Pearlstein: Central Park's Economic Policy Lessons

Washington Post columnist Steven Pearlstein was online Wednesday, August 20 at 11:00 a.m. ET to discuss the importance of creating public institutions to nourish community and why investing in public infrastructure can have big payoffs.

A transcript follows.

Read today's column.

About Pearlstein: Steven Pearlstein writes about business and the economy for The Washington Post. His journalism career includes editing roles at The Post and Inc. magazine. He was founding publisher and editor of The Boston Observer, a monthly journal of liberal opinion. He got his start in journalism reporting for two New Hampshire newspapers -- the Concord Monitor and the Foster's Daily Democrat. Pearlstein has also worked as a television news reporter and a congressional staffer.

Pearlstein was honored with the Pulitzer Prize for commentary for his columns about mounting problems in the financial markets. His award was one of six Pulitzer Prizes won by The Washington Post this year.

Read Pearlstein's latest columns.

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Arlington, Va.: I haven't been to Central Park for many years, but your article makes me want to go back to that beautiful facility. Could there be lessons for Washington's Mall and other public spaces? And further, I think this illustrates the importance of investing in our nation's, or region's and our local governments' infrastructure. Yet, neither of the presidential candidates seems to be focusing at all on this vital area.

Steven Pearlstein: You are certainly right about the Mall. It's great that Chip Aldrige is leading the private effort to raise money for the Mall, but it shouldn't be necessary. This is the sort of investment that the federal government should be making here and in the national parks everywhere. People love their national parks, they are proud of them and they are willing to pay taxes to support them. Why, on earth, would any politician want to decrease funding for this?

There are so many other areas of federal spending that have so much lower payback -- economic, political, social. I so yearn for a president and Congress that would be willing to fight the special interests that support these secondary and tertiary programs so it could free up money for the things people really care about -- and then do them up right. Do less, but do it better. That's my bumper sticker.

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Danvers, Mass.: Is there a lesson in the park for the Fannie and Freddie situation? It seems these companies may be seen as public infrastructure that was privatized with poor results. Perhaps there are other examples.

Steven Pearlstein: Bad analogy, John.

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Baltimore, Md.: Steve: Loved the column on Central Park. And your account of civic behavior in the park only reinforces something that I have believed, and experienced, for years. Contrary to the stereotype, New Yorkers in the main are a civil and pleasant bunch. They may sometimes be brusque, but I have encountered far less outright rudeness in my many trips there than I have in D.C.

Steven Pearlstein: That's true -- New Yorkers get a bum rap.

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New York, N.Y.: Steve,

I live in lower Manhattan and I have to disagree with something you wrote in today's column: "What we haven't had is the political will to raise the taxes necessary to make these high-payoff public investments."

I don't know if you're aware, but the folks who live in New York City are already taxed up the wazoo: our family's marginal state & city tax rate is over 10%, and let's not forget about the nasty AMT (and we're hardly rich). I'm no crazy fanatic tax cutting conservative who wants to abolish taxes, but I can't stand the tax burden that is placed, and keeps getting placed, upon us.

The pinheads in Albany keep doling out favors to their public union contributors and the amount of unfunded pension & health care liabilities our state faces is staggering. Maybe our subways would run better if we weren't paying transit workers to retire at 55 with lifetime free health care. Maybe if police officers weren't retiring at 50% pay with lifetime free health care at 40 our city would have more money for public works.

I'm all for public works, public transportation, etc., but it takes real money! Our legislators have forgotten that they work for the taxpaying public, not the public employee unions. I think our tax rates are high enough: just look at how many folks moved out of New York in the last twenty years.

Steven Pearlstein: I'm sure there is plenty of waste, fraud and abuse in public spending in New York, and the tax rates seem high, that's for sure. But New Yorkers also enjoy a higher quality of public services than other places, it seems to me, whether it's education, parks, the quality of the drinking water, the state of its roadways. Obviously, it's not perfect, but I think we have gone too far in cutting tax rates in this country, and that we'd have a better balance with slightly higher taxes, better services, better control over entitlement spending, a focus of discretionary spending on fewer higher-priority programs and a balanced budget. A tad more Sweden, a tad less Mississippi.

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Chicago, Ill.: Hey Steve, in your view, should the Federal Government step up to buttress Chicago's bid for the 2016 Olympics?

Steven Pearlstein: No. Chasing Olympics, like chasing conventions, is a losing proposition. There are too many people out there who are willing to lose money on such things and overbid. The United States doesn't need the Olympics. Let other countries host it.

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Laurel, Md.: Steve, this column addresses my two pet economic issues, though I'm not sure if they relate to each other:

1. A lot of public spending improves our lives a LOT more than is measured by GDP. How much is it worth to us to visit public parks, drive over new bridges, or know the police are two minutes away by phone? A lot more than we directly pay. When conservatives decry the way public taxation and spending have reduced our standard of living, they use over-simplified measures that treat public spending as if something that doesn't cost the end-user anything must not have any value.

2. Central Park is probably the most perfect example of a public amenity used by rich and poor alike. By contrast, the city of Philadelphia has largely been abandoned by the non-poor, and its parks are notorious for their unmowed grass and locked restrooms. Central Park dates from a time before zoning and density limits created price-discriminatory political jurisdictions. Any modern suburb doing the same thing would find clever ways to keep out the people who haven't payed their way in.

Steven Pearlstein: Right on both counts. One of the biggest fallacies underlying the Republican economic policy is that all that counts is growth in measured GDP. Growth is good and it does solve a lot of economic problems, but it is not a complete measure of happiness, satisfaction, standard of living. That's why I say that it's perfectly rational for us to say that we'll give up a bit of GDP growth if we can buy some fairness or sense of community or economic security.

Obviously, New York has benefited from the financial services and media boom, creating lots of income and wealth that has now been used to fix up Central Park. Philadelphia hasn't been so lucky and, yes, it's very, very visible when you walk or drive through it. And then it becomes a self-reinforcing downward spiral -- more rich people move out to the burbs to live and work, city revenue declines even further, etc. etc. Reversing that trend is very hard and requires serious investment and some risk taking on the part of businesses, developers, etc. It has worked in some cities (NY, SF, Boston, Chicago) but not in others (Detroit). It's very hard, and one wishes we had a president who understood and cared about this enough to make it a priority. The key, it seems to me, is fixing the public schools so that middle income people feel they don't have to move out to educate their kids. Then you need to direct public investment dollars away from roads and into fabulous public transportation. You have to get crime firmly under control. And if you do those three things, then I think the market would naturally take care of the rest and begin to move people and jobs away from the exurbs and back toward the central city. But that is easier said than done. As the folks at Brookings have pointed out, however, the federal government could help by beginning to channel its investments in that direction in a coordinated manner.

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Madison, Wis.: Excellent column, Mr. Pearlstein. I'm glad I'm not the only one who was impressed by the tremendous civic pride New Yorkers show not only for Central Park, but for the entire West side of Manhattan. There are bike paths and countless "pier parks" being created on the Hudson, all contributing greatly to the quality of life on the island.

Cut to California, which because of its "no new taxes, ever" fetish has been steadily retreating from public investment, including schools. As a result, the quality of life in anywhere other than the most exclusive communities is diminishing.

What will it take to overcome this dogmatic opposition to all taxes?

Steven Pearlstein: A president or two who are willing to stop talking down the public sector, who visibly enjoy the public realm and are willing to stop talking about tax cutting. It is really disappointing to me, frankly, that Obama has locked himself in to another round of tax cutting for anyone with income below $250,000. We don't need another tax cut. We need and want better services and a balanced budget. You don't get that by giving out more tax cuts and expect to make it up by simply taxing the rich.

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Falls Church, Va.: One thing NYC does right in its parks (which D.C. doesn't) is that it recognizes that these are spaces for human activity. New York parks have public performances and commercial vendors. D.C. parks, with the National Mall as the worst offender, are arid, stately spaces devoid of public amenities.

Steven Pearlstein: I couldn't agree more. The result is that all along the perimeter of the mall, you have this wall of trucks selling hot dogs and soda pop that are ugly and boring in their offerings. We should be able to do better than that.

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Chicago, Ill.: Hey Steve, What was your take on the NY Times magazine profile of Nouriel Roubini?

Steven Pearlstein: Enjoyed it, although I'm not sure it quite captured Nouriel's passion and determination to be a provacateur. It also didn't challenge him enough economically in terms of why he has come to his very gloomy conclusions.

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Fort Collins, Colo.: Hi Mr. Pearlstein,

Your article today about Central Park reminds me of one I read about the collective value of old growth forests in Oregon being more than the value of the lumber, since it raises the value of property, encourages tourism, etc. This makes me wonder whether when economists do cost/benefit analysis on things, they should consider the broader effects. For instance, if pollution and childhood asthma are correlated, do politicians or economists ever make the case, say, that if you spend money on public transportation, community health care costs will decrease? (likewise NYC could say spending taxes on Central Park will increase it's revenues). Or is doing such holistic analysis fraught with too many assumptions?

Steven Pearlstein: You are right that when we do cost-benefit analysis, we need to think a bit more broadly. But I have to warn you that it is easy to take this too far, to the point that you could justify any expenditure as an investment, like the Alaskan Bridge to Nowhere or providing daily music lessons to every child in every public school. To do these things right, you have to be conservative and disciplined and not look at any investment in isolation to what else is going on in the world, or likely to go on.

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Arlington, Va.: It strikes me as a bit simplistic to use parks as a teaching tool about tax policy. Parks are among the cheapest, easiest, and most broadly popular things that government does.

There are two problems with funding parks, though. One is that because of their broad popularity, governments threatened with tighter budgets (or even just smaller increases) put them on the chopping block first, in hopes that by holding them hostage to public outcry will lead to more money for government operations all around. A good example is the 1995 federal shutdown -- remember the media's disproportionate focus on the closure of the Smithsonian's exhibit on Vermeer?

The other problem that parks face is that while they are widely popular, that popularity is dispersed through the whole population. Parks generally lack dedicated special interests and lobbyists, particularly at the local levels. It's easier to cut those funds because there won't be a hard core of offended park users screaming their heads off, like there would be if other, more targeted programs were cut.

These problems are structural and will occur at any level of taxation. NYC has been uniquely flush with cash in recent years because of Wall Street's enormous run of success. Now that that gravy train is slowing down, don't be surprised if NYC's commitment to Central Park falters as well.

Steven Pearlstein: Some good points there, although I wouldn't want to push them too far. But what I would say is that if somebody now tries to cut funding in a way that deteriorates the quality of the experience in Central Park, you'll hear a big political hew and cry over it because so many people now use and enjoy it and make it part of their daily routine.

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Washington, D.C.: Dear Steve Pearlstein:

When I go to New York, I too find going to Central Park to be a life-affirming and even life-changing experience. And Central Park's financial structure has been extremely influential nationally - there are now almost a dozen urban park conservancies operating - in St. Louis, Atlanta, Houston, Pittsburgh, Boston, Louisville, San Francisco and elsewhere.

Where they work, the parks look beautiful. But there are more than 20,000 parks in our 75 largest cities, and obviously they can't each have a conservancy.

It seems to us that there is a role for the federal government, even just with information and coordination if not on a full-fledged funding basis. But here is the structural problem: parks are covered by the Interior Department, cities are covered by the Department of Housing and Urban Development. Interior doesn't know about cities; HUD doesn't know about parks. The federal government isn't structured to help save or create a great urban park, even if it wanted to.

As a creative, inside-the-beltway financial observer, what approach would you take on this?

--Peter Harnik, Director, Center for City Park Excellence, Washington, D.C.

Steven Pearlstein: Peter, I admire the work that you do but I don't really think there is a serious federal role here. This is one of those things that cities ought to do because all the benefits are really accrued locally. The federal government should concentrate whatever time and attention it has for parks on its fabulous national parks, which are also national treasures. As for information and best-practices, I think in the modern era that stuff pretty quickly gets shared naturally, without having to have a federal program.

I guess a second point I'd make is that, since fixing parks is relatively easier than fixing school systems or dealing with the social pathologies associated with the urban ghetto, I'd leave this one to the locals and the private sector and concentrate federal money and efforts on urban education, public health programs, pregnancy prevention and things like that.

I wouldn't expect you to agree. But that's my off-the-top-of-the-head thoughts on that.

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Columbia, S.C.: I think one of the things that needs to be done with public infrastructure is to professionalize the process of selecting investments. Let Congress set the goals of investment, and let professionals select the areas that need it.

Unfortunately investing in infrastructure becomes a lesson in pork. Whether it's Jim Clyburn's bridge from Lone Star to Enoree here in S.C. or Ted Steven's "Bridge to Nowhere."

I argue that these investments have much more cost than the dollar value. Because professionals have to set up two systems - sure I-95 needs investment and is justifiable. But they also have to deal with a bridge that serves maybe 2,000 people that isn't.

Then, the state/locals must maintain it. Which they can't.

Steven Pearlstein: Actually, we do have a professional process for evaluating federal infrastructure investments in most cases, but then Congress jumps in and begins earmarking money in a way that undermines and bypasses that process. Having said that, the professionals often take a very narrow approach, as they have at the DOT, for example, which has been reluctant to fund the extension of the DC Metro system out to Dulles airport, which in the broadest sense is penny wise and pound foolish. Again, I'd point you to the work being done at Brookings, which has been pushing for a more comprehensive, regional approach to federal infrastructure investment. I think if we had such an approach, Congress might be more willing to leave it to the experts, since the experts right now are often required by law or regulation to take a very narrow view of costs and benefits.

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Princeton, N.J.:"The idea that every dollar collected in taxes is a dollar lost from the economy is nothing but political propaganda." Wow! Talk about hitting the nail right on its head! Conservatives who say that higher taxes always inhibit growth and cutting taxes always stimulates growth, not only ignore the evidence, but base their beliefs on what you properly label "political propaganda."

But I warn you, Mr. Perlstein, that even if you show them the error of their ways with facts and figures and carefully reasoned arguments, you will not change their minds for they use faith-based reasoning, and faith (not only religious faith) is the ability to hold beliefs not supported by or even in contradiction with facts.

Steven Pearlstein: Got that right.

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Washington, D.C.: In Washington, the National Park Service controls most of the parkland. But the Park Service seems unable to create the same types of private-public structures that have made New York's Central Park so great - eroded lawns, no signage, degraded facilities, limited vending/concessions. Just look at the state of the National Mall or Rock Creek Park. Do you think the bureaucratic and legal limitations of the Park Service might be limiting the economic potential of D.C.'s parks?

Steven Pearlstein: It may be the Bush administration, which basically is hostile to the idea of collective action and government outside the national security area. It may be federal laws, which hamstring the Park Service. It may be a culture at the Park Service that is more oriented to big rural national parks than to urban parks like the mall. Or it could be lackluster, unimaginative management by political appointees and top civil servants. Probably it's some combination of all of those things. I'd tell you one thing, however: heading up the Park Service is one job I'd love to have.

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Falls Church, Va.: There's one big omission in today's column: New York City's renewed commitment to public order. Rudy Giuliani went too far at times, but without him and William Bratton reforming NYPD procedures and bringing a climate of safety to NYC in general, and Central Park in particular, the park would not be a success today.

That's why the culture of Central Park cannot be duplicated in D.C., for instance. The MPD is a non-entity, absent from public view except when someone has been murdered. Our parks are open-air homeless shelters and largely lawless, especially after dark. Until those circumstances (and the public perception of them) change, parks will never be much of a part of our civic life here.

Steven Pearlstein: I agree -- it does take politicians who are willing to take short-term heat, and really focus on things in an almost heavy-handed way, to fight the inertia and the special interests enough to actually get something done. That's why I'm such a big admirer of Chancellor Rhee here in the District, who has many of the same qualities.

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Trenton, N.J.: Hi Steve. Please let me know if I have the facts right: Since oil is a global commodity, whatever oil we were to find in America, would it not simply be offset by the oil producing nations? Thanks.

Steven Pearlstein: No, it would not. It would be good to drill and find more oil, not because it would have a huge impact on the global price of oil, but because it would mean we could import less and keep the windfall profits here in the U.S.

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Princeton, N.J.: I get a little upset when people complain that taxes are too high. It all depends on what you get for your taxes. You certainly can complain that you don't like the way taxes are spent, but just to say they are too high is not reasonable.

Look, during the period 1947 - 1973, marginal rates averaged 70% (they reached 93% under Eisenhower). Real median wages went up 50% during that period and only 25% since. Sweden has double the tax rate of the US, but the per capita growth of their GDP 1995 - 2005 was higher than ours. Spain had 50% higher taxes and 50% higher growth. If you spend the taxes for things like Central Park, you not only spur the economy, but you make life better for the citizens.

Steven Pearlstein: Exactly. It depends on how efficiently and wisely you spend and invest public funds. And growth also depends on how efficiently and wisely you raise it. If you have the wrong mix of taxes -- for example, too much tax on capital -- you can indeed impede economic growth. But as a general rule, within a wide range of reasonable options, there is no correlation between tax rates and economic growth rates across time and countries. Those are the facts.

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Hot dog carts: Seems to be the carts are selling the same selection of Popsicles in Central Park and on/next to the Mall.

Steven Pearlstein: You are probably right about the menu, but the carts are in places that are more convenient and they are aesthetically more pleasing.

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Columbia, S.C.: The one thing that makes me laugh about investment decisions in infrastructure is the complete lack of understanding of collective benefits. Sometimes a road makes sense collectively, but not on an individual basis. So, you can't charge people a toll in a way that would support the road. That's one economic reason for the existence of government. What government needs to do is do a better job of figuring out those situations.

Another thing, to answer a previous poster. Tax rates do not affect long run growth in an economy. If tax payers get something for their taxes (roads, education, health care), than it's typically a wash. Look at the %GSP that state and local government takes up in Massachusetts. It ranks in the middle, and toward the bottom of the pack. %GSP rather than per capita is a much better way of analyzing taxes.

Only in very corrupt societies does one see government spending drag down economic growth.

Steven Pearlstein: So we're in agreement, then.

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Bethesda, Md.: What do you think would happen if taxpayers were allowed to earmark some of their taxes, say 10% of what they pay, for services they particularly support? Imagine if I were allowed to earmark parks, public education, and subsidies for organic/sustainable farming on my tax form. That would shake things up.

Steven Pearlstein: You are right that one reason the public-private model works is that it allows government to get some very powerful feedback from people in terms of their priorities, since in the case of the Conservancy, they are actually making voluntary contributions. But I have my doubts about the earmarking on the tax form, frankly, because it may not really be a very good reflection of people's overall priorities. I don't think programs for mentally disabled kids would come out very high on that score, but I surely wouldn't want to spend any less on that.

What you would hope, of course, is that members of Congress would be able to pick up the priorities of their constituents and have them reflected in the budgeting process. But by and large they are not. The process has been captured by special interests and a coterie of powerful legislators, who negotiate among themselves how to divvy up the pie based on their political power. If all the members had to sit down and collectively go through a priority setting exercise, rather than simply leaving it up to the leadership, I think you'd get a very different result.

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Chicago, Ill.: Hey Steve, I loved your column last week on Alan Greenspan. It was quite the picking apart. Do you think Ben Bernanke has a greater understanding of the inherent instability in financial markets i.e. Hyman Minsky?

Steven Pearlstein: He does now.

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Silver Spring, Md.: Steven, every now and then I see a comment about how everywhere, including the Washington area, should be more like Manhattan -- namely, filled with high-rises. I always reply that we have no Central Park. Living in a high-rise surrounded by concrete is miserable. But I really fear that our small-scale, tree-filled neighborhoods will be wiped out by high-rise development, on the theory that more density and more population growth is "good." If those high-rise dwellers have no leafy neighborhoods to walk and run through, they will be very unhappy.

Steven Pearlstein: I think we have a long way to go before we get Manhattan densities around here. We could probably move a bit in that direction without denying people the ability to have a more leafy existence within short range of the center city.

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Washington, D.C.: What measures would you use to define a successful tax policy? How do you recommend defusing the political nature of taxes?

Steven Pearlstein: The first thing I'd do is have Democrats stop thinking that the tax code is primarily an instrument for redistributing income, and have Republicans stop looking to the tax code as an instrument of macroeconomic and microeconomic policy, and instead realize that the purpose of the tax code is to raise money fairly and efficiently and with the least distortion to the economy for vital government services.

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Franconia, Va.: Hello Steven,

"Cut to California, which because of its "no new taxes, ever" fetish has been steadily retreating from public investment, including schools. As a result, the quality of life in anywhere other than the most exclusive communities is diminishing.

What will it take to overcome this dogmatic opposition to all taxes?"

Before a state can start investing in la dolce vida it needs to come to grips with, and prioritize, its budget. Both California (to take your previous poster's example) and New York have MONSTER budget deficits. Both state governments are in crisis mode. I'll volunteer my time and build a climbing wall at a park in Franconia if it means avoiding higher taxes to cover the MASSIVE shortfall those two states are suffering. As it already is, Kaine said we'll be making cuts to education and transportation to make ends meet. Public money for parks can wait until better days (like 2000-2005, NOT 2008/9).

Thanks!

Steven Pearlstein: Here's my variation on your theme: Government should figure out what it needs to spend for services and then stick to that in good times and bad. In good times, it would mean running up a budget surplus, which could be used to tide things over when revenues are down. The problem is that in good times, the liberals, stupidly, want to spend every dime and the conservatives, stupidly, oppose any temporary increase in taxes to build up a big rainy day fund because they argue that it will "kill" the expansion. If both sides would alter their views a bit, we'd all be better off.

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Arlington, Va.: One of the aspects that is very different about how the U.S. does public investments now, and how we used to do it, and how countries such as France do it, is the lack of priority in the U.S. on civic design. We take much more of a spreadsheet priority as in what the ROI can be calculated to be. For example - the focus on stadiums and convention centers as methods of public investment. Often these facilities actually degrade the environment in which they are placed. Parks (particularly in urban environments) also could use more of a focus on civic design - not only on what happens inside the boundaries but what uses and frontage types are placed around it.

Steven Pearlstein: You advocate taking a more environmental approach than I would take, but it's a reasonable point of view. I think the convention center hotels are lousy investments on a purely economic basis.

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Washington, D.C.: To Princeton: Correlation does not equal causation. There's no way to know how much America's growth would have been in the post-WWII era absent high taxes. Growth could in fact have been much higher.

Steven Pearlstein: Fair point. But given enough examples in enough countries over a long period of time, I think we have enough data to conclude that there is no correlation between tax rates and growth rates. Correlation doesn't mean causation, but no correlation does imply no causation. Contrapositive, I think they call it.

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Parks?! Really?: Honestly, aren't public parks seen as somewhat of a luxury?

Steven Pearlstein: No, actually not, particularly in an urban area where people don't have back yards.

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Wilmington, N.C.: Mr. Pearslstein, loved your piece with regards to the appropriate maintaining and developing of a national, historical landmark. My question is: do we have any examples of public sector projects where, thinking out of the box, private donations instead of well structured taxes were used? It would seem like an idea that would instill even more civic pride, participation by citizens being more direct than nebulously paying required taxes or in cases where projects are somehow unpatriotically outsourced to foreign entities.

Steven Pearlstein: I'm not against the public-private model. It works sometimes, as it has in a city like New York that is big and has lots of very rich people. But it is not the only good model, and a straight tax and spend model might be better in other places. I wouldn't get too dogmatic about the model, and simply be practical in figuring which would be best in each situation. And remember, too, that a public-private model works with parks but it probably wouldn't work with national defense or taking care of the disabled.

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Anonymous: Before Falls Church gives too much credit to Rudy, he or she should note that almost every major city showed similar improvement during that period, and many did it without the divisive nature of his policies. Could it be that the good economy had more of a role in reducing crime than putting a cop on every corner?

Steven Pearlstein: Yes, the good economy was a very big factor. And I'm sure Rudy didn't have to step on as many toes and be as divisive as he was. But the history shows that the public figures who fix big problems usually wind up making some big enemies because there were very powerful interests that helped to create the problems in the first place.

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Princeton, N.J.: In your answer to Washington about causality, you got it just right. (I can't believe how much we agree today). I am not saying that high taxes cause growth, but that they may not inhibit growth. Quite a different can of worms.

Steven Pearlstein: Indeed.

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Princeton, N.J.: Since we very badly need to redistribute wealth and income or at least stop the drastic redistribution that has been going on since 1973, if we can't use taxes, what can we do?

Steven Pearlstein: Obviously, the market is distributing income more unevenly than it used to. And, to the degree that this has meant no income growth for most households, that is a bad thing. Taxes can be used to tilt things a bit. But to rely on them exclusively may create tax rates that are just too high at the top and have bad economic consequences. Why not try to deal with the fundamental problem-- the increasingly unequal market outcomes -- through other means, as well, like restoring the right of workers to organize into unions, or supplementing stagnant incomes at the bottom with more and better public services, paid for by eliminating farm subsidies or unnecessary spending on homeland security. Let's be more creative about this, shall we? And let's also remember that income equality is not the point of the exercise -- it's reasonable income growth for everyone.

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Steven Pearlstein: That's all for today folks. "See" you next week.

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