On the ECB’s Governing Council, we have the 19 governors of the national central banks who are there in a personal capacity and not as representatives of their countries. That enriches the debate and our perspective on the world. And, conversely, they are also able to explain our decisions in their countries. We ourselves regularly go to the European Parliament, and occasionally national parliaments.
As part of our efforts to analyze and address these concerns, the Federal Reserve published a series of research papers focused on potential competitive effects in areas such as small business lending, mergers and acquisitions, and residential mortgage markets. The agencies have been taking into account the issues raised in those papers in drafting the Basel IA NPR.