That is why we support safeguards to ensure strong capital levels during the transition to Basel II, and will remain vigilant in monitoring Basel II's impact on an ongoing basis. This means that during and after the transition to Basel II, supervisors will rely upon ongoing, detailed analysis to continuously evaluate the results of the new framework and ensure prudent levels of capital.
To be quite clear, the Federal Reserve believes that strong capital is critical to the health of our banking system and we believe that Basel II will help us continue to ensure that U.S. banks maintain capital levels that serve as an appropriate cushion against risk-taking. As we have mentioned before, we will continue to use existing prudential measures to complement Basel II.