We are seeing increasingly widespread discontent about rising income and wealth disparities in many countries, where the fruits of growth have not been equitably shared and have been aggravated by persistently low growth. The initial responses to the financial crisis involved both monetary and fiscal policy loosening. But fiscal space was eroded very soon as debt ratios rose to unsustainable levels.
This placed a near impossible burden on monetary policy, which persists to this day. Referring to the post-crisis focus on central banks, Mohamed El-Erian appropriately titled his most recent book The only game in town.