We will be providing in our minutes and in our survey of economic projections, which will be released in three weeks, will be providing some additional qualitative information about people's -- participants' views of the balance sheet going forward.
The reason that I can't provide all that information now is basically that we received, you know, a whole range of qualitative comments and we had further discussion during the meeting yesterday and today. And so, you know, we need -- we need a little time to -- to summarize that and to have it approved. You know, the minutes, of course, in the MPC are approved by the entire committee. And so in that respect, it will be a definitive statement about what we currently know about -- about the balance sheet.
I can say a few things. I know, you know, one is that it certainly remains -- expanding the balance sheet certainly remains an option, one that we would consider very seriously if -- in particular if progress towards full employment was -- continued or became more inadequate, or if inflation remained exceptionally low.
So we'll continue to look at that. As we say in our statement, we're prepared to take additional measures in general, and that would be certainly one class of measures we would want to consider.
I can make one additional point, which maybe wasn't obvious, which is that, in June, we provided some principles relating the -- the sales of assets, ultimate sales of assets, to the path of interest rates.
And those remain -- those principles remain in force. And so one implication of our extension of our expected point of takeoff to late 2014 is to imply that the initial sales from our balance sheet, which, again, are far down the road, but that begins, that will be later than previously thought. That will be presumably in 2015.
So we do expect to hold our balance sheet at a high level for a longer period.
Additional sales, again -- I'm sorry -- additional purchases remains a topic that we are still debating, and it will depend both on our assessment of the efficacy and risks of that particular tool but also of how the economy's evolving.