New York (CNN Business) If there's a serious recession on the horizon, the world's central banks may have trouble fighting it.

Central banks took dramatic and unorthodox steps to prevent economic collapse during the financial crisis. They slashed interest rates, and in the years that followed spent trillions on bonds as part of an effort to spur growth.

One decade later, global central banks are only starting to reverse those moves.

Interest rates in developed economies remain incredibly low; in some places, they're even negative. The Federal Reserve is unloading some of the bonds it bought, but central banks in Europe and Japan have not yet done so.

The question now is whether central banks waited too long to raise rates to more normal levels, leaving them unprepared for the next crisis.