The financial crisis and the Great Recession left firms with excess capacity, reducing incentives to invest. If businesses expect slower growth to continue, that will also hold down investment.

Increased fragmentation of production across international borders - a natural outgrowth of the gains from specialization - meant more trade for any given value of final production, thus adding to the major expansion in gross trade flows in the 1990s and 2000s.

The FOMC has considerable control over short-term interest rates. We have much less influence over long-term rates, which are set in the marketplace.

Jerome Powell Quotes