everyone else’s behalf.

Still, and more important, as long as financial conditions don’t tighten excessively as a result of today’s cyclical strengthening, global economic performance for the rest of this decade could end up being more robust than anyone would have imagined just a few years ago.