(CNN) -- The global economy is under a "veil of uncertainty" as economic issues grip the U.S., eurozone and developing markets such as China, the head of the International Monetary Fund said Thursday in Japan. Christine Lagarde, the managing director of the IMF, said that while "more difficult to analyze and pin down," elevated levels of uncertainty are resulting in slower growth. "We need action to lift the veil of uncertainty." Moreover, the world banking system is still in danger four years after the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers helped catalyze the 2008-2009 financial crisis and still haunted by an unregulated "shadow banking system" of hedge funds and non-regulated derivatives trading. The global financial system is "on the road to being safer, but not yet safer," Lagarde said in an interview with CNN on the sidelines of the IMF meetings being held this week in Tokyo. "I think it's attributable to the fact that (the banking system) was so damaged to begin with -- it was such a massive shock to financial institutions that it actually took a while to measure the depth of the difficulty and the scope of the changes that have to take place
Source: The Coming Crisis
