' ve concluded today : financial inclusion is both urgent and important. we are working together to make progress on this issue. and if we set out a good timetable we will get there. i have every confidence that together we will prevail. and to that end, i have one last piece of eisenhower wisdom for you : " neither a wise man nor a brave man lies down on the tracks of history to wait for the train of the future to run over him. " what i see here is a room full of wise and brave men and women, not passively waiting to be overrun, but actively wanting to jump on that train to shape that future. a future for all. especially the most vulnerable, an inclusive future! * * *

similar to the bad experiences of the seventies and early eighties. third, high and persistent fiscal imbalances indirectly fuel inflationary expectations, because they raise the issue of sustainability. fourth, an additional reason for the establishment of a pact for stability and growth is the possible danger of “ free rider ” behaviour by individual member states. if national fiscal policies would not be governed by certain explicit and clear rules, individual member states could implement unbalanced fiscal policies and to a large extent pass on the negative consequences to the other member states. fifth, the introduction of a stability and growth pact will safeguard the fiscal convergence that has been achieved during recent years, when eu member states started to bring down fiscal deficits in order to meet the maastricht criteria. sixth, against the background of growing government fiscal deficits, both in europe and the united states the fiscal situation of the government has become an issue of growing academic concern. as a result, a substantial number of important studies on the need for balanced budget rules have been published, establishing the theoretical framework for the necessary change towards fiscal consolidation. it should be noted that fiscal imbalances of the government are a relatively recent phenomenon. as has been stated regarding the united states by nobel prizewinner professor james buchanan, who is one of the strongest supporters of balanced budget rules : “ traditionally, before the 1960 ’ s, governments had resorted to debt as a means of financing only extraordinary expenditures, for the most part expenditures that were necessary to finance wars and other short - lived emergencies. public debt, so created, was always substantially reduced, or paid off, after most wars for most countries ”. 1 also in europe, during the sixties and the early seventies, budgets close to balance or even in surplus were regarded as normal. it will not be a surprise that i think that we should go back to normal. for example, the average of total government gross debt for the present 15 eu member states in 1970 was 34. 6 % of gdp. in 1995, this figure had risen to 71. 7 % of gdp, a doubling in 25 years. in the case of the netherlands, the figure for government debt rose from almost 47 % of gdp in 1980 to around 80 % of gdp in 1995, an increase of 70 % in just 15 years. however, the rapid growth of government debt did not result in a significant reduction of unemployment. on the contrary : the doubling of the average eu government debt level in 25 years was accompanied by a more