Publication

The worst of the global financial crisis (GFC) is over, but it has left scars, principally in the form of fiscally driven debt increases, balance sheets that still need repair and high unemployment in the principal crisis countries. There is also unfinished business from the pre-crisis period, in the form of external imbalances. More positively, the crisis offers lessons about economic policymaking that may improve the way things are done. Of course the main lessons are for the developed countries that were at the centre of the crisis. But the countries of the region had to cope with the backwash, and in doing so lessons were learned.