Who could have imagined 15 years ago that in May 2004, eight countries in central and eastern Europe, together with two countries in the Mediterranean, would be members of the European Union? The perspective of joining the European Union and eventually adopting a European single currency was out of sight for even the most imaginative minds.
17 The median assessment of the longer-run neutral federal funds rate declined from 4.25 percent in 2012 to 2.90 percent in September of this year, with 60 basis points of that shift occurring just since September 2015 (figure 5).