The emerging world clearly needed some moderation, while the major countries working through the aftermath of banking crises are still likely, if history is any guide, to find it hard  BIS Review 156/2010  1  going for a while yet. How much progress we will have made in resolving the “imbalances” issue remains very unclear.
For example, if we had invested in the US equity market (in Grade A stocks) over the last 20 years we would have earned an average annual return of 11½ percent compared with an 8½ percent return we could have earned in US fixed income instruments. However, the volatility of the equity portfolio would have greatly exceeded that of the fixed income portfolio.