Challenges are just beginning for central banks

Japan Times ^ | 08/25/2013 | Neil Irwin

[TexGrill]

JACKSON HOLE, WYOMING – Each August for the past several years, a conference room on the third floor of the Jackson Lake Lodge has been stocked with financial data terminals, secure phone lines and all the other accessories that Ben Bernanke and his top lieutenants at the Federal Reserve might need to fight a global financial crisis.

Many of the world’s leading central bankers are back at their annual economic symposium in Jackson Hole this weekend. But the conference room is empty.

The crisis — which started in subprime U.S. mortgages six years ago, engulfed banks on both sides of the Atlantic, brought the worst recession in generations and drove several European countries to the brink of bankruptcy — is for practical purposes over.

It is over in no small part because the central bankers flooded the world with trillions of dollars and insinuated themselves into countless markets, taking once-unthinkable steps to steer the financial system from the abyss.

The question now for the global economy, and the men and women who guide it, is this: What have you wrought?

[TexGrill]

Global business tip

[DesertRhino]

Every august they go there. Hard for normal people to find places to stay, when they visit those parks, and yet these vermin show up every summer on the government teat.

[arthurus]

The crisis — ... — is for practical purposes over. unwinding ... could be every bit as dangerous and volatile as the conditions that led them to take the actions in the first place

Is there an inconsistency here?

[arthurus]

The crisis — ... — is for practical purposes over.

unwinding ... could be every bit as dangerous and volatile as the conditions that led them to take the actions in the first place

Is there an inconsistency here?