I find little in your rant that I can't sympathize with. I am a former small business owner/operator, so I know the dilemma you face and also value immensely, your intuitive understanding of how the real economy works. However, please understand that we are most definitely in a deflationary cycle at this point in time. As John Rubino said back in 2007:
Doug Noland has for years been pointing out that one of the drivers of the credit bubble has been the ever-broadening definition of money. As the global economy expanded without a hic-up, more and more instruments came to be used as a store of value or medium of exchange or even a standard against which to value other things—in other words, as money. Thus mortgage-backed bonds and even more exotic things came to be seen as nearly risk-free and infinitely liquid. In Noland's terms, credit gained "moneyness," which sent the effective global money supply through the roof. This in turn allowed the U.S. and its trading partners to keep adding jobs and appearing to grow, despite debt levels that were rising into the stratosphere. For a while there, borrowing actually made the world richer, because both the cash received and the debt created functioned as money.
So, as one who has been following the charts, you know that credit has been contracting and needs to contract much more as we go along. Therefore, the money supply is also contracting along with it. While some prices go up and others go down (largely relating to the value of the USD, imo), asset prices are definitely going down. The office building/corporate condo/warehouse you work out of, the home you live in, etc. is worth less now than a year or two ago. And the values have much further to fall, once the extraordinary interventions of the "O" administration finally cease. In short, we are in a period of "monetary" contraction, i. e. deflation.
I'm trying to track as best I can, but we need a hell of a lot more eyeballs on this.
It doesn't matter at the moment what we really want, this is what we're gonna get, at least from the House, so the ability to stop a last minute gutting is what the focus needs to be on.
It seems they are doing a host of these corporate style of amendments by voice vote, then demanding a roll call and deferring/delaying the actual vote as a result.
The problem is of course, that not only is economics bankrupt, but it has always been nothing more than politics in disguise.
That is why I have long maintained that we are in a severe political crisis, not just an economic one. I wholeheartedly agree with you that the severity and depth of damage to the society at large is far beyond "fixing" at this point. In effect, I think we are fighting the "forces of Mordor", to borrow a phrase from Tolkein.
I am truly a pacificist at heart, but I can't see any way of disrupting the status quo short of violent revolution. And I don't anticipate that happening anytime soon, given the general population's ignorance of what is happening to them.
I can think of only 3 "industries" that America is a leader.
1. Prison systems
2. Weapons of war
3. Financial innovation
The Financial industry is driving the lowest 95% of the population into the underclass of America. Which, in turn, either forces them to support the War agenda, or populate the prison systems. We are a country of "Keynsian Militarism", IMO. It's the only real stimulus we have going for us.
But all of it begs the question, what about resource depletion and peak oil? To have a better appreciation of our misguided policies, I would recommend John Michael Greer's latest essay. Reality will bite hard!
but reinstating it would put a wall between investment banking and consumer/commercial banking. This is a very much needed reform. Removing that firewall is how the system became so interlocked like a pack of dominoes falling down.
But that's just one rallying cry on reforms, one point out of many things that are desired by those who have a good "big picture" view on what's going on.
So, when you see "reinstate Glass-Stegall" don't think it's just that one piece of legislation, it's a huge set of reforms behind it in addition.
...I once thought that would be a quick help to fixing this godawful mess, but things have gone too far over the cliff.
The system is too rotten, situations far too gamed.
John Plender, in a past Financial Times column, mentioned that the drivel he learned in college business and econ courses regarding balance sheet efficiency and private equity was just so much "claptrap."
Yet, we've seen over the past thirty years that corporations and foundations endowed specific econ and business chairs at a number of universities, and those specific academics taught said "claptrap." And pushed for securitization and credit derivatives adoption, and SIV, SPV, SPE, SPC, SPRe adoption.
I see a definite pattern here: Martin Feldstein, of Harvard (in regard to that other post on AIG) was on the BoD of AIG Financial Products when they did the largest insurance swindle in human history. And he was on the BoD of HCA when the settled in the largest fraud settlement at that time in American history (re: Medicare and Medicaid billing fraud). And he was on the BoD of Eli Lilly, when their performance got them the largest criminal fine in US history.
Just one small tick on an ongoing pattern of academics gone wild!
I gave several examples that absolutely show some government stats are pure bunk. Not to say they all are but the ones used to 'feed' the populace sure are.
Is unemployment here lower in RI in fact despite the employment office now admitting being so overwhelmed they are closing down several days a month now just to catch up? Or is that an example of a faked stat that doesn't show the real world?
Is there deflation when things that people need to buy are going up fast while things they own are worth less? Thats how I figure they are showing deflation using housing the same housing they allowed the banks an out on killing mark to market is being used with different numbers to show inflation being non existent. I may be wrong on that but I bet there is something to it. Inflation stats have been rigged since we went off the gold standard to hold down cola costs on union contracts. Its not more expensive if you can buy it at walmart cheaper made by a chinese prison labor - as if killing the US labor market has become a good thing. A cars price doesn't go up by $10-15k if they change the model name even though the old model no longer exists to purchase -thats always been a favorite of mine.
Are healthcare and energy costs rising fast but not counted unless they go down? Maybe those rate increases I know will get approved are a hallucination?
I swear I wish they didn't bail the wealthy bank shareholders out and for awhile we returned to a barter economy where people who have actual skills would be worth more than people who make charts.
Society is so screwed up people who actually do things that people need are paid the least while those that do next to nothing but look good doing it are paid the most.
Banking at one time was a means to an end but has become disproportionately important. The middlemen are paid the most for lending? IMO the whole thing is a scheme. How can the worlds central banks inflate the money supplies worldwide by 15% year after year and yet we show no or little inflation? Where is all the paper money going?
If we can turn $1.00 into $1.10 by laying off 1,500 people it is justified because that ten cents is for shareholders who get bailed out by taxpayers (who used to have jobs) when we make bad decisions. They never lose do they? Thats a stat there is no chart for.
Sorry for the rant it certainly isn't aimed at anyone here this is a great blog and one that I look forward to reading.
I'm just one frustrated soul at this point as the bailed out banks with a ton of cash drawing interest on deposit at the Fed are killing whats left of my small business. I suppose if I could have declared myself a bank had access to zero percent interest loans and been able to make loans 40 times the size of my no longer valued realistically assets or just turn around and deposit them for interest with the people who loaned me the money for zero interest plus guarantee all my bad debt I'd be rolling in it also.
He (Obama) has imo sold us out on the financial reform which would be all thats necessary to reinvigorate this nation. They are literally sucking the life from us. I knew there was a problem when Summers was in and Stiglitz and Krugman were locked out.
Still an Obama supporter since the alternatives are worse , no longer a cheer leader but a realist.
The real issue here is the charts clearly show, with the correct analysis.....that the middle class cannot eat them.
So, beyond someone posting out on the Internets some absurd insult, smear post, the real issue is the incorrect analysis and ignoring many of the very serious statistics, "charts" indicators which show the U.S. middle class, i.e. most of America is in a serious world of hurt and it's not really improving much. Jobs being the most critical to most of America.
But please don't believe that somehow we ignore economic theory, EIs, charts, stats or somehow believe all of this is pure bunk. I sure do not and that's one of the huge points of EP, is to highlight these very gov. stats, which are not pure bunk to show that the U.S. middle class and the national economic interests are in big trouble.
I also posted the current outstanding TARP funds AIG has in the COP report. I didn't pull out the autos from the report but I'm sure it's in there if you have a mind.
The easiest way to explain things the way I see them is that all the good news is the result of interest rates being kept at zero percent and the banks being allowed to kill mark to market. This has to end sooner or later because commodities will rise and the dollar will fall creating an untenable position as the money supply is inflated. Housing starts and car sales numbers inflated from unsustainable tax breaks and credits. So when the Fed increases interest rates to stop oil and everything else from going through the roof the stock market and everything else will crash again.
The bad news is in hard data, unemployment, bankruptcies, lay offs, the spread between interest rates seen by consumers versus what the banks are paying. My state (RI) just showed a decrease in unemployment last month but today announced they are closing unemployment offices several days a month from now on because they are way way behind in processing claims and they have hired twice this year to try and keep up. Oil has more than doubled this year, my property taxes have gone up 5%, BlueCross here is asking for a 20% rate increase, National Grid is asking for a 33% increase in distribution rates which will raise prices overall by 11% and prices at the grocery store look like they have gone down because the packages are smaller. But hey we are experiencing deflation right?
All government statistics are faked. I read that the worlds Central banks have inflated the money supply some 15% a year for the last twenty years. Thats not inflation? All the growth is on paper or in zeros and ones not in anything real. Its a faux economy based on a house of cards.
I'm not an economist so I can't offer any charts but in the real world somethings not right. People can't eat charts.
According to Reuters and Congress Matters the house will continue to debate H.R. 4173 with a possible vote on Friday. Check this out from Reuters:
An army of lobbyists from banks and Wall Street have worked for months to block, water down and delay the bill, which would threaten the profits of many financial services firms.
now BruceMF is claiming we're not "logical". Pure crap. I went through the mathematics of a VAT and cited so many sources and he literally would deny mathematical equations, plus insults because I quoted the mathematics. An equation is an equation to explain how it works as a trade tool. so, i.e. arguing over mathematics to have something so black and white argued against is where I quit for this site is based on facts, not useless argument. He picked up his toys and railroad obsession and went home in a pout over it. Since an obsession on rail over and over, isn't exactly macro econ, that seemed like a damn good idea of him.
We just had a major report from the China commission (see China, the ultimate protectionist, describing how China manipulates at the border adjustments on their VAT for unfair trade advantage, and this is why it's a major initiative as described from multiple economists to Nancy Pelosi.
This is quite the useless crying beer fest, claiming we don't use graphs or even know or have cited 70% of the economy is consumer driven, clearly not reading the site, just posting slander and libel at this point.
Boy, sad, sad state of affairs, they don't even realize we're not the site/people who blasted Bonddad in the 1st, 2nd.....100th place.
But back to the point, EP is based on well cited, well reasoned fact with a hell of a lot of middle class, layperson's Populist rage sprinkled, usually thrown at multinational corporations and corporate lobbyists running our country into the ground.
We're not doing this to get into some absurd pie fight.
Now bear in mind the insurance company lobbyists just won to get their own personal pig fest health care bill....
Here is the request: Don't focus on people so much, read the legislation and look for the loopholes. Sometimes they are brazen, often they are not as Baseline Scenario, doing their homework found a major one.
Read them this evening because odds are they will ramrod the lobbyists demands through in the dead of night, in some strange hold "manager's amendment", there are all sorts of tricks to create yet another corporate lobbyist's legislative wet dream.
there are certain sponsors which cue us in to know it's crap, so we can just say "defeat" any of those amendments, such as Melissa Bean. But others you have to read them.
Barney Frank's former staffer, Micheal Paese, left his employ a little while back to take up the Goldman Sachs' lobbyist position vacated by Mark Patterson (who left to become Timothy Geithner's chief of staff at Treasury).
It has been reported several places that he was the one who handed Frank Goldman Sachs' proposed changes which became Franks' amendments.
Sounds like business as usual (I'll try to persue those new amendments, but my eyes are really shot from reading all those voluminous drafts on the so-called "healthcare reform" --- never could find that mythical "public option".)
Most excellent blog, midtowng, and most excellent comments by Tony.
While I've never cared for Bonddad (with the exception of those debt remarks), considering him one of those individuals who comments on one variable while either ignoring or failing to comprehend the other nine hundred and ninety-nine variables.
But how anyone can be other than "doom-and-gloom" today, given the fantasy finance environment we exist in, where debt-financed billionaires destroy entire economies, and other execrable types promote "me-first" again and again, boggles my little mind.
The debt is beyond comprension, and "Barry the Bankster" (formerly known as President Obama) just layers on more debt-driven pro-bankster, anti-real economy policies.
I seriously believe anyone who actively comprehends the macro picture of the present economic state of North America realizes there is no economy, simply a 65% to 70% financial engineering bubble --- and how that doesn't promote doom-and-gloom thinking is beyond me.
Of the obvious corporate Congressional puppets out there, her strings show in bright colors.
But if this is true, there is a delay, it can give us some time to read through the latest amendments, legislation and post.
We need a video feed to watch this real time. Problem is usually an unmarked, not public amendment is put in by "voice vote" at the last minute so no one, including congressional staffers or Reps. know what's in it and it...kills the bill.
Uprate this post would ya? We've been writing on derivatives and reforms for months and if we don't go read the legislation now we've really dropped our Populist ball here.
I find little in your rant that I can't sympathize with. I am a former small business owner/operator, so I know the dilemma you face and also value immensely, your intuitive understanding of how the real economy works. However, please understand that we are most definitely in a deflationary cycle at this point in time. As John Rubino said back in 2007:
So, as one who has been following the charts, you know that credit has been contracting and needs to contract much more as we go along. Therefore, the money supply is also contracting along with it. While some prices go up and others go down (largely relating to the value of the USD, imo), asset prices are definitely going down. The office building/corporate condo/warehouse you work out of, the home you live in, etc. is worth less now than a year or two ago. And the values have much further to fall, once the extraordinary interventions of the "O" administration finally cease. In short, we are in a period of "monetary" contraction, i. e. deflation.
I'm trying to track as best I can, but we need a hell of a lot more eyeballs on this.
It doesn't matter at the moment what we really want, this is what we're gonna get, at least from the House, so the ability to stop a last minute gutting is what the focus needs to be on.
It seems they are doing a host of these corporate style of amendments by voice vote, then demanding a roll call and deferring/delaying the actual vote as a result.
Amendment #19 - Cramdown amendment [pdf file]
RebelCapitalist.com - Financial Information for the Rest of Us.
The renowned Hazel Henderson has long maintained that:
The problem is of course, that not only is economics bankrupt, but it has always been nothing more than politics in disguise.
That is why I have long maintained that we are in a severe political crisis, not just an economic one. I wholeheartedly agree with you that the severity and depth of damage to the society at large is far beyond "fixing" at this point. In effect, I think we are fighting the "forces of Mordor", to borrow a phrase from Tolkein.
I am truly a pacificist at heart, but I can't see any way of disrupting the status quo short of violent revolution. And I don't anticipate that happening anytime soon, given the general population's ignorance of what is happening to them.
I can think of only 3 "industries" that America is a leader.
1. Prison systems
2. Weapons of war
3. Financial innovation
The Financial industry is driving the lowest 95% of the population into the underclass of America. Which, in turn, either forces them to support the War agenda, or populate the prison systems. We are a country of "Keynsian Militarism", IMO. It's the only real stimulus we have going for us.
But all of it begs the question, what about resource depletion and peak oil? To have a better appreciation of our misguided policies, I would recommend John Michael Greer's latest essay. Reality will bite hard!
but reinstating it would put a wall between investment banking and consumer/commercial banking. This is a very much needed reform. Removing that firewall is how the system became so interlocked like a pack of dominoes falling down.
But that's just one rallying cry on reforms, one point out of many things that are desired by those who have a good "big picture" view on what's going on.
So, when you see "reinstate Glass-Stegall" don't think it's just that one piece of legislation, it's a huge set of reforms behind it in addition.
...I once thought that would be a quick help to fixing this godawful mess, but things have gone too far over the cliff.
The system is too rotten, situations far too gamed.
John Plender, in a past Financial Times column, mentioned that the drivel he learned in college business and econ courses regarding balance sheet efficiency and private equity was just so much "claptrap."
Yet, we've seen over the past thirty years that corporations and foundations endowed specific econ and business chairs at a number of universities, and those specific academics taught said "claptrap." And pushed for securitization and credit derivatives adoption, and SIV, SPV, SPE, SPC, SPRe adoption.
I see a definite pattern here: Martin Feldstein, of Harvard (in regard to that other post on AIG) was on the BoD of AIG Financial Products when they did the largest insurance swindle in human history. And he was on the BoD of HCA when the settled in the largest fraud settlement at that time in American history (re: Medicare and Medicaid billing fraud). And he was on the BoD of Eli Lilly, when their performance got them the largest criminal fine in US history.
Just one small tick on an ongoing pattern of academics gone wild!
I gave several examples that absolutely show some government stats are pure bunk. Not to say they all are but the ones used to 'feed' the populace sure are.
Is unemployment here lower in RI in fact despite the employment office now admitting being so overwhelmed they are closing down several days a month now just to catch up? Or is that an example of a faked stat that doesn't show the real world?
Is there deflation when things that people need to buy are going up fast while things they own are worth less? Thats how I figure they are showing deflation using housing the same housing they allowed the banks an out on killing mark to market is being used with different numbers to show inflation being non existent. I may be wrong on that but I bet there is something to it. Inflation stats have been rigged since we went off the gold standard to hold down cola costs on union contracts. Its not more expensive if you can buy it at walmart cheaper made by a chinese prison labor - as if killing the US labor market has become a good thing. A cars price doesn't go up by $10-15k if they change the model name even though the old model no longer exists to purchase -thats always been a favorite of mine.
Are healthcare and energy costs rising fast but not counted unless they go down? Maybe those rate increases I know will get approved are a hallucination?
I swear I wish they didn't bail the wealthy bank shareholders out and for awhile we returned to a barter economy where people who have actual skills would be worth more than people who make charts.
Society is so screwed up people who actually do things that people need are paid the least while those that do next to nothing but look good doing it are paid the most.
Banking at one time was a means to an end but has become disproportionately important. The middlemen are paid the most for lending? IMO the whole thing is a scheme. How can the worlds central banks inflate the money supplies worldwide by 15% year after year and yet we show no or little inflation? Where is all the paper money going?
If we can turn $1.00 into $1.10 by laying off 1,500 people it is justified because that ten cents is for shareholders who get bailed out by taxpayers (who used to have jobs) when we make bad decisions. They never lose do they? Thats a stat there is no chart for.
Sorry for the rant it certainly isn't aimed at anyone here this is a great blog and one that I look forward to reading.
I'm just one frustrated soul at this point as the bailed out banks with a ton of cash drawing interest on deposit at the Fed are killing whats left of my small business. I suppose if I could have declared myself a bank had access to zero percent interest loans and been able to make loans 40 times the size of my no longer valued realistically assets or just turn around and deposit them for interest with the people who loaned me the money for zero interest plus guarantee all my bad debt I'd be rolling in it also.
He (Obama) has imo sold us out on the financial reform which would be all thats necessary to reinvigorate this nation. They are literally sucking the life from us. I knew there was a problem when Summers was in and Stiglitz and Krugman were locked out.
Still an Obama supporter since the alternatives are worse , no longer a cheer leader but a realist.
Just the standard links:
First link, second link, and third link.
The pattern is similar as to how they set up MarkIt Group, Swaps Wire (renamed Markit Wire), ICE, and ICE US Trust.
The new variation is getting the taxpayer to finance their latest exchange (those soon-to-be insurance exchanges).
and we do charts here all of the time.
The real issue here is the charts clearly show, with the correct analysis.....that the middle class cannot eat them.
So, beyond someone posting out on the Internets some absurd insult, smear post, the real issue is the incorrect analysis and ignoring many of the very serious statistics, "charts" indicators which show the U.S. middle class, i.e. most of America is in a serious world of hurt and it's not really improving much. Jobs being the most critical to most of America.
But please don't believe that somehow we ignore economic theory, EIs, charts, stats or somehow believe all of this is pure bunk. I sure do not and that's one of the huge points of EP, is to highlight these very gov. stats, which are not pure bunk to show that the U.S. middle class and the national economic interests are in big trouble.
beyond GS, the Societe Generale got the most, $4.1 billion.
GS, $2.5 billion.
See counterparties via AIG: The Real Screw Job.
I also posted the current outstanding TARP funds AIG has in the COP report. I didn't pull out the autos from the report but I'm sure it's in there if you have a mind.
The easiest way to explain things the way I see them is that all the good news is the result of interest rates being kept at zero percent and the banks being allowed to kill mark to market. This has to end sooner or later because commodities will rise and the dollar will fall creating an untenable position as the money supply is inflated. Housing starts and car sales numbers inflated from unsustainable tax breaks and credits. So when the Fed increases interest rates to stop oil and everything else from going through the roof the stock market and everything else will crash again.
The bad news is in hard data, unemployment, bankruptcies, lay offs, the spread between interest rates seen by consumers versus what the banks are paying. My state (RI) just showed a decrease in unemployment last month but today announced they are closing unemployment offices several days a month from now on because they are way way behind in processing claims and they have hired twice this year to try and keep up. Oil has more than doubled this year, my property taxes have gone up 5%, BlueCross here is asking for a 20% rate increase, National Grid is asking for a 33% increase in distribution rates which will raise prices overall by 11% and prices at the grocery store look like they have gone down because the packages are smaller. But hey we are experiencing deflation right?
All government statistics are faked. I read that the worlds Central banks have inflated the money supply some 15% a year for the last twenty years. Thats not inflation? All the growth is on paper or in zeros and ones not in anything real. Its a faux economy based on a house of cards.
I'm not an economist so I can't offer any charts but in the real world somethings not right. People can't eat charts.
According to Reuters and Congress Matters the house will continue to debate H.R. 4173 with a possible vote on Friday. Check this out from Reuters:
RebelCapitalist.com - Financial Information for the Rest of Us.
now BruceMF is claiming we're not "logical". Pure crap. I went through the mathematics of a VAT and cited so many sources and he literally would deny mathematical equations, plus insults because I quoted the mathematics. An equation is an equation to explain how it works as a trade tool. so, i.e. arguing over mathematics to have something so black and white argued against is where I quit for this site is based on facts, not useless argument. He picked up his toys and railroad obsession and went home in a pout over it. Since an obsession on rail over and over, isn't exactly macro econ, that seemed like a damn good idea of him.
We just had a major report from the China commission (see China, the ultimate protectionist, describing how China manipulates at the border adjustments on their VAT for unfair trade advantage, and this is why it's a major initiative as described from multiple economists to Nancy Pelosi.
This is quite the useless crying beer fest, claiming we don't use graphs or even know or have cited 70% of the economy is consumer driven, clearly not reading the site, just posting slander and libel at this point.
Boy, sad, sad state of affairs, they don't even realize we're not the site/people who blasted Bonddad in the 1st, 2nd.....100th place.
But back to the point, EP is based on well cited, well reasoned fact with a hell of a lot of middle class, layperson's Populist rage sprinkled, usually thrown at multinational corporations and corporate lobbyists running our country into the ground.
We're not doing this to get into some absurd pie fight.
Gotta link?
I suspect the part on the swap execution facility is to steer them towards MarkitWire and the newly launeched markitSERV.
New York Times reporting delay, but doesn't state how long.
Now bear in mind the insurance company lobbyists just won to get their own personal pig fest health care bill....
Here is the request: Don't focus on people so much, read the legislation and look for the loopholes. Sometimes they are brazen, often they are not as Baseline Scenario, doing their homework found a major one.
Read them this evening because odds are they will ramrod the lobbyists demands through in the dead of night, in some strange hold "manager's amendment", there are all sorts of tricks to create yet another corporate lobbyist's legislative wet dream.
there are certain sponsors which cue us in to know it's crap, so we can just say "defeat" any of those amendments, such as Melissa Bean. But others you have to read them.
Barney Frank's former staffer, Micheal Paese, left his employ a little while back to take up the Goldman Sachs' lobbyist position vacated by Mark Patterson (who left to become Timothy Geithner's chief of staff at Treasury).
It has been reported several places that he was the one who handed Frank Goldman Sachs' proposed changes which became Franks' amendments.
Sounds like business as usual (I'll try to persue those new amendments, but my eyes are really shot from reading all those voluminous drafts on the so-called "healthcare reform" --- never could find that mythical "public option".)
Most excellent blog, midtowng, and most excellent comments by Tony.
While I've never cared for Bonddad (with the exception of those debt remarks), considering him one of those individuals who comments on one variable while either ignoring or failing to comprehend the other nine hundred and ninety-nine variables.
But how anyone can be other than "doom-and-gloom" today, given the fantasy finance environment we exist in, where debt-financed billionaires destroy entire economies, and other execrable types promote "me-first" again and again, boggles my little mind.
The debt is beyond comprension, and "Barry the Bankster" (formerly known as President Obama) just layers on more debt-driven pro-bankster, anti-real economy policies.
I seriously believe anyone who actively comprehends the macro picture of the present economic state of North America realizes there is no economy, simply a 65% to 70% financial engineering bubble --- and how that doesn't promote doom-and-gloom thinking is beyond me.
FYI: here is the information on the New Democrats Coalition - who they are.
RebelCapitalist.com - Financial Information for the Rest of Us.
Of the obvious corporate Congressional puppets out there, her strings show in bright colors.
But if this is true, there is a delay, it can give us some time to read through the latest amendments, legislation and post.
We need a video feed to watch this real time. Problem is usually an unmarked, not public amendment is put in by "voice vote" at the last minute so no one, including congressional staffers or Reps. know what's in it and it...kills the bill.
Uprate this post would ya? We've been writing on derivatives and reforms for months and if we don't go read the legislation now we've really dropped our Populist ball here.
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