*  *  *  I am delighted to address this meeting of the Japan Society of Monetary Economics. I would particularly like to thank Professor Shimizu both for inviting me and for helping to arrange a series of meetings with officials at the Bank of Japan, the Ministry of Finance, and the Financial Services Agency.
Those meetings have given me a first-hand look at the difficult challenges that the current economic situation poses for Japan's leaders and for the Japanese people. The economic situation here is indeed enormously complex. It involves not only structural, monetary, and fiscal problems but also underlying political and social forces, which have at times limited the flexibility of policy.