And I note that Congress has also recognized your importance, mandating our respective agencies to help support MDIs. From the perspective of someone who sits on the Federal Open Market Committee, I see many ways that the Federal Reserve can not only support MDIs but is itself also supported by them, and I would like to talk about four of these ways today.
At our meeting yesterday, we discussed some of the factors that are likely to bear on that future and I would like to share three of these with you. The first is the outlook for the global economy, especially in light of the recent banking stresses in the United States and Switzerland.