In particular, I would like to thank Alejandro Jara, Markus Kirchner, Andrés Fernández, Victoria Nuguer, and Liliana Rojas-Suarez for setting up the agenda, and to Tomás Gómez, Paloma Navarro and María José Reyes for the excellent organization of the event. I wish everyone a very fruitful discussion and a pleasant stay in Santiago. ***  References Espinosa, C. and J. Fernández (2015). “Comparación Histórica de Resultados en el Sector Corporativo en Chile”. Economía Chilena, Vol. 18, No. 1. Agosin, M., G. Crespi, and L. Letelier (1999). "Explanations for the Increase in Saving in Chile", in C. Reinhart (ed. ), Accounting for Saving – Financial Liberalization, Capital Flows and Growth in Latin America and Europe, Inter-American Development Bank, Washington, D. C.  Page 5 of 5
The much more flexible monetary and fiscal policies of today have also avoided the intrusion of protectionist distorting measures that so prolonged the crisis of the 1930s, amplifying its costs and deeply hurting the later economic development in several regions of the world, including our country. Still, it is likely that returning to domestic demand levels like the ones we had before the crisis takes a while, especially in the United States. Active fiscal policy actions have taken up the room left by the shrinkage of private spending. However, it cannot be sustained for long. The natural, sustainable solution will come via net exports from the US and, to a lesser extent, from Europe. How it will happen is an open question, because it is also yet to be seen which economies will, as counterparts, have to reduce their own net exports to create the  2  BIS Review 93/2009  necessary space for such an adjustment. Furthermore, this may call for major parity adjustments in the main economic areas. Beyond this last point, currently floating foreign exchange regimes have played a stabilizing role, providing every degree of freedom needed by monetary policy and by liquidity provision measures to tackle the cycle and the financial stability objective. This element was nowhere to be seen in the 1930s, when the main central banks struggled hard, but ineffectively, to defend the gold standard, severely magnifying tensions in the banking systems.