[inaudible] >> madam chair, steve becker in of mni. you said in your opening statement that the fed's policy of maintaining a large balance sheet by not starting to shrink that balance sheet by curtailing reinvestments and rollovers, that helps add to your monetary stance on top of the near-zero federal funds rate. but delaying rate hikes, logically, are you not also delaying -- reducing the balance sheet? a year ago the fomc said it would not start shrinking the balance sheet until it started raising the funds rate. so is it a concern that you are delaying normalization of the balance sheet? was that an issue that you and your colleagues discussed? thank you. >> we have been, and this was reported in the minutes of our july meeting, we have been discussing reinvestment policy. our normalization principles indicated that we would not begin to either reduce or eliminate reinvestments until after we have begun to raise the federal funds rate. our principals said that the -- our principles said that the exact timing of that would depend o