We’ve spent a lot of time, and posts, writing about the current economic malaise.  We’re in a severe recession where traditional monetary tools (lower interest  rates, pump cash into the economy etc) have run their course.  They have had some positive effect, but it appears doing even more easing won’t accomplish much.

So in an effort to spell out what can yet be done, here are some observations.

• Create jobs.  The private sector can’t create them right now because of several reasons, but most of the reasons can be summed up by the phrase “lack of demand.”  Without this demand, productive capacity is taken off line (including people being thrown out of work) to wait for a better day.  There are $2.2 trillion in public goods (infrastructure primarily) that will need to be built.  Might as well do them now because they will create private sector jobs for a minimum of three years, and it might take that long for the private sector to regain its footing and start creating jobs independent of government largess.
• Reduce the trade deficit by imposing tariffs on imports.  Just because foreign competitors can make some goods more cheaply because of currency manipulation and millions of low cost laborers, doesn’t mean we should buy those goods.  Instead, we should protect the manufacturing industries we now have, and expand back into the industries where we allowed jobs to disappear only to re-appear on foreign soil.   The reality is the majority of Americans need to work with their hands.  That’s simply a fact of life.  If the country continues to export manufacturing jobs, that will guarantee high unemployment for many Americans.  We cannot afford all those hands to be idle.  The overall goals are to protect employment and to achieve balanced trade.
• Immigration reform.  We do need farm labor, after all.  Our immigration system needs to be more robust and legally allow in sufficient numbers of migrant farm labor, at the least.  America was built by immigrant labor and nothing’s changed in that regard.  Second, allow more highly trained professionals to come to America.  We are in a global, competitive world today.  We should allow the world’s best and brightest to come to our shores and work with us.  It will guarantee our advantage in innovation.  It will make more millionaires and produce more private sector jobs.
• Let the Bush tax cuts expire on schedule.  All of them.  Just as with the other monetary tools’ usefulness, tax cuts are inefficient right now.  Restoring marginally progressive rates that were in place under President Clinton (a period of strong job and wage growth) will have little effect on the economy, but will show that America is willing to seriously reduce its deficits.  Oddly, so-called  fiscal conservatives won’t even commit to this minor effort to reduce deficits.
• Change the health care delivery system.  The first reform effort is flawed in many ways, but the impulse was and still is correct:  Our current system is based on fee for service which is inefficient and far too expensive to maintain.  The simple fact is the system that works best is results based.  It’s not how many procedures you do, it’s the results that count and for which you get paid.  Necessarily that means the administration of payments needs to be done by non profits, i.e. what in our system today remains with for-profit insurance companies.  That has to change.  Also, we need to expand the population allowed to become doctors.  That means a subsidized system of scholarships open to competition where the winners get a free degree (other than the incredibly hard work required) but in return agree to a salary or at minimum some guaranteed hours working for those covered by Medicare or Medicaid:  Effectively the vast majority of Americans.  This will have huge positive consequences not only for the population’s health, but for the taxpayer’s pocketbook.
• Wind down overseas military engagements.  We cannot afford to be the world’s Robocop.  We cannot afford to nation-build around the world.  We have an $800 plus billion military industrial complex in America, and more than $200 billion of that is spent on overseas engagements, primarily in Iraq, Pakistan and Afghanistan.  If we can get that down to $100 billion, it saves us a cool trillion dollars over the next 10 years.
• Put in a cap and trade system directed at removing inefficient use of fossil fuels.  Right now that would probably mean old coal plants will be idled and new, gas fired plants built.  Which would generate new jobs and help bridge the necessary transition to more sustainable base energy systems, which can gain subsidies derived from the cap and trade revenues.
• Maintain robust regulation of major industries.  The cheapest expenditure you can make is to have an honest, career oriented, regulator.  A major cause of our current problems came about due to poor regulation of our financial infrastructure.  Financial regulation already passed will help restore confidence in banking.  But what about better regulation of offshore drilling?  Or better inspection of food processing?  Or better inspection of mining?  Capitalism is great, but capitalists will compromise regulation if they can and we’ve seen clearly the negative consequences of allowing that to happen.  It’s cost us trillions in taxpayer money, millions of jobs, and ecologic damage that will no doubt be in the billions from the BP offshore disaster.
• Restore some sanity and fairness to our political process by severely limiting lobbying activities and restraining both individual and corporate contributions to campaigns–particularly at the federal level.  This has become a foundational problem.  A problem  made even worse by the recent Supreme Court decision reversing a century of Supreme Court decisions that restrained direct corporate campaign contributions, both money and in-kind.   Just turn on the TV today.  The screen is literally shouting at you with political ads not paid for by candidate campaigns, but by invisible and un-named corporate fronts.  This will inevitably control public information, swamping open and honest discussion and debate with marketing spin paid for by large, often multi-national, corporate treasuries.  This may turn out to be even worse for America than the current recession.
• Restore competitive markets in critical industries.  Right now American industry is dominated by oligopolies–near monopolies that use government power to stifle competition.  The problem is evident in banking, in agriculture, in energy production and in health care.  Banking has undergone some reform.  As has health care.  But both have come in weak form.  These efforts need to be continued until there is real competition in these industries.  It’s astonishing how well these non-competitive markets have convinced many Americans that they are, in truth, competitive.  And as for Congress and the White House, companies that control these markets have apparently consolidated their influence everywhere.  It may need some good old fashioned trust busting by Attorneys General, both federal and state, to unwind this decades old effort to buy government.  

There’s much more that we’ve recommended, not the least of which is to stop subsidizing corn and to subsidize organic farming instead.  But these are the major areas where America, according to a liberal, has gone far astray and is paying a high price for doing so.

Taking the mile high view of conservative economic concepts. 

Government BAD, private economy GOOD.  That’s the underlying philosophy of conservative Republicans and a majority of so-called Tea Partiers.  Rule no. 1.  It’s loosely based upon the Chicago school of economics, but has morphed into something almost no real economist recognizes as a coherent philosophy.  Even Adam Smith would disagree with much of it.  Never mind Keynes.  But in politics, as in bad journalism, the rule is never let the facts get in the way of a good story.

Deficits are always BAD.  Again that’s the Republican/Tea Party point of view.  Balanced budgets are normally advisable.   But in a recession, deficits happen.  This is where government spending can ‘prime the pump’ to help spur recovery.  Otherwise, the private economy takes longer to recover, or can even get more sick.  Even conservative economists understand the deficit issue, although they disagree somewhat with what types of deficit spending helps the most.

If only government would just stay out of the way and let private corporations do what they think is best.  Another ‘morph’ of the Chicago school philosophy with which even members of that school won’t always agree.  From Love Canal to the BP disaster, to the financial collapse of two years ago, it’s painfully obvious to all but the ultra right wing of the Republican Party that this is bad advice and worse policy.  The truth is that failure to sensibly regulate the banking industry turned a garden variety housing bubble into the worst recession since the Great Depression. 

Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security — all wasteful socialist systems that should be done away with as soon as possible.  Again, a right wing fantasy, totally at odds with historical reality.  All of these programs have benefited millions upon millions of American who would otherwise be impoverished.   Can they be more efficient?  Sure.  Should they be eliminated?  Even right wing  Republicans dare not make such a claim.  If they did it would be the political death knell for the Republicans.  Besides, there’s those inconvenient Europeans with socialist health care systems that provide better health care results for half the money.  The right’s response:  That simply cannot be.  See rule No. 1 about government always BAD and private business always GOOD.

World trade is always good for everyone.  The more trade the more good.  Economists of all stripes are taking another, less sanguine, look at this belief.  Balanced trade is being allowed into the public arena once again, as it was always allowed until the Chicago school rose to ascendancy in economics.  Entire industries and their often well paying jobs have been shipped overseas.  It was heralded as a good thing.  Not so much anymore, as the American economy became 70% consumption.  Industries shipped overseas, in the meantime, have gone through several iterations of innovation (durable goods a prime example) and what was once an American strength has turned into a serious weakness.

The dearth of capital investment domestically, caused by this economic philosophy, created severe economic dislocation in America.  And it still continues.  The resulting trade deficits act like a leak in the economic tire.  Money pumped into the local economy goes overseas through the trade deficit ‘leak.’

Ironically, foreign competitors use good old fashioned mercantilism with capital controls and currency manipulation to beat the pants off domestic industry, which exercises the only option they have left — they invest overseas, not in America.  This wrongheaded economic belief has made America the prime time chump of the global economy.

Yet it still persists.  Amazing stupidity.

We don’t have an energy problem at all.  We just need to “drill baby drill” and we’ll have all the cheap energy we could want.  Forever.  Again, a philosophy looking for some justification.  Every developed or developing country on the planet disagrees with this attitude.  Seriously.  Every damn one of them disagrees.   Of all the head scratching ideas the right has, this one takes the cake.

I call this industry ‘Big Fossil.’  It’s an industry that receives billions of dollars in annual subsidies.  Billions.  The right won’t even consider doing away with the subsidies!  The right has fought every effort to reduce the stupendous amount of pollution, and damage, this industry creates every day.  The costs of fighting this pollution adds additional billions annually.

It’s like the smog encrusted Los Angeles of the 1970s never existed!  Young people in Los Angeles today probably don’t even realize that their city was at one time enveloped in dangerous clouds of fossil burning smoke from industry, utilities and inefficient automobiles.   The right fought change then (and thankfully lost) just as they fight it now.

And don’t forget that pesky rule no. 1:  Government BAD, private business GOOD.  Always and forever.

Same for Industrial Agriculture.  Another subsidized industry to the tune of $4-$7 billion.  This subsidy, for corn primarily (coupled with a tariff protecting domestic sugar) has transformed farming in America.  Small farms were almost made extinct.  Food diversity disappeared under the onslaught of subsidized corn.  Where there were thousands of meat processing plants 40 years ago less than 10 super processors produce more than 90 percent of the protein Americans consume.  

We’ve become an agriculture mono culture.  And such cultures have never survived in history.  Plus, to add insult to injury, the food produced approaches toxicity.  And overuse of the artificial fertilizers these mega farms need to exist, has resulted in huge ‘dead zones’ in the Gulf of Mexico where the nitrogen runoff has lowered oxygen levels below that which can sustain marine life.

Still, as with Big Fossil, Industrial Ag is protected by the Republican right wing.  Socialism for their patrons is fine, apparently.  In these two cases one must ignore rule no. 1.  Which the right wing has no problem doing, it appears.

On and on.  Mythical beliefs of how the world actually operates.  When these same beliefs run afoul of patron industries, discard them and hope no one’s looking too closely. 

It’s tough to persuade someone when their livelihood depends upon not being persuaded.

CNBC this morning featured former IMF Banker Simon Johnson (co-author of the book “13 Bankers” ) and US Senator Ted Kaufman, both proponents of breaking up TBTF bank holding companies and forcing derivative trading onto public exchanges.

You have to understand that CNBC represents a point of view opposite to Johnson and Kaufman.  In our equity and bond markets today, making money depends on large volume trading and volatility.  Boring, stable markets reduce trader and exchange profits.  And boring, stable markets make CNBC boring as well–or at least the CNBC management believes so.  The cable station is a child of the markets and the symbiotic feedback loop between the markets and CNBC is fairly straightforward.

Nevertheless the CNBC staff took Johnson’s and Kaufman’s opinions fairy well.  Show co-host Joe Kernen did make a stab at placing Fannie and Freddie (government sponsored enterprises that are legally private) as the main culprit for building a housing bubble and, thus, causing the financial meltdown.  This is a Wall Street meme aimed at diverting responsibility from risky, leveraged Wall Street bets to government as the main culprit in the meltdown.

They then went to US Senator Bob Corker, who is opposed to reforming derivative trading and to downizing the TBTF banks.  Corker complained that the derivative reforms will, somehow, limit credit to companies and leave them bereft of any way to hedge currency risk, or product input pricing.  He didn’t explain how this would happen.  He just took it as faith, as did the CNBC staff listening to him.  Those are the official Wall Street memes, of course, which is why Corker quickly followed Simon and Kaufman.

The CNBC crew didn’t ask Corker what he thought about the current situation where more than 90% of derivative trading is done over the counter (OTC)–that is outside of public and regulatory view–by five of the world’s largest banks, four of  them TBTF Wall Street holding companies: (1. JPMorgan Chase, 2. Goldman Sachs, 3. Bank of America, 4. Citibank, 5. HSBC.).

One wonders how our large corporations managed to survive and prosper before the rise of derivatives, and their inherent trading volatility.   Of course they did survive and were quite easily able to hedge currency and material prices without the innovation of opaque, off the board derivative trading and traders.  But those kind of observations challenge the meme’s validity so they weren’t brought up when Corker was on.

Kernen brought up Fannie and Freddie with Kaufman on the air, but made no contrary observations when Corker was on the air.  To be fair, that’s not his job anyway.  He’s there to push the daily Wall Street meme and he does.  That’s what he’s paid to do. 

CNBC needs to re-balance it’s point of view and hire some co-hosts who know finance, markets and trading and offer a different point of view over the day’s events.  This unrelenting, one sided point of view means no one is seriously covering the issues of the day.   Instead of having the occasional, brief appearance, of knowledgeable players who don’t always follow the meme, such people should have a regular chair at the table.  All day long.

Dream on.

Financial Regulatory reform is apparently going to happen.  But in order for it to be effective, the so-called shadow banking network needs to be dragged out of the shadows and into the sunlight.

Shadow banking refers to all those leveraged entities that are not part of traditional banking but nevertheless played a significant role in creating our financial collapse by their use of leverage.  Hence their moniker, “shadow banks.”  That would be hedge funds, venture capital funds and private equity funds.  They are currently effectively outside the scope of regulations.  Unfortunately, the proposed legislation doesn’t do much of anything to impose regulatory oversight on these shadowy investment pools.  Without doing this, the country remains vulnerable to the leverage that caused our recent near-death experience.

 Over at the American Prospect, journalist and author Nomi Prins has a nice crisp article explaining all this.

The following are her specific conclusions for what the regulation needs to include in order to have a chance at being effective.  It’s not just the banks, it’s also the non banks that were major players in the rise of leverage and the subsequent collapse.

“The Reforms We Need. Current reforms won’t deter the reckless financial engineering, investing, and inflation of values upon which leveraged funds thrive. Right now, Wall Street funds are inhaling a host of new distressed security concoctions (a k a toxic assets part II) that scoop up all the junk out there and regift it to the markets. This all operates under the radar screen.

Thus it is imperative that banks with any form of leveraged fund, even if it belongs to a client, must provide detailed information to the SEC, no exceptions. Every hedge fund, private-equity firm, and venture-capital company, no matter what its size, should be required to register with the SEC and be subject to stringent reporting requirements and limits on leverage.

Private-equity firms should have to confer with regulators and make public all steps of their actions when buying and operating failed banks whose deposits are government-insured; otherwise we will maintain this unbalanced situation where banks can’t own private-equity funds, but private-equity funds can manage banks.

Hedge funds should have restrictions on the percentage of securitized assets they can buy and the percentage of federally backed banks or financial firms they can own. Hedge funds currently own 6 percent of Citigroup, for example; if they dump their stock, the ripple effect could generate a need for more federal aid.

Without addressing these structural issues, shining a high-beam of transparency, and dramatically restraining the leverage and risk that these funds can take or enable, we are doomed to crash again.”

As so often before, thanks to Prof. Mark Thoma’s blogsite economist’s view, where this article is featured.

One facet of understanding markets, and economies, is to understand how much cash is sloshing around “out there.”

During the low interest rate Greenspan era after the 2000 recession, corporation profits and cash holdings built up to historic levels.  So did the cash holdings of the wealthiest cohort of Americans.

Cash has to go somewhere, particularly if interest rates are low.  As we know now, a good portion of the cash went into housing and into financial innovation securities like credit default swaps.  And into the stock market.

The bubble built and burst far beyond the housing market itself because the housing bubble was mirrored on Wall Street by the swap market bubble.  The second bubble was the one that cratered the financial industry throughout Europe and the US primarily.

The underlying problem is that investors can’t find enough productive investments.  In an ideal world there would be industries and innovations sufficient to handle the money created from corporate profits.  In an ideal world these types of investment opportunities would create new jobs and income growth.  But the private markets haven’t been able to create, net, any new jobs for the past 10 years. 

And so the cash horde is building up again.  Right now the cash sitting on corporate balance sheets is about 12% of total assets.  That’s more than double the historic average.  Outside of corporations, the amount of cash sitting in money market funds is also at historic highs.

Yet this is happening while unemployment rises to 10% (16% in the US if you count the people who quit looking for jobs or are otherwise underemployed), more than 5$ trillion in US private wealth disappears and sovereign nations build up deficits as their revenues shrink.

So why is there a lack of productive investment opportunities–the kind of opportunities where money goes into new jobs, new machines and life enhancing innovations?

Because right now all the real opportunities, the really big ones, need government help.  And in the Democratic, developed countries governments haven’t done a very good job of identifying the right policies and the right government funding to get things kick started.

So what might these really big opportunities be?

• Energy.  Everyone knows that, inevitably, fossil fuel energy is going to become more and more expensive.  It won’t go straight up, of course.  Nothing does that.  But the fundamentals, and the trends in pricing, are as clear as the nose on your face.  Governments should adopt a multi-faceted set of policies that together would spur innovation and development in alternative energy.  Natural gas and nuclear might be good energy sources to “bridge”  into the era of truly clean and sustainable energy.  They would buy private markets time and security for risk taking–particularly if the government put subsidy floors under the new industries allowing them to attract private investment.  The so-called “green revolution” would take off with the right policies and subsidies.  And the promise of job and income growth would take off at the same time.
• Transportation.  You now hear that the automobile industry is going to eventually disappear.  Possibly.  But more likely it will evolve into an industry where more and more efficient cars are designed and built.  In 10 years I wouldn’t be surprised if there are very few gas stations.  There may be stations where you can “charge” your car.  But the days of selling gas may be the real industry that won’t survive.  On the flip side are trains.  That industry is likely to grow because it will have to–particularly in the area of commodity transportation.  Governments who adopt policies encouraging expansion of rail infrastructure will not only create private jobs and income growth, but will make other industries more competitive by controlling transportation costs.
• Agriculture.  This is another broad area where growth may come because it has to.  And it’s an excellent example of displaying the power of government subsidies.  Unfortunately, the subsidies were to the wrong companies.  The US subsidizes corn to the tune of $4 billion annually.  It’s been a stunning success in some regards.  We’ve basically become a corn dependent nation.  The corn is artificially cheap which means our beef and chicken, even farm raised fish, are cheaper than they would otherwise be.  Unfortunately, the food that’s cheaply produced isn’t very healthy.  And non corn food prices have gone up sharply.  So we’ve lost our food diversity too.  What if we changed our policy and started subsidizing the production of healthy foods?  What if we subsidized an increase in food diversity instead of one that concentrates fewer and fewer jobs into fewer and fewer corporations that make money on corn and corn derivative production?  Such policies would not only make us more healthy (thus reducing obesity and diabetes for starters) but would save the nation billions of dollars in medical costs.   Plus, there would be more farms and thus more farm employees and farm equipment.

These are just three major areas where productive investment opportunities will arise with the right government policies and subsidies.  They are huge areas offering the potential to create millions of jobs and billions in profit and income.

Repairing poor policies comes along with this package.  For every new subsidy aimed at the right target, there are other subsidies that should be stopped.  The corn subsidy is one striking example of what should be eliminated.

Financial regulation reform is another example.  Under the current regulatory regime, the policy is that we will always bail out “too big to fail” bank holding companies.  This is a huge subsidy, without question.  And it cost the nation dearly.  In the trillions of dollars.  If these banks can’t compete without this subsidy, then we need a new banking system from the ground up.  Done properly, financial reform will greatly improve the stability of our financial system, and that, all by itself, will give the overall economy a boost.

Health care reform is much like financial reform.  The policy has been to subsidize health insurance companies, to support medical professional wages overall, and to protect drug and medical device innovation.  The health reform package just passed is a step in the right direction.  But it has deep flaws that won’t do much to withdraw the subsidies of the previous policies.  To the degree that it is improved and thus reins in out-of-control price hikes all along the health care chain, the new policies will ”save” tax dollars that could be re-directed towards more growth oriented industries.

Better international trade policies are needed, as well.  Our laissez faire approach to international trade, similar to our laissez faire approach to financial regulation, has kept a lid on domestic job and income growth.  If our policies are able to protect domestic industry and labor’s income,  they will also support domestic demand for product.  And robust demand is a good force for job and income growth. 

The health care reform effort and the financial regulation reform effort represent only one kind of policy change:  The one trying to repair damage caused by poor policies.

What we also need is the development of policies aimed at spurring private investment directly into specific areas such as those mentioned before.  Targeted, coordinated government efforts at creating sustainable improvement in our economy.  If we can manage to implement these types of aggressive, forward looking, policies the nation will prosper.

Economies grow because capital is being invested in labor and technology to grow one or more industries.  But this doesn’t happen just because one wants it to happen.  There has to be one or more “triggers” creating the need for more capital and labor.

Triggers could be a strong rise in population growth or some strong form of ”game changing” innovation that literally creates new companies, industries and products.  Or, as is often the case, governments decide to support certain industries by directing subsidies or tax incentives their way to insure growth. 

China is an excellent example of growth created by government actions to support exports.   If Ford wants to build a factory in China, Ford would have to partner with a Chinese firm, would have to use local labor and some portion of local product supplies and would have to export half of what they make.  These and several other official government policies, including pegging their currency to a value just under the dollar which guarantees China a price advantage, have been successful in creating jobs, income and overal economic growth in China.

In the US, taxpayers pump billion of dollars into basic research in several industries which, in turn, results in innovations that are made available to private industry.  Two related industries, medical devices and pharmaceuticals, have received much of this money.  It is no accident, therefore, that these two industries have been shining stars in terms of growth and income.  In the 1950s under President Dwight Eisenhower, taxpayers subsidized building the interstate highway system, which in turn guaranteed an explosion in the automotive industry.  The all important internet was invented, tested and installed by the government and then handed over, literally without charge, to private markets.  The internet has been a tremendous job and income creator not only in the US, but worldwide.

But America, for a number of reasons, has forgotten how important government action can be for supporting real job and income growth.  In fact, a common theme in Washington DC today is that government can’t do anything but waste taxpayer dollars and destroy jobs and income.  This belief may be the single most important cause of America’s fall from economic grace.

The US should take a page or two from the Chinese.  Running huge trade deficits is like having a hole in a tire you’re trying to inflate.  Every pound of pressure you try to put in the tire, just goes out through the hole.  China’s policies insure that investments they make results in the export of native made product.   Having local labor and product requirements, plus export requirements of product made, do just that.

The US should have the same requirements.  That we don’t have sensible requirements insures that US corporate and private investment capital results in jobs and income growth outside the US.   We’ve been making more product and hiring more people–just not in the United States.  

At the same time, we have subsidies that are wasteful and inhibit native job and income growth, among other ills.  Take the annual $4 billion subsidy for corn.  It has made corn cheap and plentiful, but it has created a giant industry that is destroying agriculture and making our country, literally, physically ill.  Ill health and the destruction of farm jobs (not to mention all the related supporting industry jobs) has helped weaken the nation for the benefit of the few.

From the blogsite accidental hedonist:

01/24/06, by Kate Hopkins 33988 views • Categories: Food Politics, High Fructose Corn Syrup (HFCS)

Financial regulatory reform.  Considering what the country has suffered, and still suffers from, one would think this “trigger” would be obvious.  But amazingly it isn’t.  Setting strong limits on what the taxpayer will guarantee in the financial industry and setting strong groundrules on speculation and leverage would appear to be screamingly obvious.  But because of the same philosophy of lousy government and tax cuts, we still have strong opposition in Washington DC to even these basic requirements.  Reform here will avoid financial disruptions in the economy, an economic boon all by itself. 

From 1932 until the late 1980s (almost 60 years) the US was spared financial meltdowns when these common sense rules were in place.  But because of the same philosophy the rules were weakened beginning in the 1980s, and eventually eliminated entirely in 1999.  The result: Seven financial economic crisises, including the last one which may still outdo the one that created the Great Depression of the 1930s.

Health care reform.  Again what should be obvious to everyone (we can’t afford the system we now have) became merely a side item on the menu.  The real opponent to reform was (can you guess?) fear of government, and unwillingness to actually pay for (read lower, not more taxes) a new system.  The main issues of better healthcare, cost control, and universal access to health care services for more than 30 million uninsured, became irrelevant under the onslaught of this misogynist (one of hate) philosophy.

So there’s some triggers.  To Beezer they should be as obvious as the nose on one’s face.  But our belief in the myth that government, due to some mysterious illness (despite more than two centuries of evidence to the contrary), can’t even pull up its figurative pants by itself remains virulent in DC and within the Republican political party as well. 

Too bad.  We’re well on our way to becoming a declining nation with a declining economy and declining standards of living.  So much we could do, so little understanding and will to do it.