On June 28, 2015, the oldest international financial institution, the Basel-based eighty-five-year-old Bank for International Settlements, asked in its annual report a most pertinent question: “Is the unthinkable becoming routine?” The report pointed out that low interest rates “are the most remarkable symptom of a broader malaise in the global economy: the economic expansion is unbalanced, debt burdens and financial risks are still too high, productivity growth too low, and the room for maneuver in macroeconomic policy too limited. The unthinkable risks becoming routine and being perceived as the new normal.” Watching the malaise of major multinational and supranational institutions that were established after the ravages of World War II and in the post-war era in Europe as part of a historic process of ever broader and deeper economic and political integration, one could ask the same question in the shadow of never-ending financial turbulences: Is the unthinkable becoming the new normal?
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