Dudley, William

I don’t think [negative interest rates are] a question that’s on the table right now because I think the economy is growing above trend and the issue is really a question of when are we likely to raise short term interest rates, not whether we are going to lower short term interest rates below zero. Now the one thing that we have seen over the last year or so is other countries have moved to negative short term interest rates and I would say that on balance the unintended consequences of moving to those negative short term interest rates is it’s probably been less than what people had feared, but they’re doing it in a totally different institutional set up than we have in the United States and so it’s not obvious that just because it’s working relatively okay there that you would necessarily want to import it here.

We have a very different system in terms of how our money markets work and I think you’d have to ask yourself the question is the benefit of going to negative interest rates -- obviously in a very different environment than we are in today -- is that does that outweigh the potential cost in terms of unintended consequences. Obviously, as we went through the financial crisis that was an option and we decided not to pursue that option because of fears that the benefits were not sufficient to outweigh the potential costs.