However, some important headwinds – in particular, constrained bank lending and a weak job market – likely will prevent the expansion from being as robust as we would hope. I'll discuss each of these problem areas in a bit more detail and then end with some further comments on the outlook for the economy and for policy.
Bank lending and credit availability I began today by alluding to the unprecedented financial panic that last fall brought a number of major financial institutions around the world to failure or the brink of failure. Policymakers in the United States and abroad deployed a number of tools to stem the panic.