In particular, our need to cooperate with state bank regulators has increased in importance, and we have responded to that need. In that vein, we launched a cooperative pilot project with other federal and state agencies to conduct reviews of certain nondepository lenders involved in the subprime market.
There are two presumptions behind this question: first, that central banks neglected financial stability because they had no explicit mandate, and second that in some sense, financial stability falls  BIS central bankers’ speeches  1  within the purview of a central bank mandate. Evidently, there are no settled views on these presumptions but they do raise a host of important issues.