There are some good reasons why the capital rules have not yet been finalized – in particular, the need to carefully consider the thousands of comment letters on the proposed rules, many of which came from community banks. Meanwhile, since Basel III sets a final deadline for implementation of 2019, one might ask why it is so imperative to act sooner.
M3 growth is therefore monitored on the basis of three-month moving averages of the 12-month growth rate of M3, which stood at 4.9% in the period from November 1998 to January 1999. This was 0.2 percentage point higher than the figure recorded in the previous three-month period and is 0.4 percentage point above the reference value of 4½%.