I want to emphasize that policy does not hinge on decimal points – we always know we are dealing with a range of possible outcomes. Interpretation of the recent data is complicated by the slowdown in the U.S. in the same quarter, which no doubt was partly due to severe weather and a port strike in Los Angeles. We had some unusual weather ourselves.
During the course of the financial and economic crisis, many countries had accumulated a large amount of debt via guarantees or costly fiscal policy measures that had been implemented to prevent vital markets from collapsing during the financial and economic turmoil, in particular after the Lehman insolvency.