*  *  *  The views expressed here are my own and not necessarily those of my colleagues on the Board of Governors or the Federal Open Market Committee. Nellie Liang, Daniel Covitz, William English, and Brian Madigan of the Board’s staff contributed to these remarks.
It is tempting to view the economic events of the last three years as a series of unrelated, unpredictable, unfortunate financial shocks. And it is easy – too easy, really – to bemoan the latest flare-up of crisis conditions, and chalk it up to the global economy’s continued string of bad luck.