This is a common political technique which is a variant of "floating a trial balloon": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trial_balloon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki

This is a common political technique which is a variant of "floating a trial balloon": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trial_balloon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trial_balloon You put an idea out there in a way that can later be very cheaply walked back (because it wasn't an "official" idea), and gauge the reaction by the various interesting people to see how you want to proceed going forward. Bear in mind the various "interesting people" may not include "the general public", despite this being in a general public newsfeed. Or, as I expect is probably this case, they may be interested in "the general public's" reaction but it may be a secondary goal vs. simply using the news media to gauge the response from the rest of the financial industry insiders. This directory is likely to get various calls from various important people making various points pro or con now. Sometime in the next couple of weeks there will probably be some other release from this organization couched in diplo-speak. That is, if they say something like "decided not to pursue this at this time" it's quite possibly because their inbox was a sea of flame from the important people, whereas "are continuing to consider the matter" means they may have gotten conflicting, neutral, or tepid responses, and "developing a plan to pursue this matter going forward" means they may have gotten uniformly positive responses behind the scenes and a strong order from the Powers that Be to go ahead and be the ones who pursue this and take the heat for doing it. But in diplo-speak you almost never make strong commitments, you just barely deviate from "neutral" and expect people in the know to pick up what you're laying down.