"There are a number of concerning issue areas in the international macroeconomic system that illustrate the lack of meaningful progress in macroeconomic policy coordination.

The absence of evolution and the lack of commitment to improving the governance of sovereign debt restructuring is a glaring gap in international economic governance. Additionally, the legal uncertainty created by the U.S. court decision on Argentina, the numerous challenges faced by Europe in handling Greece’s sovereign debt restructuring, and the rising levels of public debt in developed and developing economies have highlighted the importance of reform.

The Eurozone’s continuing struggles is also a cause for concern. As the world’s largest economy by nominal GDP, the Eurozone’s lagging recovery is impeding global economic growth. Europe’s failure to restore growth highlights a number of important vulnerabilities in the European political and economic system. Europe’s unwillingness to commit to a cooperative approach to fiscal consolidation and its inability to endorse pro-growth fiscal and structural reform policies for the beleaguered southern European economies is the core driver of Europe’s failure to jump start economic growth. The failure to pursue expansionary fiscal policies has placed an immense burden on the ECB’s monetary policy. The ECB’s monetary policy is also beleaguered by Europe’s unwillingness to pursue aggressive, cooperative, and expansionary monetary policy. Despite the new expansionary monetary policy package that was recently by the ECB, monetary policy has not done enough to address Europe’s current state of low economic growth.

Finally, the failure to pass IMF quota reform as a consequence of the U.S. Congress’ continued reticence on this issue is disappointing. The failure of the IMF to reform its quota and inability to keep up with the changing power dynamics of the international economic system will have spillover effects into other important issue areas."

"There have been important areas of improvement as a consequence of the post-crisis reform process. Basel III has improved the capital adequacy requirements for banks in a manner that will improve the resiliency and the robustness of the financial system.

Nevertheless, important vulnerabilities still remain. The concentration of ownership in the US and elsewhere as a consequence of the financial crisis has meant that leverage in the financial system remains high. Continued leverage within the financial system means that it is still vulnerable to the impact of large external economic shocks. At a time when the global economic recovery is fragile, managing the deleveraging of the financial system is difficult, and political commitment to reducing leverage continues to wane as time passes.

Within the post-crisis reform process, the continued absence of meaningful reform of the shadow banking system and the failure to achieve greater progress in the area of cross-border resolution of financial firms highlights that there are still glaring gaps in the reform process six years later. This brings attention to the fact that important vulnerabilities remain."

"The path towards progress in free trade is increasingly being found within plurilateral and regional mega free trade agreements such as TTIP, TPP, and plurilateral free trade agreements that set the foundation for further developments elsewhere, such as Canada’s recently concluded trade agreement with Europe.

These free trade agreements have been useful in maintaining momentum towards free trade, but the limitations to the WTO’s Bali Agreement and the cracks that are appearing in the multilateral WTO trade process show the underlying vulnerabilities in the international trade system."