If you’ll bear with me for mixing metaphors, the title of this blog describes to a tee the situation the U.S. Federal Reserve (Fed) and Fed Chair Janet Yellen find themselves in with other central banks, including Bank of Japan (BOJ) Governor Haruhiko Kuroda.

Let us start with January’s Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) meeting. If one were optimistic, one could describe the FOMC communique as dovish, and there is enough in the note to support that line of thinking. The FOMC mentions slowing growth, although more in inventory terms rather than spending and investment. It also mentions global developments but passes on balance-of-risk statements.

However, if one were a little less optimistic, the repeated comments on the strength of the U.S. labor market might make one nervous. What the FOMC was in essence saying is that yes, the U.S. economy was slowing in the fourth quarter of 2015, and yes, global and financial market developments have them worried, but there is enough strength in the U.S. labor market for them not to back off from their tightening stance.

The bottom line, from my perspective, is that while the Fed may seem to be sounding a tad dovish, unless the labor market starts softening, Fed policymakers are far from done with tightening.

As a result, while there are reasons to be hopeful for risky asset prices, it is far from certain that the Fed will stop tightening now and a reversal of the markets’ thinking on what the Fed will do – which at the moment is nothing for the foreseeable future—is still a substantial downside risk for sentiment.

In a perfect world, where the Fed is the Supremo, that would be the end of the conversation because the Fed is free to do whatever it believes is called for based on the state of the U.S. economy.

However, the situation in the current global environment is a bit different. While the Fed has a lot