Introduction I am happy to be in the City and to have the opportunity to speak with you this afternoon. You can feel the pulse of the global financial system here, and it feels a bit like an irregular heartbeat to me. The recovery from the Great Recession has been a long, drawn-out affair, with some countries emerging faster than others.
This stagnation, however, ended rather quickly, and, as is well known, what followed was economic expansion accompanied by asset price bubbles. The coexistence of high economic growth and low inflation throughout this period suggested gains in productivity, and we observed widespread optimism that Japan had overcome the adverse effect of not only the oil shocks but also the yen's appreciation.