0:20

Welcome, friends, to another edition

0:22

of Economic Update, a

0:24

weekly program devoted to the economic

0:27

dimensions of our lives and those

0:29

of our children. I'm

0:31

your host, Richard Wolff. Before

0:35

starting today and as usual, I

0:37

want to remind you that Charlie

0:39

is available charlie.info438

0:43

at gmail.com for your suggestions

0:46

and so on to help

0:48

us plan future programs. I

0:51

also want to remind you that we have this

0:53

new book. I completed it this

0:56

last year. It's called

0:58

Understanding Capitalism. It's

1:01

available at democracyatwork.info.

1:04

If you like this program, if you

1:06

tune in on either radio, TV, or

1:09

YouTube, then let me

1:11

assure you the book will be valuable

1:13

as a kind of companion piece. It

1:16

is an assemblage of the insights I

1:18

try to present each week, generalized,

1:22

integrated, brought together to give

1:24

you an overview of capitalism,

1:27

a way to understand the

1:29

system, and even more importantly,

1:31

the problems, the mythologies, and

1:34

the way it all impacts on

1:36

you individually. These are things

1:39

I often don't have the time to

1:41

do in each weekly program, and so

1:43

I've tried to put it together in

1:45

this book. It's a short

1:47

book, but I think it's a concentrated

1:50

presentation of what it

1:52

is that brings you to this program, Understanding

1:56

Capitalism. Today

1:59

we're going to be talking talking about a

2:01

decision about favoring rich

2:03

people to get them into college,

2:07

as happened in California and of

2:09

course in many other places, a

2:13

little bit about the remarkable

2:15

Millet regime in Argentina, and

2:19

then something about Russia

2:21

and the aircrafts Russia

2:23

seized in retaliation

2:25

to the sanctions imposed

2:28

on Russia. It'll give us

2:30

an insight into the sanction

2:33

warfare that the United States

2:36

pursues without explaining

2:38

to its people, as we ought to

2:41

have it explained, what the costs of

2:43

it all might be. Here

2:45

we go. Recently,

2:49

Gavin Newsom, the current governor

2:52

of California, signed

2:54

a law banning

2:56

legacy and donor

2:58

favoritism in private

3:00

schools like the University

3:02

of Southern California and Stanford and

3:05

so on. Let

3:07

me be sure we all understand what this is

3:09

about. A legacy is a

3:12

fancy word applied when

3:14

colleges give a favorable

3:17

nod to applicants

3:20

from families who

3:22

went to that school and who have

3:24

donated money to that school

3:26

one way or another. And

3:29

donor, well, that's obvious what that means.

3:33

Do colleges and universities favor

3:36

the children who apply from

3:38

families that have given them

3:40

money? The answer to

3:42

that question is you bet.

3:47

I have seen it when I was a student.

3:49

I have seen it when I was a faculty

3:51

member in No Secret

3:53

at all. Anyone who's

3:55

ever paid attention and any research, and

3:58

there's plenty of research out there. shows

4:00

it over and over

4:03

again. So in

4:05

other words, you're favoring people

4:07

who need at least the

4:09

richest amongst us, those whose

4:11

wealth is so big that

4:13

they've been able to give

4:15

gifts to

4:17

colleges and universities. And I don't mean $50

4:19

and I don't mean

4:21

$200, I mean

4:23

big gifts. Thereby,

4:26

as the Bible

4:29

once was rumored to have

4:31

said, to them that

4:33

have shall be given, and

4:36

to those who have not, yea,

4:38

even from them something will be taken.

4:42

Okay, is

4:45

this a valuable act?

4:48

Governor Newsom tells us it is,

4:50

but then again he wants the

4:52

political capital flowing his

4:55

way. So he said

4:57

it's going to enable merit

5:00

to govern who gets

5:02

the California dream, his

5:04

phrase, not mine. Is

5:08

it really going to give

5:10

us a merit system? The

5:13

answer is, sorry

5:15

Governor Newsom, you're not

5:17

even close. The

5:20

inequality that enables

5:23

some people to give large

5:25

gifts to universities and other

5:27

people not to is not

5:30

changed when you don't allow them

5:32

to get favoritism for

5:35

their kids because of the

5:37

donation. Here's a

5:40

short list of what rich people

5:42

can do that

5:44

gives their kids a leg up on

5:47

all of the rest of us who don't

5:49

come from rich families. Rich

5:53

families give their kids tutors along

5:56

the way, starting when?

5:58

Starting in kindergarten. In some cases,

6:03

they provide their children

6:05

with costly educational

6:08

or learning experiences.

6:11

They buy whatever educational toys

6:14

come on the market, the

6:16

more the merrier. They

6:20

pay for their children to have travel

6:23

to gain the benefits, to learn a

6:26

foreign language, to become excellent in

6:28

a sport. They

6:30

have the funds to do all of that,

6:33

and they do. The

6:38

children of the wealthy often

6:40

go to private schools, where

6:42

even more special opportunities are

6:45

loaded up on them. I

6:48

remember as a public school graduate

6:51

all my life, arriving

6:53

at Harvard as an undergraduate, which

6:55

is where I went to college,

6:58

to discover that most of my dorm

7:00

mates, most of the other young men

7:02

and women I met, had gone to

7:05

Exeter or Andover or Pumphret

7:07

or all these other private

7:09

schools I knew nothing about,

7:15

where they enjoyed supports and programs

7:17

I hadn't even heard of in

7:20

public school. No, no,

7:22

no, Mr. Newsom. They're not making

7:25

merit count. And

7:27

then here's another little detail you

7:29

forgot. Poor

7:32

people have to borrow money to go to college.

7:35

Tens of thousands of dollars, and they have

7:37

to worry about the interest, and they have

7:40

to worry about the jobs they train for

7:42

and they get, because so much of their

7:44

income will have to go back to service,

7:46

the loan that they had to get to

7:49

go to college. Rich people don't have any

7:51

of those worries. No distraction, no job to

7:53

take you away from the books you need

7:55

to read or the lectures you want to

7:58

attend. No, no, no. merit?

8:01

No, no, no. It's all

8:03

about the money. And you

8:06

have done nothing substantial about

8:08

that. You've paraded

8:11

around, you've pretended, you've

8:13

taken away the legacy

8:15

and donor favoritism

8:19

that college admissions gave

8:21

to the children of the rich. You

8:24

haven't done anything to make

8:27

merit the issue

8:29

you claim to be

8:31

in favor of. I

8:35

want to turn next to Argentina.

8:37

Why? Because

8:39

the story of Argentina is

8:41

the story of many, many

8:43

countries in Asia, Africa, Latin

8:45

America, Eastern Europe, and beyond.

8:48

Here's how it goes. A

8:51

small, and I mean small, 1,

8:53

2, 3% of

8:56

the population, very wealthy, owns

8:58

an enormous amount of

9:00

the industrial infrastructure and

9:02

foundation, are powerful

9:04

enough to control the politics so

9:08

that they don't get taxed. They

9:10

have the government do all kinds of things for them

9:13

to maintain the gross

9:15

inequality. And you can

9:17

see it if you go to Sao

9:19

Paulo in Brazil, or if you go

9:21

to Buenos Aires in Argentina, and then

9:23

you take a trip into the countryside,

9:26

the gap between where the rich play

9:28

and where the poor live is overwhelming.

9:33

And to maintain that system, the government controls

9:36

the society. It doesn't

9:39

tax the rich. It

9:41

taxes the mass of people to control

9:44

them. And

9:46

the mass of people allow it out

9:49

of fear, out of confusion,

9:52

out of belief. Maybe it'll get better, out

9:55

of belief. Maybe it'll get better after

9:57

they die. There's a variety of ways.

10:00

you hold on. In

10:04

these countries they have another option. They

10:08

can also borrow money abroad,

10:10

which they do. Get

10:12

them through the difficulty because that

10:14

allows you to give

10:17

lots of money to the rich. They take

10:19

a big chunk of whatever is borrowed from

10:21

abroad, but let a little of it trickle

10:23

down, keeping everybody happy,

10:27

or at least not so

10:30

unhappy as to make

10:32

a revolution. But

10:35

you know, you keep borrowing and

10:38

the lenders, banks in

10:40

New York or London or

10:42

Paris or Rome, governments

10:45

in the same places, they begin to

10:47

look at you and say, whoa, they

10:50

may never be able to pay any

10:53

of this back. So

10:55

now they demand higher interest if they're gonna

10:58

give you a loan. You

11:00

say sure, and you use some of the

11:02

money you borrow to pay off the high

11:04

interest of other money you borrow, and you

11:06

can get away for that for a few

11:08

years, and then you get to the point

11:10

where you can't. And the only

11:12

way you can keep going is to

11:14

stop spending money on social

11:18

programs. You've

11:20

now borrowed so much you have to

11:22

take all the taxes you get from

11:24

the middle class and the poor and

11:26

use it to pay off the lenders

11:29

that you borrowed from all those years.

11:31

And so you cut back on your

11:33

school programs and your road programs and

11:35

your welfare programs and your hospital system

11:37

and on and on and

11:40

on. You know what

11:42

that's called? Austerity. It's a

11:44

much nicer word than admitting

11:46

what you're doing. And

11:50

it got so bad in Argentina

11:52

where it has happened over

11:54

and over again

11:57

that a right wing

11:59

demagogue got up and

12:01

said, this is awful,

12:03

we are suffering, you

12:05

are suffering, let

12:07

me come in with

12:09

my fix-it mentality.

12:11

A kind of

12:13

Trump, Mr. Millay

12:15

in Argentina, patterns

12:17

himself after Trump. Bit

12:20

of a wild guy, bit of an unusual

12:23

character, even

12:26

has funny hair like Mr.

12:29

Trump, different from Mr. Trump's.

12:31

He's a younger man. What

12:35

did he promise? I'll fix it. It'll

12:38

be an austerity and I'll fix it. The

12:42

word austerity frightened people, but they were

12:44

so desperate for a fix-it, they

12:46

went. They gave him enough votes he got in, and

12:49

he's hitting them. Argentina

12:52

now has, get ready, a

12:54

50% poverty

12:56

rate, and it's getting

12:58

worse each, literally each day. He's

13:01

only been in office a short

13:04

time, and he's crashing down and

13:06

cutting back on pensions, on supports

13:08

for people, everything he can. Why?

13:11

To pay off the

13:14

lenders that they borrowed from. And

13:17

why do they have to borrow? Because they

13:19

will not tax the corporations and the rich,

13:22

who sit on the wealth of

13:24

Argentina, and Argentina is one of

13:26

the wealthiest countries in all of

13:28

Latin America. It's right up there

13:31

with Mexico and Brazil. You

13:35

don't tax the people who have the money,

13:37

then you squeeze everybody else,

13:40

sooner or later, with or

13:42

without borrowing. It's

13:44

horrible to watch the suffering

13:46

that these countries go through, and

13:49

the revolution against Mr. Malay

13:51

is building literally every day.

13:56

Well, it was necessary to

13:58

take a bit of extra time to

14:00

deal with it. with this question. So

14:02

I'm going to hold the story of

14:05

how Russia retaliates against sanctions for

14:07

our next visit next

14:09

week. Thank

14:12

you for your attention. Stay with

14:14

us. We'll be right back with

14:16

a fascinating interview on

14:19

the political changes. Very

14:21

interesting, very positive in

14:23

Puerto Rico, and

14:26

that will ramify in the United States as

14:29

well. Stay with us. We

14:31

will be right back. Friends,

14:37

as you know, any project

14:39

like this takes money,

14:42

and we don't want to bore you or burden you. On

14:46

the other hand, you, our audience, are

14:48

the source of our funding, and we

14:50

wouldn't have it any other way. If

14:53

you can, please consider

14:55

making a donation. It

14:58

will be enormously appreciated. Welcome

15:01

back, friends, to the second

15:03

half of today's Economic Update.

15:06

I'm very glad to bring back to

15:08

our microphones and our cameras Professor

15:11

Ian Seda-Irizarry.

15:14

He's been here before, and we've

15:17

had good conversations. And

15:19

now that there are some important changes in

15:22

the situation in Puerto Rico, I

15:24

wanted to have him come back and

15:26

talk about them with us. Ian

15:30

is an associate professor and

15:32

graduate program director at the

15:35

economics department of John Jay

15:37

College, which is part of

15:39

the City University of New York. His

15:42

work focuses on the current

15:45

socioeconomic crisis of Puerto Rico

15:48

and its relation to the

15:50

island's first fiscal crisis in

15:53

the mid-1970s. So

15:56

first of all, Ian, and I've known

15:58

Ian a long time. That's why I'm

16:00

calling him Ian, not just Professor Seyda

16:03

Irizarry. Welcome to the program

16:05

and thank you for sharing your time with us.

16:08

Thank you Rick for the invitation and for your viewers

16:10

and listeners for tuning in. Good.

16:13

So tell us, how has

16:15

the political situation in Puerto Rico

16:17

changed? And I'm particularly

16:19

interested, as you can imagine on this

16:22

program, with the fact that

16:24

there's been a kind of unification, at least

16:26

in part, of groups on

16:28

the left of the political spectrum. Well,

16:31

in Puerto Rico for decades now, politics

16:33

has been usually defined in terms of

16:35

the political status of the

16:38

island, specifically what type of relationship do Puerto

16:40

Ricans want with the United States, Puerto

16:42

Rico being a colonial possession of the United

16:44

States. And political

16:47

parties, the electoral political parties have

16:49

usually been organized around precisely the

16:52

status preference in that relationship. So

16:55

the three main parties, the three main historical

16:57

parties have been the New Progressive Party, which

17:00

pushes for statehood for Puerto Rico, the

17:03

Popular Democratic Party, which

17:07

supports what they call the Commonwealth or what I

17:09

would call the perpetuation of the colony, and

17:11

then you have the Puerto Rican Independence Party, which

17:13

its name already says what it

17:16

pushes for, for Puerto Rico to be independent and

17:18

acquire sovereignty. So the

17:21

ideological spectrum, the political spectrum has usually

17:23

been defined in terms of those options.

17:25

Like if you're a leftist, supposedly it's

17:27

because you believe in independence. If you're

17:29

a conservative, it's supposedly because you believe

17:31

in states with Puerto Rico,

17:33

and of course the popular Democratic Party, the

17:35

pro-Commonwealth Party, some sort of middle

17:37

way. So politics in Puerto

17:39

Rico has been understood for that for decades,

17:42

specifically since 1968, when

17:44

the New Progressive Party won its first election. But

17:47

things have changed. Things have changed in the island.

17:51

And the evidence for this is probably the

17:53

crisis that the two main parties, the pro-statehood

17:55

and the pro-Commonwealth Party, have had in

17:57

the last elections, when you look at their numbers

17:59

that have been the votes that they have received

18:01

throughout the elections, you see a significant downfall of

18:04

tens and thousands of votes, while

18:07

other alternatives have

18:09

grown up, have developed, and

18:12

the pro-independence party support also has grown up.

18:14

So for example, in the pro-independence party usually

18:16

gets 3% of the vote. In

18:19

the last election, they got around 14% of the vote. Another

18:23

new party, the Citizens' Victory

18:25

Movement, a newly instituted

18:27

party in the last election also got 14% of

18:29

the vote. So

18:31

the crisis is basically measured in terms

18:33

of that outcome, where

18:35

if you add what now becomes

18:37

the base of this new alliance,

18:39

which is the pro-independence party, and

18:42

the Citizens' Movement victory, they

18:44

combined got 28% of the vote, whereas

18:47

the winner got 32% of the vote, and

18:49

the second place got 31% of the vote. So

18:52

at least at the electoral level, you

18:54

have a registry of that crisis, a

18:56

crisis that of course is tied to

18:58

the socioeconomic problems of Puerto Rico, that

19:01

both administrations under the popular democratic party

19:03

and under the new progressive party have

19:05

failed to address for the benefit of

19:07

the suffering masses. In

19:09

a country where over 40% of the

19:11

population is living under the poverty level.

19:15

If people want a comparison in the United

19:17

States, the poverty level, my understanding, is

19:20

that in the poorest state, it's Mississippi, it's

19:22

20%, so we're double of that.

19:24

So that should give you a sense of

19:26

how we are doing right now in Puerto

19:28

Rico regarding how the

19:31

electoral coordinates have been redefined, where

19:33

now this new alliance is seeking

19:35

to push forward policies that

19:37

are progressive, that deal

19:40

with local and foreign capital, that

19:42

deal with the corruption of the administrations,

19:44

that try to address problems associated with

19:46

the fiscal control board that was imposed

19:48

on us to manage our budget,

19:52

and so on. So again, this is a new

19:55

situation in Puerto Rico that has

19:58

a history type, for example, the

20:00

hurricane Maria in 2017, the

20:04

failure in the reconstruction efforts of that,

20:07

the imposition of the fiscal control board and

20:09

its policies of austerity that

20:11

have led Puerto Rico to pay an insurmountable

20:13

amount of money in terms of its debts.

20:17

So people are tired. They're tired

20:20

of seeing the state being used

20:22

by the main parties and the

20:24

main actors behind those parties, like

20:26

the organized local capitalist

20:28

class to their own benefit. So

20:30

this is again a reflection of the crisis that

20:33

has evolved in

20:35

Puerto Rico for the past 15 years. Is

20:38

there any effort of the current government?

20:41

How are they dealing with this? So

20:44

with, you mean in terms

20:46

of the crisis

20:49

or the electoral moment

20:51

for them? I think I mean both of

20:53

them. In other words, this

20:56

must be a shock to the

20:59

establishment to discover that they have

21:01

lost a third of the

21:03

population here, if I understand you

21:05

correctly. Yeah. So how have

21:07

they managed it right now in terms

21:09

of that crisis? They have focused

21:13

their efforts on

21:15

a very old strategy, which is

21:17

to accuse anything that looks progressive

21:20

or leftist as being communist.

21:24

So right now, if you listen to

21:26

the radio waves, any radio program in

21:28

Puerto Rico you will hear either in

21:31

political program, analysis programs, or in advertisements.

21:34

All this discourse focuses on the ghost

21:36

of communism. Can you believe that? And

21:38

the ghost of Puerto Rico being independent

21:41

if this alliance wins the election. An

21:44

alliance whose purpose is not to define

21:46

a new political status, but

21:48

in terms of that problem of Puerto Rico,

21:50

the colonial problem, to actually push forward a

21:53

mechanism to solve the problem. That's

21:55

why for them, their bet is

21:57

that people will unite under

21:59

the... flag of this alliance between

22:02

the Prime Dependence Party and the citizens movement

22:04

victory on the basis

22:06

of progressive economic policies and also

22:08

pushing forward a real binding process

22:10

with the United States to decolonize

22:13

the island. What

22:15

were the conditions? How would you explain

22:17

to us the conditions that brought this

22:20

all about? Well, what happened

22:22

in Puerto Rico? I mean, you've alluded

22:24

to the hurricane, you've alluded to, but

22:26

sort of give us an overview of

22:29

how this crisis came

22:31

to be. So we officially

22:34

entered the global depression two decades ago

22:36

in 2005. And

22:38

since then over 200,000 jobs have been

22:41

lost. The emigration

22:43

towards the United States has increased.

22:45

Actually, a very interesting study now

22:47

in October came out with a

22:49

very important piece of information,

22:51

which is that between 2010 and 2020,

22:54

the proportion of the population

22:57

above the age of 65 has doubled

23:00

from 13% to 21%. Of course, that's

23:02

evidence of this huge, massive influential

23:05

immigration waves to the

23:07

United States. Also,

23:09

you have the after

23:11

effects of Hurricane Maria in which

23:14

the public electrical utility this

23:16

company was privatized and

23:19

was brought in under very sketchy

23:21

conditions. This private firm to administer

23:23

the electrical grid, a firm

23:25

that had no experience with the scale

23:27

of operations required in the island of

23:30

Puerto Rico. And we're at a point

23:32

where we don't need a hurricane to

23:34

experience power outages or blackouts, as they

23:36

call it. It's something

23:39

of a daily experience

23:41

for most in the island. And

23:44

imagine a population that relatively

23:46

speaking is aging the importance

23:48

of medical services, the function

23:50

of medical equipment, and of

23:52

course, need for continuous electricity

23:54

provision for those things to

23:56

keep running. So again, the

23:59

prospects of that The president

24:01

and coming generations are not to

24:04

have a better standard of life than

24:06

their parents or their grandparents as before.

24:08

On the contrary, the people who are

24:10

right now entering the working age are

24:12

ones that have never seen a year

24:15

with any bit of positive

24:18

prospects for their future. Let

24:20

me ask your opinion about something, Ian.

24:25

There are those of us who look upon

24:27

the position of the United States now

24:32

as an empire that has entered

24:35

the decline phase. It had a

24:37

century of rise, and

24:39

now, if

24:41

you look at the wars in Vietnam

24:44

or Afghanistan or Iraq, these are all

24:46

wars that are lost. The one in

24:48

Ukraine is being lost and so on.

24:53

And there's a historical truism

24:55

that when empires decline,

24:58

the people at the top, the rich and

25:00

the powerful, are the

25:02

ones best able to hold on

25:05

to the wealth they acquired in

25:07

the empire, and

25:09

they offload the costs

25:13

onto the mass of the people below them.

25:17

If that's true, then

25:19

the mass of the people below them

25:21

might start with Puerto

25:23

Rico. It might be the place where

25:25

one saves money, first

25:27

of all, to hold on. And

25:30

so one might impose

25:32

on these American citizens

25:36

regular blackouts, even if there

25:38

isn't a hurricane, because there

25:40

is no funding left to

25:43

be allocated to provide something

25:45

as basic as electricity. Does

25:49

that make any sense to you as

25:51

you think about the situation in Puerto

25:53

Rico? Well, I guess

25:55

that there's many ways of approaching this. For

25:58

starters, Puerto Rico does. receive under

26:01

the Federal Emergency Management Agency

26:05

a substantial amount of funds, for

26:08

example, for the reconstruction after

26:10

Maria FEMA. Funds

26:13

that have been misappropriated, mismanaged

26:15

by the current administrations. So

26:17

there hasn't been any, for example, reconstruction of

26:20

the electrical grid. So those,

26:22

let's call them breadcrumbs that the Empire gives

26:24

us are still there. But

26:27

interestingly enough, right now, from the perspective of

26:29

the United States, knowing what

26:31

role Puerto Rico played in the Cold War,

26:34

it's difficult to see what importance

26:36

it might have apart from providing

26:38

a tax haven for its corporations.

26:41

We do not possess the same military

26:44

strategic importance that once we had,

26:47

which implied a lot of investment coming to Puerto

26:49

Rico, for the sake of

26:51

military infrastructure. But we

26:53

still provide places for firms

26:55

to hide and misreport their

26:58

profits. So Puerto

27:00

Rico is one of those countries that

27:02

appears every year in those global reports

27:04

on countries where you have transfer pricing

27:06

from firms misreporting their profits

27:09

for not paying taxes. So

27:12

that's something that is there.

27:14

Those firms are looking for more profitable

27:16

places to go. And usually

27:19

the cost of labor has been the

27:23

main bargaining tool, which

27:25

the local elites also push for. That's

27:27

not a coincidence that every time that

27:29

we have a labor reform law, it's

27:31

those elites and their organized representatives that

27:34

want to stand behind the governors, irrespective

27:36

of the administration, to

27:38

push for lower wages,

27:40

less benefits, etc. So

27:43

that's a continuation of what we have

27:46

experienced for decades now, and of course,

27:48

in a new situation. And

27:50

hopefully Puerto Rico, contrary to many

27:53

movements in the US, will

27:56

break from the Democratic Party, which as

27:58

the saying says, the Democratic Party. Democratic

28:00

Party is the tomb of

28:03

progressive and revolutionary movements. So

28:05

I think we see it right now with what's

28:07

happening with gas and Palestine and the genocide happening

28:09

over there. We saw it, we

28:12

see it with the silence of the United Auto

28:14

Workers in relationship to the ceasefire that once upon

28:16

a time, some months ago they were calling for,

28:18

I haven't heard anything about that since they aligned

28:20

with Kamala Harris. So

28:22

here in Puerto Rico, hopefully political go

28:24

beyond this idea that voting for the

28:26

Democrats are supporting Democrats

28:29

in the United States, Puerto Ricans in the US supporting

28:31

Democrats for the sake of the benefit of Puerto Ricans

28:33

in the island. Hopefully we're transcending

28:37

that moment of being stuck in terms

28:39

of our imagination regarding politics. I

28:42

wish we had more time Ian, but thank

28:44

you very, very much for giving us this

28:47

insight. I find

28:49

myself very excited with the

28:51

unification that people on

28:53

the left who

28:56

have so often felt compelled

28:58

to split into God knows

29:00

how many different subdivisions are

29:03

going in the opposite direction in Puerto Rico

29:06

and trying to come together to

29:08

make a political difference is

29:10

a very hopeful sign, not just

29:12

for Puerto Rico, but for all those who

29:14

might be inspired to move in

29:17

that same direction. Absolutely. Thank

29:19

you again, Ian, and I will bring you

29:21

back soon so we can keep abreast of

29:23

what's happening in Puerto Rico.

29:26

Thank you, Rick. Thank you very much. To

29:28

all my audience, I hope

29:31

you learned about something important happening in

29:33

Puerto Rico now. And

29:35

as always, I look forward to speaking with

29:37

you again next week.