few years has been the flexibility exhibited by our market - driven economy and its ability to generate substantial increases in productivity. going forward, these same characteristics, in concert with sound economic policies, should help to foster a return to vigorous growth of the us economy to the benefit of all our citizens. in fact, we will need some further acceleration of productivity just to offset the inevitable decline in net labor force, and associated overall economic, growth as the baby boomers retire.

that captures all significant processing events over the entire lifecycle of trades, delivers operational reliability, and maximizes the efficiencies obtainable from automation and electronic processing platforms. in addition to supporting more robust exposure measurement and capture, these enhancements should strengthen participants'ability to manage counterparty risk through loss mitigation techniques such as the use of netting and collateral agreements. we are encouraged by recent industry efforts to address counterparty credit risk, such as plans to extend central counterparty clearinghouse services to credit derivatives and other initiatives. credit cards credit card charge - offs have continued to rise over the past several quarters, although charge - offs remain well below their early 2002 peak. not surprisingly, some banks report that delinquency rates for unsecured consumer debt are generally higher in areas that have experienced significant home price depreciation and increased unemployment. in response to these trends, many issuers are tightening credit standards and reducing exposures in these higher risk markets. rising delinquencies and increased card usage that has been reported in recent months are likely to push charge - off levels higher in future quarters. therefore, we will continue to monitor credit card markets and other consumer lending sectors for potential weaknesses. the federal reserve has also taken steps toward improving consumer protection for credit card users. our first step was the board's 2007 proposal to substantially revise and improve credit card disclosures under the truth in lending act. in preparing this proposal, we conducted extensive consumer testing to determine the type and format of information that consumers find most useful in shopping for and choosing a credit card. this extensive consumer testing – and the thousands of public comments on our proposal – suggested that disclosures may not provide sufficient consumer protection with regard to certain practices. therefore, we recently proposed rules under the federal trade commission act to protect consumers from financial harm caused by those practices. if implemented, the proposed rules would require financial institutions to make changes to their business models and to alter some practices. the federal reserve developed this proposal jointly with the office of thrift supervision and the national credit union administration. we are continuing to use consumer testing as we work toward issuing final rules for credit cards by year - end. commercial lending commercial lending activity, aside from a few sectors such as leveraged lending, has not been markedly affected by the recent volatility in the financial markets, but may encounter more difficulty should slow economic growth persist. lenders and investors are demanding stricter underwriting standards and higher returns for commercial loans.