The reason for the delay is the existence of significant productive capacity that remains unused in many of the developed nations. While the U.S. economy has clearly strengthened, it has not yet returned to pre-crisis output and employment levels. Its unemployment rate, for example, remains near 9 percent. In the U.K., unemployment remains near 8 percent.
Thus for many the issue of policy turns on one’s confidence in the long run economic trends and the degree of monetary accommodation needed to ensure that those trends continue. Shifting economic risks The monetary policy being implemented currently within the United States and much of the world is more accommodative now than at the height of the crisis.