Transparency and market discipline  There is now a wider appreciation that high quality financial reporting - described as the ‘cornerstone of market discipline’ - is essential for the efficiency and stability of the financial system. Structural changes underway in the financial system have only served to raise the premium on market disclosure.
The survey’s measures of future activity also indicated that our respondents expect activity to continue to pick up over the next six months. I take this as a sign that business sentiment is also improving. On the housing front, I expect to see stabilization but not much improvement in 2012.