In advanced economies, growth is still very low; unemployment is high and still rising; bank credit is yet to pick up and de-leveraging is yet to run its course.
Worse, there is the lurking danger of the downside effects of ill-timed and uncoordinated withdrawal of the massive monetary and fiscal accommodation that prevented the global economy from being sucked into what might have become the mother of all depressions. Closer to home, the year gone by was indeed challenging not just for the banking sector but for the economy as a whole.