MORGAN STANLEY: Here Are The 5 Big Tricky Transitions The World Will Go Through This Year

REUTERS/ Nicky Loh

From the U.S. to Europe to China and emerging markets, 2014 will prove a year of "tricky transitions," Morgan Stanley's Joachim Fels in a new free newsletter.

"Looking at the broader picture, 2014 will mark year five of a post-crisis global economic expansion that has seen bumpy, below-par and brittle growth," Fels writes.

The first four years of the post-crisis paradigm has been characterized by deleveraging in developed markets, leveraging in emerging ones, expanding central bank balance sheets, and a "full-blown debt crisis in Europe."

"If all goes well, 2014 could mark the transition to a sounder, safer and more sustainable second half of this expansion," Fels writes. "That means a DM expansion that is less dependent on monetary and fiscal stimulus, instead driven by private consumption and capital expenditures and supported by a normalization of the credit mechanism. It also means an EM expansion that is helped by structural reforms aimed at more sustainable growth models."

But it won't be easy.