This decentralized regional structure ensures that national policymakers have access to information about local economies – information that is often more forwardlooking than lagged aggregate data. But, just as importantly, the regional structure also promotes intellectual diversity in the way policymakers think about the economy.
In the middle are debit cards, a product that has been around for a number of years but which only recently began to achieve wide market penetration, electronic bill payment innovations, and PC banking, a newer product that is becoming increasingly robust and sophisticated.