Thursday, November 13, 2008

in the U.S., we have a lot of imbalances. Many of those are not new, but some of them are. When we think about imbalances, there's a housing imbalance. There's just too much housing compared to the demand, and it's not clear exactly when and how the housing market [will be] cleared, where the prices stop. There is a consumption/saving imbalance. Everybody thought they were saving because their housing prices were going up. Well, they no longer are. And the U.S. consumer has to start saving at some point. When you look at the financial system around the world, [it became] overloaded over a period of time. They have to figure out how to de-lever themselves. And the last point, which I think is also important, there's a lot of growth elsewhere in the world and the world is trying to figure out how to grow without causing inflation. Each of these four is very important rebalancing cycles that we're going to have to get right as a country.

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