While I intend to say quite a lot about those events later on, I do not propose to invoke that excuse at this stage, because they have not had any effect on the economy to date. They have affected financial markets, but not the economy yet.
Instead, I want to start by saying that the baseline we have to work from, i.e., the growth of the economy in the first three quarters of 1997, has been at least as good as I was pointing to in May, if not a little better.