The act generally requires that public notice be provided, and approval of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) be obtained, before any information requirement is applied to more than nine entities. Over the years, the act’s requirement for OMB approval for information collection activity involving more than nine entities has discouraged agencies from undertaking many initiatives and can delay the collection of important information in a financial crisis. For example, even a series of informal meetings with more than nine entities designed to learn about emerging developments in markets may be subject to the requirements of the act. While the principle of minimizing the burdens imposed on private parties is an important one, the Congress should consider amending the act to allow the financial supervisory agencies to obtain the data necessary for financial stability in a timely manner when needed. One proposed action would be to increase the number of entities from which information can be collected without triggering the act; another would be to permit special data requests of the systemically important institutions could be conducted more quickly and flexibly. The global nature of capital markets seriously limits the extent to which one country acting alone can organize information on financial markets. Many large institutions have foreign subsidiaries that take financial positions in coordination with the parent. Accordingly, strong cooperative arrangements among domestic and foreign authorities, supported by an appropriate statutory framework, are needed to enable appropriate sharing of information among relevant authorities.
 Lastly, we know that we will emerge from this crisis with significantly higher levels of debt. This is clearly the case for government debt, with an increase of between ten and several dozen percentage points of GDP. But it is also the case for business debts: the longer the economic hiatus lasts, the more their problems will evolve from simple cash requirements to lasting balance sheet challenges and losses to be covered through capital increases. In financial terms, several businesses will go from facing liquidity constraints to solvency constraints. And the current cash flow problems will become stock problems. Relatively speaking, the economic agents generally least affected by this crisis are households, which experience high levels of “forced saving” during the period. Of course, this does not mean that, on a micro-economic level, some low-income households and financially vulnerable people are not already feeling the effects of lost income; and these households, which struggle to make ends meet, have no precautionary savings. *** This leads us to consider the lessons that history can teach us about recovering from crises, starting with the post-war years. This has become a particular focus of economic research today, even though, fortunately, our situation is less  Page 6 of 8 dramatic: the three "classic" themes – which give rise to so many questions – are the return to growth, debt treatment, and the proper use of monetary policy. 1/ How to support growth?