I probably do not need to tell anyone in this room that we are indeed living in unusual times. Policymakers around the world have been grappling for the past six years with an economic crisis, which has repeatedly mutated, and it is still not clear what direction the crisis is going to take next.
From its origins as a sub-prime crisis in the United States to its morphing into a sovereign debt crisis in Europe, to its current manifestation of fiscal/political gridlocks across both sides of the Atlantic, various measures taken to address each mutation of the crisis have led to unintended consequences.