The surprise election of US President Donald Trump with an agenda of protectionism, deregulation and tax cuts didn’t stop the markets from continuing on the bullish trajectory that started during the Obama years - perhaps because, amid the chaos, so little of the agenda was implemented.

The start of a structural shift in US monetary policy – eight years after the crisis –as the Federal Reserve board began to raise US interest rates and unwind its massive purchases of bonds and mortgages – was also absorbed smoothly. The VIX index, which reflects investor expectations of market volatility and is seen as a gauge of perceived risk, had its quietest year since its creation in 1993.

This year, with the Fed programs pushing US rates up and Trump’s on-again, off-again trade sanctions against China and threats of similar action against Europe, the tensions with North Korea, the sanctions against Russians and the reimposition of sanctions against Iran, the markets have become more volatile.

In early February, the VIX index soared and markets slumped as unexpectedly strong employment data ambushed a number of funds that had "shorted" the index, or in effect bet against any emergence of volatility.

The spike in the index might have been exaggerated by those exotic trades but there are other measures for assessing risk that also reflect a more general increase in anxiety.

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From late last year, the "TED spread" – the difference between the three-month London Interbank Offered Rate, or LIBOR – and the yield on three-month US Treasury bonds – began to open up quite dramatically. The spread between LIBOR and the Overnight Index Swap Rate, or OIS, also gapped to levels last reached in 2012 during the last bout of (Grexit-inspired) fear of eurozone fragmentation.

The TED spread is an indicator of perceived credit risk within the global economy and the LIBOR-OIS spread of perceived risk within the banking system. They were reliable lead indicators – "canaries in the coal mine" – through 2007 and 2008 of the developing financial crisis.

After being quite dormant through the past several years, they started to move late last year, with the spreads surging from early February and peaking last month. While they have fallen back, the spreads are multiples of their levels as recently as last November.

Some increased awareness of risk could have been predicted, and not just because Trump created a less predictable and more volatile global environment. The Fed is the most important central bank and the US economy and markets still remain pre-eminent.

The response to the crisis by the Fed and its peers – massive interventions to drive interest rates down and hose the system with liquidity that have remained in place for nearly a decade – encouraged/coerced investors to chase yields greater than those from low-risk securities while accepting ever-increasing risk. It was inevitable that, as post-crisis monetary policies started to be wound back, the indiscriminate risk-taking they encouraged would be exposed and investor anxiety and volatility would increase.

Risks that were previously underwritten or suppressed by central bank policies are now becoming more active and visible.

Among the unintended consequences of policies that rewarded wealthy investors while punishing conservative savers has been the debate about "inequality" and the tides of anti-establishment populism that are destabilising the eurozone and which put Trump into the White House.

Another of many distortions of capital flows was a massive increase in the supply of ultra-cheap US dollar debt to emerging markets. With interest rates and the value of the dollar rising, the cost of servicing that debt is starting to bite and countries like Indonesia, Mexico, Argentina and Turkey are being forced to raise domestic rates to defend their currencies.

Risks that were previously underwritten or suppressed by central bank policies are now becoming more active and visible and investors more nervous and quick to act.

While it hasn’t been a fashionable concept since the crisis, the pricing of those risks would be good for the financial system and economies in the longer term, even though the near-term consequences might be unpleasant.