Although conditions will not necessarily be as favourable over the  6  BIS Review 147/2007  next decade as they have been recently, nonetheless, further efforts to reduce the debtservice burden are needed in order to prepare for the inevitable effects of the aging of our population.
*  *  *  I am not telling you anything new if I say that the global financial system is ill, severely ill. Being ill is a concern, but in itself no cause for alarm. This time, however, there is something special about the state of the global financial community.