only toward the end of the legislative exercise that resulted in the dodd - frank wall street reform and consumer protection act ( dodd - frank act ) that the process took a more partisan turn. indeed, the dodd - frank act contains measures that commanded fairly wide consensus, such as the need for higher capital requirements for the largest banks. furthermore, the origins of some features of the legislation rested as much or more with republican than democratic legislators, such as the section 165 requirement for resolution plans that will make systemically important firms resolvable in bankruptcy without requiring taxpayer support or resulting in major disorder in the financial system. the nature and impact of the new regulatory regime now let us fast forward to the present. less than a decade after being the epicenter of a global financial crisis, today the united states has the strongest and most diverse financial system of any major economy in the world. credit default swap ( cds ) spreads and other market indicators suggest that investors have remained confident in the solvency of large u. s. banks through several recent episodes of global financial volatility. 7 for example, during the market strains at the beginning of this year, the cds spreads of u. s. banks increased only 25 to 50 basis points, and even so only briefly, while large banks in some other parts of the world saw their cds spreads increase substantially more and for a longer period. the relative strength of, and some have suggested that market - based measures of bank risk indicate that banks are not safer than before the crisis. for example, cds spreads are well above their levels in early 2006. but this as likely suggests that investors were too sanguine in 2006 as that they believe there has been no change in bank safety since then. and, as reflected in the changes made by credit ratings agencies in their assessment of implied support for banks from the government, markets may rightly perceive that the government is less likely now to bail out a bank that gets in trouble. moreover, equity prices may be down because some combination of economic conditions and regulation make profits likely to be lower than was expected and experienced in the unsustainable period leading up to the crisis. resulting market confidence in, u. s. banks has allowed them to expand their lending, the growth of which has returned during the last couple of years to a pace similar to that in the pre - crisis, pre - bubble years. 8 what accounts for this dramatic change in the position of the u. s. financial system? first, the crisis

. but the process of searching for common ground is itself an important aspect of how the committee operates. diversity of views drives the committee to adopt an eclectic approach and thus serves to limit the risk that a single viewpoint or analytical framework might become unduly dominant. the changes to the projections process announced today preserve the important role played by this diversity of perspectives. as i have noted, committee participants will continue to produce individual projections that reflect their judgments about the state of the economy and their approaches to policy. from the internal perspective, i expect the more frequent sharing of projections and the additional information they contain will improve our discussions and policy debates. from the external perspective, the public will gain additional and more frequent information about both the central tendencies and diversity of participants'views. in particular, the additional narrative material that will accompany the numerical projections will illuminate both the consensus of opinion and the differences in judgments that may emerge. conclusion the communications strategy of the federal reserve is a work in progress. i believe that the changes announced by the fomc today are an important advance : the changes will provide a more - timely insight into the committee's outlook, will help households and businesses better understand and anticipate how our policy decisions respond to incoming information, and will enhance our accountability for the decisions we make. but the changes are also evolutionary, in that they build on long - established practices ; in that respect, they represent just one more step on the road toward greater transparency at the federal reserve. the committee will continue to look for ways to improve the accountability and public understanding of u. s. monetary policy making.