The stock indexes barely budge, trading traffic slows to a crawl, and everyone is holding his breath for the big event. No, not that wedding that has sold out every balconied room overlooking Buckingham Palace, and not even the first-quarter earnings that companies will begin reporting this week, but the end of the Federal Reserve’s “quantitative easing” regime.

Since our Fed chairman talked up his $600 billion plan to buy Treasuries last August, stocks have rallied more than 27%, almost uninterrupted. So the looming end of federal largess this June has created paralysis. Will risky assets give back some of their gains?

Crude oil climbed last week to $113 a barrel, the economy has expanded for seven quarters and employers are hiring anew, so the Fed can’t easily argue for another round of quantitative easing, or QE3. So after central bankers meet on April 26 and 27, Ben Bernanke may have to summon his calmest voice and, without ruffling his beard, prepare investors for life after quantitative easing. With the government spending a staggering $1.60 or more for every dollar it earned in tax revenue, that path back to normal could prove anything but normal.

The good news: The central bank will continue to coddle. Stocks aren’t egregiously expensive. Confidence among both companies and consumers is mending, and cash earning no interest at the bank keeps up the pressure to invest. Also, mergers—and merger speculation—help put a floor beneath stock prices, and just last week Texas Instruments (ticker: TXN) snatched up National Semiconductor (NSM), and Diamond Foods (DMND) agreed to buy Pringles from Procter & Gamble (PG)(Source: Barrons Online).