I can certainly appreciate these concerns and am fully aware of the challenges that we face in restoring economic and financial conditions conducive to healthy growth, some of which I will comment on today. With respect to longer-run prospects, however, my own view is more optimistic.
To start with, we are, for the first time, putting to the test the soundness and resilience of the globalised economy, which has become increasingly integrated over the past fifteen years. We now have to draw, systematically and without complacency, the lessons of the global crisis that we are fighting against. Secondly, we have a duty.