Still, the key question to ask is why are we not moving faster out of the crisis? The recovery continues to face headwinds, especially in stressed countries and a number of factors may hinder a faster recovery. First, notwithstanding some progress in rebalancing, in many euro area countries we will still see further adjustment of private and public sector balance sheets.
Don’t forget in this context that past recoveries have been driven by a pick-up in housing and construction activity that then continued to feed its way through to overall economy.