The effects of recent exchange rate developments will also make a significant contribution to reducing inflationary pressure, although some of the effects may be visible only with a certain time-lag. Over the last couple of months, inflation has remained somewhat above 2%. We expect that, after hovering around 2% over the coming months, consumer price inflation should fall more significantly in 2004.
For these reasons, I believed that, rather than invoking the MAC, Bank of America's best option, and the best option for the system, was to work with the Federal Reserve and the Treasury to develop a contingency plan to ensure that the company would remain stable should the completion of the acquisition and the announcement of losses lead to financial stress, particularly a sudden pullback of funding of the type that had been experienced by Wachovia, Lehman, and other firms.