The Bank implemented policies that consisted of lowering short-term interest rates as close as possible to 0 percent and expanding the size of its balance sheet to close to 30 percent of nominal GDP, which back then was globally unprecedented in terms of scale. Nevertheless, the impact provided by those policies proved insufficient to allow the economy to escape from its deflationary equilibrium.
However, institutional rules and regulations have also become so complex nowadays that often only a few experts are able to fully understand them. Consider the federal financial equalisation system, for example. Addressing this subject, Peer Steinbrück once said, “There are only three people that really understood this concept. The first is dead. The second is in a mental asylum.