Even so, the ratio of debt to gross domestic product (GDP) will continue to edge higher over the next decade unless the Congress and the Administration are able to agree on a program of deficit reduction that is more ambitious than the targets incorporated in last summer’s Budget Control Act.
That is something we are currently discussing with the Ministry of Finance, and I certainly hope we succeed as the payment system is simply too important for us to be satisfied with the current patchwork of laws. We need a single consistent framework so that we can supervise all the links in the horizontal chain of the payment system.