I will also discuss some questions that arise from the crisis that remain unresolved, at least in my mind. They are questions which I think should be a focus of the economics profession. Answering them will help guide policymakers should they be faced with similar situations to the one we confronted in 2008. I am going to talk about both macro and finance today.
In fact, the policy to induce short-term interest rates to effectively zero and to make commitment about future policy based on CPI is an unusual step into uncharted territory. Nonetheless, in view of the worsening economic conditions, we decided to take such an unusual step into uncharted waters as long as some effects were thought to exist at least theoretically.