In fact, this trend was more pronounced in the US and Japan – where the average growth rate in government spending exceeded the average nominal GDP growth rate by 1½ and 2 percentage points respectively – than in the euro area where this difference only amounted to around one quarter percentage point.
This second dimension is a crisis of the social contract, a contract that was established in the post-war era and that was fair and affordable at that time. It was fair because it implied  BIS central bankers’ speeches  3  solidarity towards the generation that experienced the war.