Domestically, a key headwind in the past has been the necessary deleveraging by firms and households. But this is also now diminishing as debt returns to more sustainable levels. For the euro area, gross corporate debt1 to value added is now roughly back to its pre-crisis level. In vulnerable countries the decline has been steeper.
But my education did not stop. I earned a masters degree and went on to further studies at night at Columbia University. At the age of twenty-seven I joined a very small Wall Street firm as a partner and was essentially in charge of making it grow. It did, and I eventually became the senior partner.