Governments and central banks responded to financial sector difficulties by introducing a number of substantive and innovative measures to deal with both liquidity and solvency problems in financial institutions and financial markets. Central banks reduced interest rates to unprecedented levels to offset the increase in private sector risk premia and to underpin aggregate demand, and they used nonconventional measures in the form of quantitative easing and qualitative or credit easing to bring about reductions in risk premia and to provide liquidity to markets in difficulty. In spite of these efforts, credit conditions remained tight and aggregate demand and employment in many countries weakened rapidly. There were negative spillovers from the weakening economies to those economies that had appeared to be more robust, and increased concern that the global economy might be moving into a period of deep and prolonged recession (IMF, 2009a).