Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman and Members of the Committee, for the opportunity to appear before you today. It is a great honor to have been nominated by President Bush to be the United States Executive Director for the International Monetary Fund, and I am grateful to have the privilege of your considering my nomination.

It is important to the United States that the IMF is strong and successful in its mission. As recent events have reminded us, international political stability and economic growth and financial stability are closely connected.

The IMF’s charter includes in its statement of purposes three goals which I believe are particularly important in our current environment: to provide the institutional framework to promote international monetary cooperation; to foster international economic growth and exchange stability; and to give confidence to its members by making resources of the Fund temporarily available under adequate safeguards to correct imbalances without members resorting to measures destructive of national or international prosperity.

Secretary O’Neill and Under Secretary Taylor have defined what the United States considers to be the priorities and focus needed for the International Monetary Fund successfully to achieve its mission. First, the IMF should increase its efforts on financial crisis prevention; second, it should narrow its focus, to involvement in economic policies that lay the macroeconomic framework for growth; third, there is a need for the IMF to improve its tools and methods for assessing when a country’s debt situation becomes unsustainable; and lastly, the IMF should seek to strengthen the framework for dealing with the situation when a country’s level of debt is unsustainable.

This is an important and ambitious agenda. I look forward, if confirmed, to becoming an integral member of the U.S. policy team in developing and implementing these policies.

I hope to bring with my experience at Treasury, the Fed, and in the financial sector a level of energy, enthusiasm, and good judgment that will enable me to serve the United States well to further our interests in the International Monetary Fund.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I would be pleased to answer any questions.