- called “ amazon effect, ” as digital technology makes it easier for consumers and businesses to compare prices. while common sense tells you that this is happening, it has not been easy to measure this effect. so, this adds a layer of uncertainty to our inflation outlook. more fundamental, however, is the way digital technology is changing total supply and demand in the economy. for example, consider a company that is planning to expand. traditionally, you would expect this company to make investments such as the construction of new buildings, the purchase of machinery and equipment, or the hiring of more staff. but today, this investment might take on whole new forms. a company that needs more computing power might decide to buy cloud - computing services rather than purchase new physical equipment. or, the investment might be concentrated in intellectual property or in retraining workers. there may be a lot of investment, but it may not show up in the economic statistics the same way it has in the past. in short, new digital technologies are making it harder to accurately measure the components of supply and demand. our ability to measure the impact of digital technology is constantly playing catch - up with the technology itself. this is not just true for investment. it is also becoming more complicated to measure how much households spend and import. digital technology makes it easier than ever to make purchases online, from anywhere in the world. when i was a teenager, buying albums for my record collection, it was easy to determine the cost of the purchases and say whether they were imports. it is much more complicated today when people download digital music purchased from itunes or stream songs from spotify. the point is that the emergence of new technologies is another source of uncertainty at a time when the bank is trying to get a handle on many others. we are still assessing how new guidelines for mortgage lending are affecting the housing market. we believe the economy has become more sensitive to higher interest rates, given the accumulation of household debt, but we are not sure how much. and we cannot know to what extent the nafta negotiations and global trade policy uncertainty are slowing business investment decisions. in the face of such uncertainties, we cannot operate monetary policy mechanically. rather, policy becomes a matter of risk management. we must assess carefully the upside and downside risks to the outlook for inflation, and decide how best to manage and balance those risks. today, we continue to judge that higher interest rates will be warranted to achieve our inflation target. and we know

consider developing savings products that offer attractive deposit interest rates, in their own long - term interest, rather than concentrating on short - term gains by maintaining wide spreads between lending and deposit interest rates and, at the same time, charging exorbitantly for the services rendered. rest assured, this and other related matters are receiving the bank ’ s active attention. distinguished ladies and gentlemen, we await the next course of the meal to be served, and i do not want to frustrate your appetite further. this, therefore, concludes my submissions. please accept my best wishes for a pleasant and relaxing evening. i thank you for your attention.