Nonetheless, this is an appropriate juncture at which to try to bring all this together. So this morning, I intend to elaborate a little about the sorts of issues that have been important for the conduct of policy in the past year and those that look like they will be relevant in the period ahead.
The IMF further revised the 2009 world growth projection down to 2.2 percent from the earlier projection of 3.0 percent. We therefore expect our major trading partners to have a sluggish outlook for the next two years.