As a result of the continuing fallout from the financial crisis, the global macroeconomic system still faces a number of challenges: slow or declining economic growth; exchange-rate volatility; asymmetry in the adjustment mechanisms between the United States, whose currency lies at the heart of the current system, and the rest of the world; excessive accumulation of foreign reserves by emerging economies; and excessive spillovers of the US monetary policy on other countries. Almost six years into the most severe economic downturn since the Great Depression, policy-makers around the world are attempting to steer their economies to safe harbour and away from the storms still bashing large parts of the global economy.