as to any other euro area country, and our decisions have followed exactly the same rules under this government as under the previous ones. the ecb is the central bank of greece, but we are also the central bank of 18 other countries and we cannot bend our rules to suit the occasion. the greek government can relieve funding constraints by pursuing policies which will open the way to disbursements by other member states under the programme and, ultimately, restore market access. let me add that the ecb ’ s monetary policy stance is currently very accommodative. greece also clearly benefits from this. bis central bankers ’ speeches

, to give firms that are already of systemic importance a sense of which mergers will face very close scrutiny. a third answer is that, once an acquisition is consummated, dodd - frank provides only narrow authority to order divestiture on financial stability grounds. though the board can recommend action by the fsoc, i have already noted that the test for such action is “ grave threat to financial stability, ” presumably a significantly higher standard than the “ risk to financial stability ” that can constitute an adverse effect for purposes of sections 3 and 4 of the bank holding company act. unlike section 7 of the clayton act, which permits the antitrust authorities either to restrain a merger beforehand or undo it thereafter, the federal reserve ’ s authority under the bank holding company act to disallow the merger on financial stability grounds appears to lapse after the merger is completed, but for the narrow authority vested in the fsoc. of course, one motivation for the passage of hart - scott - rodino in 1976 was the perceived reluctance of courts to order potentially disruptive divestitures once companies had completed the merger. in any case, the legal and practical impediments to such action counsel an additional measure of caution by the federal reserve in considering acquisitions by firms that can reasonably be expected to raise significant financial stability concerns. for all the attention paid to financial stability analysis in the last few years, it is still – relatively speaking – a fledgling enterprise. even if we hypothesize a viable working theory of financial stability that commands a rough consensus, translating that theory into administrable standards and processes is a task that will take years. 41 but while the absence there are eight u. s. banks on this list, as well as many foreign - based firms with significant u. s. operations. however, the buckets to which they will be assigned will not be finalized under more up - to - date data is available and analyzed next year. once final agreement has been reached by the basel committee, ordering the systemically important banks into categories with progressively increasing surcharges, the federal reserve board intends to propose matching provisions for covered u. s. banks under its section 165 authority. in conducting our annual reviews of the capital levels and planning processes of major u. s. bank holding companies, we have already instructed the eight firms on the basel committee list to include their estimated required surcharge in their plan for reaching their ultimate capital requirement. the basel committee has