Thank you.
Let me begin with the U.S., which is largely a good-news story. Certainly in the U.S. we saw very rapid efforts to liquefy the financial system, a very fast response by policy-makers, which meant that unlike in other countries, all the damage was done at the beginning and then the healing process began very rapidly.
Of course, we had a tremendous fallout in the U.S. housing sector. That was the biggest element that was hit hard. We're seeing very positive signs that it is going back to a more normal course. This is very important to Canada since we export materials that often go into that equation.
Importantly, the U.S. economy, fundamentally, is stronger than it appears as a headline, because we have a significant fiscal adjustment layered on top. The part of the U.S. economy that we export to is more the private part than the government part. That's one of the reasons why EDC's export forecast for the U.S. is stronger than you might have guessed, given how much growth we expect to see in the U.S.
In Europe there is a different story, obviously. It remains in a very difficult situation. We have there, if you like, institutional gaps that have made it difficult for them to do the same things that the rest of us tend to take for granted in policy action.
I would say that those institutional gaps persist, but I am encouraged that though they persist in practice, the intellectual leap has been made. The bridges have been built. People understand what is needed. So I have to believe that being constructive about what's going on in Europe is the right thing. We think it will gradually improve, but it will be a very prolonged story.