But over the last few years there emerged a fairly widespread view that some fine tuning of regulatory tiering was warranted. Let me now offer a few of my own thoughts on this point.
First, I want to mention how pleased we were that last December Congress amended the statutory provision that had prevented us from raising the threshold for application of our Small Bank Holding Company Policy Statement. I will not repeat here the purpose and history of this statement, which I described in advocating this change last fall.