Mr. Tom O'Connell:

Nobody can say "Well, it's going to be soft or hard". In fact, it's pretty common for asset price adjustments, particularly in stock markets, as you know ... whatever ... a currency thing ... for commodity markets to get abrupt drops. In fact, quite often you'll get an overshooting downwards. Now, housing market will be ... sort of ... you ... maybe you'll get a slower adjustment, if you like, but you probably can't ... you can never say ab initio... as I think it's more in hope than in confidence you'd talk about soft landings. But, if sentiment, sort of, decreases monotonically or gradually, you might get a ... a ... a gradual fall but you certainly couldn't rule out ... I mean, for example, the instances in Sweden, Finland, Japan, the savings and loans in the States, they were pretty precipitous falls, you know. So, I suppose the Central Bank had to come down on one side or the other ... was there going to be a ... could we say there was going to be a hard landing?Well, for starters you wouldn't know ex anteif it's going to be soft or hard but, in general, I suppose, all central banks would tend to, more in hope than in confidence, say "We'd hope for a soft landing rather than a hard landing".