Guy Quaden: New views on firms’ investment and finance decisions Opening address by Mr Guy Quaden, Governor of the National Bank of Belgium, for the National Bank of Belgium Conference, Brussels, 27-28 May 2002. *  *  *  Ladies and Gentlemen, I am really pleased to welcome you here at the National Bank of Belgium 2002 Conference.
Though the levels of public debt were rising in many advanced market economies before the crisis, the Great Recession accelerated the public debt problems. The high public debts are a concern more generally and not just in the euro area. These debt problems are likely to pose a challenge for defining the proper domains of fiscal and monetary policies in the coming years. II.