That means that we have only our own strengths to rely on to sustain growth. Finally, and most importantly, our economies are suffering the effects of an erosion of long-term growth prospects and a relative increase in the global supply of savings. Long-term growth in the euro area has halved since the crisis, to less than 1% a year.
That probably involves an acceptance of more modest investment returns across the board than people may have been used to in the past decade or more. But unrealistic expectations, and the inevitable disappointment which follows, have elsewhere proven, through the swings in broader behaviour that those experiences bring, to be the biggest source of macroeconomic problems in recent years.