. i ’ d like you to take a look at what the new york state department of school construction authorities are doing. they worked out a system that allows us to bid on major contracts. if you took a look at that, because we need some ingenious new ways of financing. we don ’ t have a black bank per se. there were 94 black banks across this country, now there ’ s only 23. some of the banks that ’ s going out of business, i don ’ t think is kosher, but something has to be done to allow us to participate in the marketplace. on your material, you have listed some organizations within the minority community that you deal with. i ’ d like to recommend some additional organizations. for example, the ones that are primarily interested in the flow of contracts and development. i ’ m not in a prime area of what ’ s going on today. in addition, for example, we have here at york college one of the best small business development sectors. they ’ re number one in the state a couple of times. president dudley : i agree with your concern. is there a question? audience member : yes, what can you do to set up financial resources for minority and women - owned businesses to become involved in the economy? whether that ’ s establishing a bank – we ’ ve asked the controller to control this, let him set up a funding source for us using pension funds, and there ’ s a way to do that, if you look at it. but we need you to be an advocate for us in that area, but help us come up with an ingenious idea for how we can develop access to capital. president dudley : well, i certainly agree with the importance of access to capital, and i certainly agree with you in the importance of having minority work enterprises have the ability to participate in economic development and bidding on contracts. we don ’ t have the legal authority to do anything direct, but we have a lot of convening authority. one thing that we do do is we do continuing workshops, conferences, symposiums. we ’ ve had a number of things with small businesses on how small businesses can get access to credit, how small businesses can figure out how to export their goods and services. and so this is something that for you to talk to our regional development people on how we could be helpful. because we definitely think this is an important issue, and we definitely want to be helpful and use the

in the past. inflation may, however, be temporarily influenced by events that are not attributable to monetary policy. we are currently experiencing such an event in the form of higher oil prices. price increases for oil products have contributed significantly to the rise in annual inflation measured by the national consumer price index ( cpi ) from 0. 5 % in april to 0. 9 % in may. the increase in the oil price is also the main reason why our inflation forecast exceeds the march forecast until the first quarter of 2005 despite the higher interest rate level. such a rise in prices cannot and may not be corrected with monetary policy measures as long as no wage - price spiral is set in motion. first, we do not know whether this price rise is a permanent or merely a temporary phenomenon. second, the change in oil prices impacts directly on the price level, whereas monetary policy changes act only indirectly and after a considerable time lag. third, higher oil prices constitute a cost shock that cannot be countered by means of monetary policy. experience shows that a monetary policy which attempts to counteract the effects of a one - off increase in oil prices on the price level can cause considerable damage to the national economy. furthermore, it must be noted that the present price increase is modest in a historical comparison. for example, during the second oil price shock at the end of the 1970s, oil cost approximately twice as much as today calculated at current prices. our interest rate decision of today is thus not aimed at combating the effects of the oil price rise on inflation. the increase in oil prices nevertheless casts a shadow over the prospects for the economy, which are optimistic overall. we are not of the opinion, however, that the upswing is threatened by this. model calculations have shown that higher oil prices would slow growth in switzerland only moderately. it must also be mentioned that, given the exchange rate developments, the increase in the oil price was less marked in switzerland than in the us and in the euro area. despite higher oil prices, inflation in our country has remained within the range that we equate with price stability. economic prospects for a period of one to two years, the development of inflation depends decisively on the economic outlook. our economy has already been on a growth track for a year now. real gross domestic product in the third and fourth quarters of 2003 grew at an annualised rate of more than 2 % compared with the previous quarter. in the first quarter of 2004 the trend continued at a