All of you here are familiar with developments in the world economy since then, but the understanding that high world economic growth had continued for a long time was, without any question, true until the recent past. In actual numbers, growth rates of around 5 percent continued from 2004 through 2007.
Even with such high growth rates, inflation rates did not rise noticeably until around 2006. A major factor supporting this combination of low inflation and high economic growth was the entry of emerging economies into the market economy, which expanded global supply capacity, providing an environment for low inflation. In this situation, there was a prolonged period of low interest rates worldwide.