In addition, asset quality was quite good by historical standards before the deterioration began. Moreover, in the last decade, as I will discuss more fully in a moment, banks have improved their risk management and control systems, which we believe may have both strengthened the resultant asset quality and shortened banks' response time to changing economic events.
Part of this was clearly related to the decline in the housing sector and part to difficulties which small business was having in adapting to the administration of the GST. But, by January 2001, there was another piece of data pointing to an additional factor. Paradoxically, it was the unexpectedly good performance of the CPI in the December quarter.