Lack of confidence a drag on global recovery

At the latest G20 meeting in Washington, Singaporean Finance Minister Tharman Shanmugaratnam, chairman of the International Monetary and Financial Committee of the Board of Governors of the International Monetary Fund, succinctly summed up the global economic problem at a news briefing.

"The commodity that is in shortest supply now is confidence," he said, referring to the failure of aggressive monetary policies adopted by some major economies, notably the United States, Japan and Britain, to spark a reliable recovery that creates jobs and boosts government revenue.

Global financial officials who attended the meeting agreed "there is no single bullet that will get us to normal growth and some normality with regard to jobs," said Tharman. So the overriding question is what else needs to be done to kick-start a sustainable recovery other than flooding the economy with cash.