Grasping Reality on TypePad, by Brad DeLong

Was macro policy different after 2008? I interpret that to be the question: "Did macro policy follow the same rule after 2008 that people had presumed before 2008 it would follow in a true tail event?" To answer that question requires determining just what policy rule people back before 2008 thought that the U.S. government was following. Let me propose four candidates for our (implicit) pre-2008 macroeconomic policy rule:

1. Limit fiscal policy to automatic stabilizers, and follow a Taylor rule with John Taylor's coefficients (Taylor).
2. Follow Milton Friedman's advice and target velocity-adjusted money: if nominal GDP is below trend, print more money and buy bonds; if that does not restore nominal GDP to either the trend level or the trend growth rate (depending on whether your favorite flavor has or does not have base-drift sprinkles), repeat (Friedman).
3. Use open market operations to manipulate the short-term safe nominal interest rate to stabilize inflation and unemployment as long as you are not at the zero lower bound. At the zero lower bound credibly promise to be irresponsible in the future in order to raise inflation expectations by enough to push the real interest rate down to its negative Wicksellian neutral rate value, and so restore real macroeconomic balance (Krugman).
4. Use open market operations to manipulate the short-term safe nominal interest rate to stabilize inflation and unemployment as long as you are not at the zero lower bound. At the zero lower bound resort to expansionary fiscal policy and do as much of it as needed, at least as long as interest rates on long-term government debt remain low (Blinder).

Were there any other live candidates for "the policy rule" back before 2008?

Noah Smith periodically asks me why I feel that I do not have time to read David Andolfatto--why what he writes goes never to the top but always to somewhere lower, in the middle of the too-read pile...

Here is one sufficient reason:

David Andolfatto, February 2009:

Here we go again.... Many governments appear to be taking seriously the notion that a massive government 'electric shock therapy' is needed…. Is there any merit in the view that a massive government fiscal action can rescue the day? Apparently, there must be. Why would all these learned people be advocating a policy prescription that is not solidly backed by economic theory and the historical evidence?… I am especially eager to learn how this evidence might be construed as supporting the notion that fiscal policy 'works'…

Must-Read: The market's social welfare function: take each individual's utility and sum them up. Only, first, take the inverse of their marginal utility of income, and weight their utility by that before summing.

The desires of those who have the least need for goods and services therefore get the greatest weight. The market thus has a very interesting "operationalization" of the principle of "the greatest good of the greatest number":

Takashi Negishi (1960): Welfare Economics and Existence of an Equilibrium for a Competitive Economy:

A competitive equilibrium is a maximum point of a social welfare function...

Hoisted from the Archives: Daniel Kuehn: Yes, Acemoglu and Robinson's Piketty Review Is Strange:

I just happened to get to one of the parts in Piketty that Acemoglu and Robinson quote to show that Piketty doesn't think institutions matter (from page 365):

John Hersey: Hiroshima:

At exactly fifteen minutes past eight in the morning, on August 6, 1945, Japanese time, at the moment when the atomic bomb flashed above Hiroshima, Miss Toshiko Sasaki, a clerk in the personnel department of the East Asia Tin Works, had just sat down at her place in the plant office and was turning her head to speak to the girl at the next desk...

Must-Read: Art Goldhammer: The Great Paradox:

In 2004, Barack Obama catapulted himself into the national limelight by denouncing the bitter antagonism between rival camps and suggesting that we heed “the better angels of our nature”...

Must-Read: Drew Altman: The ACA Marketplace Problems in Context (and Why They Don’t Mean Obamacare Is ‘Failing’):

There absolutely are problems in the marketplaces...

Over at Project Syndicate: The Economic Trend is Our Friend: These are days of grave disillusionment with the state of the world. Sinister forces of fanatical, faith-based killing – something that we in the West, at least, thought had largely ended by 1750 – are back. And they have been joined by and are reinforcing forces of nationalism, bigotry, and racism that we thought had been largely left in the ruins of Berlin in 1945. In addition, economic growth since 2008 has been profoundly disappointing. There is no reasoned case for optimistically expecting a turn for the better in the next five years or so. And the failure of global institutions to deliver ever-increasing prosperity has undermined the trust and confidence which in better times would serve to suppress the murderous demons of our age. Pessimism thus understandably comes easy these days – perhaps too easy... Read MOAR Over at Project Syndicate

Live from the Roasterie: You know, I do sometimes wish I understood things--like the very basics of the physical chemistry of water…

Must-Read: Richard Portes and Simon Wren-Lewis: Issues in the Design of Fiscal Policy Rules:

The potential conflict in designing rules between the need to mimic optimal policy...

Dean Acheson: On that Triangulating Bastard Grover Cleveland: From Dean G. Acheson: A Democrat Looks at His Party:

At the end of the [nineteenth] century there was a lesser, but serious, missed opportunity for Democratic leadership in President Cleveleand's failure to grasp the significance of the Populist and labor unrest... and in his cautious and unimaginative approach to economic depression. The unrest... did not spring from a radical movement directed against the established order... or the constitutional system. It grew out of conditions increasingly distressing... on the farms and in the factories.

Over at Equitable Growth: Must-Reads:

• Larry Summers: Disappointed by What Came Out of Jackson Hole: I had high hopes... billed as a forum that would look at new approaches to the conduct of monetary policy...
• Anna Aizer et al.: Do Low Levels of Blood Lead Reduce Children's Future Test Scores?: Linking preschool blood lead levels with third grade test scores for eight birth cohorts of Rhode Island children born between 1997 and 2005...
• Mohamed El-Erian: Jackson Hole Was a Missed Opportunity for a Policy Pivot: Central banks policy tools alone are ill-suited to overcoming the challenges....
• Martin Wolf: Capitalism and Democracy: The Strain Is Showing: Confidence in an enduring marriage between liberal democracy and global capitalism seems unwarranted....
• Charlie Stross: Two Thoughts: The effects [of] universal functional telepathy (lies and all)... on how we handle business...
• Gavyn Davies: Sims Highlights Fiscal Dominance at Jackson Hole: The most far reaching speech at the Federal Reserve’s Jackson Hole meeting last week was...
• Nick Bunker: Only a hint of new thinking at Jackson Hole - Equitable Growth
• Nick Bunker: How often do Americans not pay federal taxes and receive government assistance? - Equitable Growth

Over at Equitable Growth: Paul Krugman appears confused:

Paul Krugman: Chris and the Ricardianoids:

Here’s [Chris] Sims on fiscal policy:

Fiscal expansion can replace ineffective monetary policy at the zero lower bound, but fiscal expansion is not the same thing as deficit finance. It requires deficits aimed at, and conditioned on, generating inflation. The deficits must be seen as financed by future inflation, not future taxes or spending cuts... Read MOAR Over at Equitable Growth

Live from the Orion Arm: Kevin Marks: "How to talk...:

How to talk to a woman wearing headphones: Be a Kardashev Type II civilisation in HD164595 pic.twitter.com/ud5IcRYssj

— Kevin Marks (@kevinmarks) August 30, 2016

Truman Library: Telegram, Elbridge Durbrow to James Byrnes, August 30, 1946:

• 2006-08-30: Hoisted from Comments: Understanding Danny Okrent: I Don't Think We Can Blame Donald Luskin for This: Jim Dandy writes, apropos of Danny Okrent's belief that Paul Krugman sought to deceive his readers by mixing-and-matching numbers from the household and the establishment survey.... 'We certainly know who "they" were [Donald Luskin], but that flying attack monkey shall remain unnamed, having already been confined to "stupidest man" territory.' My guess is that that is probably not the case. We know that Okrent thinks Luskin is creepy. If A thinks B is a creep, A would have to be really stupid, a COMPLETE idiot, totally unfit for paid employment, to take B's word for technical details without verifying them. So I think the balance of the probabilities is that Okrent's source for this was not Luskin.

Once again, not somebody who I see as underrated in the world at large. But the community in which he is well-known seems, once again, to have less overlap with it should with the community that reads here...

• Branko Milanovic, Senior Scholar

Must-Read: Gavyn Davies: Sims Highlights Fiscal Dominance at Jackson Hole:

The most far reaching speech at the Federal Reserve’s Jackson Hole meeting last week was...

Must-Read: As I always say, the key to making it an an economy--pretty much any economy--is to find something (a) that you can do, that is also (b) scarce and hard to copy, and (c) for which rich people have a Jones. It doesn't matter how useful the stuff you do or make is. You have a place in the economy only if you satisfy (a), (b), and (c) or control resources that satisfy (a), (b), and (c). It's what the seventeenth-century proto-economists called the diamonds-and-water paradox: how can carrying the most useful stuff on earth to where it is needed be so poorly paid, while selling useless flashy gewgaws is so richly paid? Scarcity and a rich people's Jones--or, as we say now as if it were an obvious and inescapable law of nature: supply and demand.

And as I have started saying more recently:

1. Human thighs and backs as sources of value started going out in the fourth millennium BC with the horse, and then in the eighteenth century with the steam engine.

2. Human hands and fingers as sources of value started going out in the eighteenth century with automatic machinery.

3. But human brains as cybernetic control mechanisms for sources of power and manipulation retained their value--nay, increased their value, as every domesticated animal and machine required a human-level controller. (Although very few of the jobs that added value actually required a Turing-class cybernetic control mechanism.)

   • But now, increasingly, we have robots--and the demand for human brains as cybernetic control mechanisms for sources of power and manipulation is dropping fast.

4. And human brains as information assembly and transmission mechanisms--cashiers, accountants, form-fillers, form-approvers, gatekeepers, database-enterers and so forth--gained enormously in value. (Although very few of the jobs that added value actually required a Turing-class cybernetic control mechanism.)

   • But now, increasingly, we have 'bots--and the demand for human brains as information assembly and transmission mechanisms is dropping fast.

5. That leaves smiles--direct personal services, plus human eyes, mouths, and voices as sources of motivation and persuasion.

6. That leaves genuine creative thought, which is, you know, rather difficult...

Charlie Stross: Two Thoughts:

The effects [of] universal functional telepathy (lies and all)... on how we handle business...

Must-Read: Martin Wolf: Capitalism and Democracy: The Strain Is Showing:

Confidence in an enduring marriage between liberal democracy and global capitalism seems unwarranted....

Must-Read: Very nice to see. Very good. But four brief whimpers:

1. "Structural reform" is a very dangerous thing to do in a low pressure economy. Moving people from loss-making improperly-subsidized industries into unemployment is, in fact, the very opposite of useful "structural reform". But that is what "structural reform" is--unless we also have a high pressure economy.

2. Even at its best, "structural reform" is not a substitute for proper monetary, fiscal, and financial regulatory demand management and stabilization policies. It is at most independent of them, and more likely something that requires that they already be in place.

3. We do not know whether we need large policy bangs, or whether a small policy bang will set in motion a powerful virtuous circle. We should not overpraise here.

4. The root political problems are that depression elsewhere in Europe is not a minus from the perspective of the political masters of a prosperous export powerhouse Germany, and that an inadequate economy in the United States is not a problem but an opportunity for Republicans in Congress as long as there is a Democratic president. Hence either those who vote for austerians the Bundestag and the U.S. Congress need to be convinced to take a more cosmopolitan view (hah!), or extra-electoral pressures need to be brought against austerian politicians. I have no idea how to do this, and no levers. But perhaps the international financial cosmopolitan clerisy of which Muhamed is a leading light could put forward some ideas, and build some levers?

Mohamed El-Erian: Jackson Hole Was a Missed Opportunity for a Policy Pivot:

Central banks policy tools alone are ill-suited to overcoming the challenges....

Storify: "Fighting with -------- on Twitter"!: A vice, best entertained not too often, but fun in small doses...

June 13, 2015_: I say: "No!":

One "Bush Ally":

The culture of the Bush operation will now be a Pickett’s Charge engagement campaign with his main opponents...

Zack Beauchamp: You can’t explain Trump’s conservative media appeal without talking about race:

Oliver Darcy... argues that Republican elites encouraged conservative voters to embrace alternative, hard-line right-wing media outlets--which made them powerless when those outlets turned on them by backing Trump. Darcy’s piece is thoughtful and well sourced, and you should read it in full. But it misses a basic part of the story.... Look at this list of words that don’t appear in Darcy’s story: “race, racism, Mexican, Latino, black, African Americans, minorities.” Race and racism are a huge part of the Trump story, inseparable from any meaningful account of how he succeeded. That’s because race remains a hugely important motivating force, independent of class or partisanship, in American voters’ political behavior. Ignore that almost entirely, as Darcy does, and you end up with a distorted analysis of Trump’s success.

Must-Read: Anna Aizer et al.: Do Low Levels of Blood Lead Reduce Children's Future Test Scores?:

Linking preschool blood lead levels with third grade test scores for eight birth cohorts of Rhode Island children born between 1997 and 2005...

Wikipedia: Battle of Rhode Island:

On the morning of August 28, the American war council decided to withdraw the last troops from their siege camps. Over the last few days, as some of their equipment was being withdrawn, the Americans had engaged the British with occasional rounds of cannon fire. General Pigot was also made aware of the American plans to withdraw on August 26 by deserters, so he was prepared to respond when they withdrew that night.

Read MOAR Over at Equitable Growth WTF?! A 15% chance that the Fed Funds Rate will be 4.75% or higher in 27 months? Only a 15% chance that the Fed Funds rate will be effectively zero in 27 months?

Janet Yellen: Figure 1:

I confess I do not understand how such a graph could be estimated and drawn. Read MOAR Over at Equitable Growth

Over at Equitable Growth: Larry Summers says that he is disappointed along three dimensions at what came out of the Federal Reserve's Jackson Hole Conference. I think Summers is right to be disappointed. Indeed, from my perspective, it was disturbing that there was not more connection between the academic papers on how the monetary policy toolkit might be expanded and the policy discussion.

Summers's view is that the policy discussion is seriously awry: "near-term policy signals... on the tightening side... will end up hurting both the Fed’s credibility and the economy.... The longer-term discussion revealed... dangerous complacency about the... existing tool box.... [And] failure to seriously consider major changes in the current monetary policy framework..." I think that gets it right:

• The Fed appears to me to be dangerously complacent,
• Both with respect to the short-term macroeconomic situation,
• And with respect to its ability to stabilize the economy over the longer term;
• Hence its current policies appear to me to be dangerously blind to current realities,
• And it is not seriously engaged in setting the stage so that the successors of current policymakers can have a chance at a quiet life. Read MOAR Over at Equitable Growth:

Must-Read: Indeed, I think Summers is right to be disappointed. From my perspective, the most interesting things about the Fed and monetary policy to come out in the past week were written by people who were not at the Federal Reserve's Jackson Hole Conference...

Larry Summers: Disappointed by What Came Out of Jackson Hole:

I had high hopes... billed as a forum that would look at new approaches to the conduct of monetary policy...

Over at Equitable Growth: Must-Reads:

• Patrick Wallis et al.: Puncturing the Malthus Delusion: Structural change in the British economy before the industrial revolution, 1500-1800: Accounts of structural change in the pre-modern British economy vary substantially...
• Matt Levine: Hedge Fund Results: Since the end of 2011, hedge funds as a whole have (1) produced negative alpha and (2) added almost $900 billion of assets...
• Richard Mayhew: A Thousand and One Posts: Wow, that last post was my 1,000th post here at Balloon Juice. I was not expecting that when I first got started here...
• James Hamilton: Too Systemic to Fail: Bryan Kelly at the University of Chicago, Hanno Lustig at Stanford and Stijn van Nieuwerburgh....
• Bradley A. Hansen: Ironic Origins of Libertarianism: "Some liberty-loving soul had donated a copy of John Hospers’s Libertarianism: A Political Philosophy for Tomorrow (1971) to my local public library... 
• Megan McArdle: Health Care Is a Business, Not a Right: You’ll die without food long before you’ll die without health care, and yet few people say we need to “take the profit motive out of farming”...

Most-Recent Must-Reads:

• Patrick Wallis et al.: Puncturing the Malthus Delusion: Structural change in the British economy before the industrial revolution, 1500-1800: Accounts of structural change in the pre-modern British economy vary substantially...
• Matt Levine: Hedge Fund Results: Since the end of 2011, hedge funds as a whole have (1) produced negative alpha and (2) added almost $900 billion of assets...
• Richard Mayhew: A Thousand and One Posts: Wow, that last post was my 1,000th post here at Balloon Juice. I was not expecting that when I first got started here...
• James Hamilton: Too Systemic to Fail: Bryan Kelly at the University of Chicago, Hanno Lustig at Stanford and Stijn van Nieuwerburgh....
• Bradley A. Hansen: Ironic Origins of Libertarianism: "Some liberty-loving soul had donated a copy of John Hospers’s Libertarianism: A Political Philosophy for Tomorrow (1971) to my local public library... 
• Megan McArdle: Health Care Is a Business, Not a Right: You’ll die without food long before you’ll die without health care, and yet few people say we need to “take the profit motive out of farming”...

Most-Recent Links:

• David Atkins: How Much Bad Press Can Trump’s Campaign Take Before It Implodes?: He’s only down by 5 points nationally... terrifying... but because it means there’s almost no bad press a Republican could possibly receive to allow them to lose by a landslide. Conservative voters are so locked into their hatred of anything “liberal” that even a man as openly vile and dangerous as Trump will probably manage to at least make it close on election day.
• Susanne Lohmann: Darwinian Medicine for the University
• Jonathan Chait: The Neocons Have Gone From GOP Thought-Leaders to Outcasts
• Russell Letson: Reviews Charles Stross: The Nightmare Stacks

Live from the Journamalists' Self-Made Gehenna: I see an extremely strange, weird, and wrong white-washing of Barry Goldwater by Louis Menand in the New Yorker...

Goldwater, according to Menand, was: "[no] kind of racist... a lifelong opponent of racial discrimination... did not want to campaign for the segregationist vote."

And yet, somehow, the campaign Goldwater ran and the organization to run it he built were very clear on what the first liberty he sought to secure was: The first liberty was the liberty to be free from the interference of the federal government in how your state, county, citizen, and town dealt with African-Americans:

Louis Menand: He Knew He Was Right:

Goldwater was not a segregationist, nor was he any kind of racist. He was, in fact, a lifelong opponent of racial discrimination...

Must-Read: I don't know if I dare show this to Joachim Voth, lest he be thereby driven into shrill unholy madness, and have to abandon his cushy chair at Zürich for one at Miskatonic University in haunted Arkham, MA...

There were a great many people who firmly believed and there was a very widespread sentiment that it was very important to keep the profit motive out of or to limit its influence over the grain trade. See, for example:

• Karl Gunnar Persson (1993): On Corn, Turgot, and Elasticities: The Case for Deregulation of Grain Markets in Mid-Eighteenth Century France

And, of course:

• Amartya Sen (1981): Poverty and Famines: An Essay on Entitlement and Deprivation

The view that when the stakes become high--matters of life and death--then market solutions can no longer be justified by the claim that they maximize a weighted sum of individual utilities, because the weight they then place on some people's utilities is zero. That's a very powerful argument. People should not pretend it doesn't exist:

Megan McArdle: Health Care Is a Business, Not a Right:

People need a lot of things. You’ll die without food long before you’ll die without health care, and yet few people say we need to “take the profit motive out of farming”. There are some, to be sure, but this was never a widespread sentiment even when food was a lot scarcer and more expensive). Why is health care special?...

Must-Read: Bradley A. Hansen: Ironic Origins of Libertarianism:

"Some liberty-loving soul had donated a copy of John Hospers’s Libertarianism: A Political Philosophy for Tomorrow (1971) to my local public library... 

Eleanor Roosevelt: My Day:

NEW YORK, Tuesday—I hope that both Russia and Marshal Tito are being fully informed of the reaction of the people in this country toward Yugoslavia's unwarranted and cruel attack upon American transport planes and toward Russia's backing up of the Yugoslav Government. To us, it seems a flimsy excuse to say that a number of planes, no matter how many, had flown over and taken pictures. It would be more than stupid to use transport planes for aerial photography. And if pictures were taken, what do either the Russians or the Yugoslavs think we would do with them that could be harmful to those countries?

Must-Read: One of the pieces of the Bagehot rule for dealing with a financial panic is the penalty rate piece: the managers, option holders, and shareholders of institutions that need the lender of last resort should not profit thereby. Lender-of-last-resort loans should be made at painfully high interest rates. And if the institution is too close to insolvency to stand a penalty rate, the right policy is for the central bank to TAKE THE EQUITY.

I have never heard an explanation from anyone in the Treasury or the Federal Reserve for why so little was done to implement this piece of the Bagehot rule in 2008-2009:

James Hamilton: Too Systemic to Fail:

Bryan Kelly at the University of Chicago, Hanno Lustig at Stanford and Stijn van Nieuwerburgh....

Live from Sarkozy-Le Pen Land: Yascha Mounk: [Via a Friend:][]:

Via a friend: "The French police were here." pic.twitter.com/BUT9LBW2kC

— Yascha Mounk (@Yascha_Mounk) August 27, 2016

Must-Read: Patrick Wallis et al.: Puncturing the Malthus Delusion: Structural change in the British economy before the industrial revolution, 1500-1800:

Accounts of structural change in the pre-modern British economy vary substantially...

Must-Read: Richard Mayhew: A Thousand and One Posts:

Wow, that last post was my 1,000th post here at Balloon Juice. I was not expecting that when I first got started here...

Must-Read: Matt Levine: Hedge Fund Results:

Since the end of 2011, hedge funds as a whole have (1) produced negative alpha and (2) added almost $900 billion of assets...

Why? This seems to be the best explanation:

Live from Trumpland: Storify: As Ye Sow, So Shall Ye Reap: Working for Fox News: Jay Rosen on how the Republicans cooked their goose by creating the alt-right-media-complex

Over at Equitable Growth: Must-Reads:

• A Brief History of (In)equality: No Longer So Fresh at Project Syndicate - Equitable Growth
• Why Do We Talk About "Helicopter Money"? - Equitable Growth
• Matt Markezich: Weekend reading: "Down the Jackson Hole" edition - Equitable Growth
• Nick Bunker: How U.S. consumption behavior changes during recessions - Equitable Growth
• Nick Bunker: Retiring in the United States amid low interest rates - Equitable Growth
• Olivier Coibion et al.: Monetary Policy and Inequality in the United States: We study the effects of monetary policy shocks on—and their historical contribution to—consumption and income inequality in the United States since 1980...
• Mark Thoma: Why We Need a Fiscal Policy Commission: During the Great Recession, monetary policymakers were aggressive and creative....
• Ruixue Jia (2014): The Legacies of Forced Freedom: China's Treaty Ports
• Gabriel Chodorow-Reich and Johannes Wieland: Secular Labor Reallocation and Business Cycles: We study how economies respond to idiosyncratic shocks which induce reallocation of labor across industries....
• Ruddier Bachmann and Eric Sims: Confidence and the Transmission of Government Spending Shocks: In a standard structural VAR, an empirical measure of confidence does not significantly react to spending shocks and output multipliers are around one...
• Marc Andreessen: Software Programs the World: We frequently have delegations from all over the US and the world who come in and ask: “What can we do to have our own Silicon Valley?”...
• Pierre-Olivier Gourinchas et al.: The Greek Crisis: An Autopsy: The Greek crisis is one of the worst in history, even in the context of recorded ‘trifecta’ crises – the combination of a sudden stop with output collapse, a sovereign debt crisis, and a lending boom/bust...

Must-Read: Pierre-Olivier Gourinchas et al.: The Greek Crisis: An Autopsy:

The Greek crisis is one of the worst in history, even in the context of recorded ‘trifecta’ crises – the combination of a sudden stop with output collapse, a sovereign debt crisis, and a lending boom/bust...

Must-Read: Olivier Coibion et al.: Monetary Policy and Inequality in the United States:

We study the effects of monetary policy shocks on—and their historical contribution to—consumption and income inequality in the United States since 1980...

Must-Read: Marc Andreessen: Software Programs the World:

We frequently have delegations from all over the US and the world who come in and ask: “What can we do to have our own Silicon Valley?”...

No, the stock market is not an "efficient" price discovery mechanism in any sense. But you are almost surely not one of the people who can exploit this to make a lot of money easily:

Joe Seligman (1983): Can you beat the stock market?:

FORTUNE — Most people interested in the stock market fall into one of three categories...

1. academic scholars who doubt that anybody really knows how to beat the market;
2. professional investors who indignantly reject this view of the matter; and
3. amateur investors who also believe that you can beat the market but don’t realize how controversial this assumption is.

I have long been a partisan of the first group, and until the last year or so had assumed that its case was airtight.

Guinness: noitulovE (2005):

Harry S. Truman: Letter to Bess Wallace:

Commerce, Okla. August 26, 1916

Dear Bess:

Your very good letter came day before yesterday in the morning but I have been so hard pushed trying to raise this week's payroll that I couldn't write. I succeeded in doing it, although I hope I never have such another time doing it. The banker had broken the National Bank Act by paying me out last week and it looked as if he'd either have to bust it wide open or turn me down today.