Senate Special Aging Committee Holds Hearing on Global Aging and US Economy

Senate Special Aging Committee Holds Hearing on Global Aging and U.S. Economy

CRAIG:

Good morning everyone.

The U.S. Senate Special Committee on Aging will convene.

Today's hearing will explore the economic of global aging. When I say global aging, I'm talking about the human population of the world growing older. This hearing will—was called to help us better understand the opportunities and the challenges that lie before us on issues of concern to all Americans but especially, the baby boom generation and their children.

The topics of global aging or topic is directly related to many of the important issues this Congress has under consideration.

The issues include, the ones strengthening Social Security, improving the quality of Medicare, improving long-term care, increasing economic opportunities for older workers, promoting economic prosperity and providing for national security.

Deliberations on these issues tend to focus on trends on the United States. Little attention is give to the broader impacts of global aging on our nation.

And so we are here this morning to improve our understanding and to build a record so we in Congress can make policies based on the best available information.

In the United States, birth rates are roughly at replacement levels. Americans are living longer—and that's a wonderful blessing. We understand all too well the pressures an aging society will place on our fiscal health and as the baby boomers begin to retire.

The United States faces the challenges of an aging population that if not addressed, could hurt our children and grandchildren. We in Congress have the opportunity to address these pressures.

But there is another issue that deserve attention, the impact of global aging on the U.S. economy. And today, we have invited several top experts who will speak to this issue.

We will hear from the familiar fiscal—about the familiar fiscal opportunities and challenges ahead. We will also hear about labor and financial markets, economic growth, and the geopolitical opportunities and challenges for us.

Our first witness really needs no introduction. Chairman Greenspan, I want to thank you for agreeing to appear before us today. We welcome to the Special Committee on Aging.

We have on our second panel, three top thinkers of the economics of global aging.

Joining us today on the second panel will be Paul Hewitt, Director of the Global Aging Initiative at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, Sylvester Schieber, Director of Research at Watson-Wyatt Worldwide and Gary Geipel, Chief Operating Officer and Vice President at the Hudson Institute.

So I want to thank all of my witnesses beforehand for being here today. We look forward to your testimony, and before I turn to chairman Greenspan, let me turn to my colleagues here on the committee and the ranking member, Senator Breaux.
Senator?

CRAIG:

It certainly will become a part of the record, Mr. Chairman. Thank you for being here. We will move to a round of questions for those senators who are here. And thank you Senator Dole for attending.

You've obviously offered up some substantial challenges to us as it relates to an aging population in this country and the rest of the world.

Mr. Chairman, historic experience suggests that the impending global labor shortage has the potential to unleash an era of technological progress. If this were to occur, what would happen to relative returns fore savings and investment?

GREENSPAN:

Well, Mr. Chairman, I think it depends to a large extent on the type of investment that is made. It's fairly apparent, if you just think in terms of what would happen if you had a decline in the population but the same capital infrastructure, it's pretty obvious that if there's a surplus of capital and the rate of return would fall.

But if you can find technologies which enhance the capability of individuals to produce, or as I like to put it in the extreme form, if human being produced robots which did the same thing they did, then clearly there is a very significant rate of return on that.

Our actual equivalent is in high tech area in computers which clearly have enabled us to do types of things which human beings do and in many cases, do (inaudible) manner.

Those types of investments will tend to have fairly significant rates of return.

CRAIG:

So I think I know the answer to this one, but what effect would this have on the value of financial assets then?

GREENSPAN:

The value of financial assets is going to depend to a large extent on two things. One of course is the innovations and the nature of the types of investments that are made. But also how we address and resolve the issue of the huge increase in benefits which are projected to start sometime in the beginning of the next decade, and under current services budgeting would create a very substantial increase in the unified budget deficit,higher real interest rates and very—presumably—a weakening in the capital values throughout the economy.

And so it really depends on when—whether we in fact create these innovative types of equipment which could be a major solution to the shortage of labor.

But unless we restructure the underlying governmental programs, all of the potential benefits that could accrue from these innovations could be unwound because of fiscal distortions which work they way through the financial system and then moving real long term interest rates higher much invariably move the capitalized value of other assets lower.

CRAIG:

Let me ask this last question then. You indicated that delaying initiatives in strengthening Social Security and in improving Medicare. And our colleague just left to go down to a Medicare hearing where we're looking at some reform, will make program adjustments more painful for baby boomers when they eventually retire.

Can you describe the potential economic effects of the delay on the baby boomer—of delay on the baby boomer generation and their children?

GREENSPAN:

I'm sorry, delaying changes in the programs?

CRAIG:

Uh, huh.

GREENSPAN:

Well, first, I think one of the better ways of getting a context here is I always find if you ask yourself when you're dealing with major programs, government programs, which effect the economies, ask yourself, "How would the economy adjust if those adjustments had to take place, solely in the private sector and there were no government programs?" I mean, for example, we can very readily determine that if the big rise in Social Security and Medicare and Medicaid benefits are only raised at the rate that the GDP was rising, saying from the year 2010 and forward, and you therefore obviously covered a very significantly less proportion of for example medical expenditures and then indeed the population would warrant, then you ask yourself, "Then how would the rest of the—if it were needed to be done, be financed in the private sector?"

And clearly what would happen is that medical services, which are highly valued in the system, would probably able (ph) out the second and the third cars that we see in a lot of people's garages.

They would probably spend less on certain leisurely and entertainment issues. In other words, what you would get would largely be what we get now is a allocation of consumption expenditure over goods instead (ph) products.

In that environment, you would probably not get a change in the budget deficit. You probably would not get increases in interest rates. And therefore, what all of this tells you is that it is crucially important to find a way to appropriately bring the private sector into the issue of financing medical care in a much broader way than have done if we're going to get appropriate solutions between Medicare publicly financed and whatever part of it that is not publicly financed, make certain that it is financed appropriately with whatever incentives, whatever we have to do in the private sector.

In other words, it's going to require something different from what I would call the hard edge problems that you get if you have basically non-dated programs when we're dealing with a very large shift from people in the working age population into retirement.

So I think there are solutions here, and I think that the sooner that we begin to think of how to phase in, the easier it's going to be because there is no doubt that while economists might not be terribly good in making long-term economic forecasts, demographers are extraordinarily accurate in making forecasts of what the population will look like 10 and 15 years ahead.

CRAIG:

Well, thank you. Let me turn to my colleague from Oregon, Senator Wyden.

CRAIG:

Thank you.

Mr. Chairman, I want to go a little further on this question of health care productivity. We have sort of touched indirectly on it. But one of the things that—one of your many contributions, it seems to me was early on you pointed out that information technology a few years back was going to give us a chance for this incredible opportunity for productivity growth. And I'm curious about your thoughts as it would apply to health care in particular.

And it seems to me, for example, that electronic medical records is an extraordinary opportunity to increasing health care productivity. I mean, we know if someone sees three doctors today, there's a very high likelihood that Dr. Three won't know a whole lot about what Dr. One and Dr. Two have done. And so you've got to basically start all over.

I see nurses when I go to health care programs spending astronomical amounts of time charting, for example. If they had a palm-like device on their hip, they could probably handle a lot of that.

I'm curious if you have given any thought to steps that would increase health care productivity basically taking what you've said about IT information technology as related to the economy as a whole, and brought it to the health care field, particularly as it applies to government.

If you look at these government health care programs, I think it's fair to say we are technological Ludites. I mean,we are not making the investments in these technologies that it seems to me could do in health, in terms of increasing productivity which you have correctly advocated in other areas. And I'm curious about your thoughts with respect to improving health care productivity.

GREENSPAN:

Senator, I think you're hitting on one of the areas where we're still back in pre-World War I phase. I'm still looking at prescription written by doctors. I can no longer—I can't understand them now any more than I could when I was young.

There is a remarkable amount of actual paper that goes on in prescriptions and then getting (ph) into the health care records of individuals. And I think you're quite right. We now have the technologies to have integrate a very significant amount of medical records of individuals into central systems.

You do have a privacy issue here, which as you are aware, has been one of the major problems preventing that. And I'm not sure how you get around it .

But the technology is there to very significantly reduce administrative expense.

And remember, a very large part of improved technology in medical care does not come from bio-medicine or from galogical insights. It comes from information technology systems. I mean, MRI is a system which has got very little to do with biochemistry. It is an electronic insight of you know, of remarkable importance.

And I think that the synergies of various technologies are clearly where a great deal of overall innovation is going to occur, and especially in the medical area.

CRAIG:

Well, I thank you for that. If you will recall some weeks ago, we had a hearing—we had a couple of witnesses that touched on that as it relates to the kind of voluntary effort of counseling that's going on now with our seniors, but the technology side of it for all is very, very significant.

Mr. Chairman, one last question from me. You talked about large increases in payroll tax would suppress economic growth and reduce the incentive to work in what will likely be an era of labor shortages.

CRAIG:

This seems to make a strong economic argument against raising payroll taxes in an effort to strengthen Social Security or Medicare in any significant way.

Can you elaborate on how increases in payroll taxes would suppress overall economic growth?

GREENSPAN:

Well, all taxes, by their very nature, suppress growth. The question is that they are there hopefully not just to suppress growth, but to raise revenue for purposes that the government thinks are important.

I think with respect to Social Security and Medicare as a first approximation, I would certainly say that not to solve the problem by moving up taxes.

You may end up with at the end of the day with a whole series of adjustments that you've made, ad there's a small part that still have to be done, and you may decide that it's the least worst final alternative. But one has to keep in mind that raising taxes is not merely a revenue raising phenomenon. It has negative impacts on the tax base from which you're making those revenue increases.

But Mr. Chairman, again we thank you very much for coming this morning and expressing your views on this very important issue. And you have offered us great insight. I think the record we build here—as you know, we're not an authorizing committee—but we value our ability to be the town crier on occasion as many of the authorizing committees move in certain areas that we're involved in, to build records that we can then make available to our colleagues here in the Senate as decisions are made.

So again, thank you very much.

We appreciate it.

GREENSPAN:

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

CRAIG:

Now let me invite our second panel forward.

Again, let me repeat, joining us today on our second panel, will be Paul Hewitt, director of the Global Initiative at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, Sylvester Schieber, Director of Research at Watson-Wyatt Worldwide and Gary Geipel—correct pronunciation, Gary?

GEIPEL:

Absolutely.

CRAIG:

All right—Chief Operating Officer and Vice President of the Hudson Institute.

Paul, will start with you. If you will pull the microphone as close as possible to your comfort, so that all can hear, please proceed.

CRAIG:

Gary, thank you. Gentlemen, thank you very much for your testimony, both your spoken word and of course, your full statements will become a part of the record.

Paul, I am most struck by the global aging linkage to so many policy issues. And of course that's what we're about there.

The word you used to describe these linkages was pervasive. How informed are officials in other countries regarding this linkages?

HEWITT:

I think in a word, they're not. They're not well informed at all. We have managed to put together a fairly impressive group in the global aging commission, that has, I think, helped us spread the word. But for the most part, people are surprised.

Prime Minister Guserol (ph) of India, former prime minister, confessed after we first had him to one of our meetings, that for the first time he realize that India's population ws not just a burden to the world. I recall sitting down with the chairman of the foreign affairs committee in Bundestag, the German parliament. And after a while, after a fair amount, he just started shaking his head. And he said, "You know, if we'd begun 10 years earlier we would have had a chance.

So politicians I think haven't really focused on these questions. They need to. IT's essential that they do.

One of the reasons why they don't though, is the problem the challenge of global aging is entirely unprecedented. Imagine a society that is beset by chronic labor shortages, that has to get used to the idea that job creation is not the best measure of economic success. In fact, it's intelligent job shrinking that we'll need to be doing.

And of course, a new phenomenon, shrinking numbers of consumers. This is posing credible sectoral problems throughout the global economy and particular national economies like Japan, where you have vast over-capacity in construction.

One out of five workers in Germany is in construction. They think this is an essential sector. But the demand for construction is declining because German population now is shrinking. There are more deaths than births.

So all of things, I think, are interconnected. And it's essential that we do the education. We really don't have much time. And so your efforts here are very much appreciated.

CRAIG:

North America seems to be in a much better position—I think all of you speak with a certain degree of optimism about our position relative to the rest of the country—or the world, obviously with caution and assuming or making certain assumptions.

But Paul, North America appears to be in a better position regarding aging pressures than other nations or regions of the world. Can you describe a likely scenario for the economies, the economic and geo-political relationships between the United States and its neighbors, Mexico and Canada in 10 or 20 years?

HEWITT:

I think to do so with any degree of confidence would be impossible because so much depends on what happens outside of China. Gary Geipel was mentioning that if there were another big terrorist shock, that the low down global trade, it could certainly gum up the borders as it did directly after...

CRAIG:

In other words, walls built.

HEWITT:

... 9/11. Yes.

And then of course, what are those contingencies? Well, Japan doesn't look like they're going to last the decade with out a default and an IMF workout. What would that do to China's economy and to the U.S. economy and to Southeast Asia, which all regard Japan as a major export market.

You know, then there's the larger questions of capital productivity. You know, how do we get capital to be more productive and not just labor so that you know, we get higher returns on our money.

Now in this context, some of the relationships between Canada and the U.S. and Mexico, the NAFTA countries, you know, evolve in different directions. Obviously, if you look to the end of this 20 year period, in Mexico you're going to see a great diminution of immigration.

Our immigrants are going to come from different places, wherever that may be. Because not just Mexico, but virtually all of Latin America is going to be aging at a very, very rapid rate.

And increasingly, of course, they will be capitalizing on their demographic bonuses and they won't be seeing so many people abroad. There will be plenty of opportunities at home.

Growth is going to slow in Canada. The birth rate is 1.6. That's about one-third below replacement. So even though if Canada has very robust immigration, it's population will stop growing and this will dramatically slow the growth of markets and certainly the growth of productive potential.

And so Canada is kind of a piece of Europe on our Northern border. And of course we could see that Europe then becomes a big drag on global growth as Japan has become.

In fact, all of this has contagion (ph) potential too. And so some of these issues of course really are going to require very sensitive management and sensible management in U.S. diplomacy.

Doctor, you were wishing to get into that question, I see. And certainly all of you can join in and make additional comments if you choose. Please.

SCHIEBER:

To the extent that the developed world is facing the prospects in coming years, certainly over the next two or three decades of labor shortages. Mexico for us is a tremendous asset.

SCHIEBER:

Today, the Mexican working age population is almost identically the same size as the German working age population. By 2030, the Mexican working age population is going to be twice the German working age population. It's a phenomenal shift going on.

As Paul mentioned, Canada is reading almost the point of stability in terms of their labor market. My guess is that the Canada will continue to be a strategic partner because of our cultural linkages, the proximity, the length of the border...

CRAIG:

Resources.

SCHIEBER:

... resources, a whole variety of things, although we do discourage them bringing lumber down here.

CRAIG:

Well, at the moment.

SCHIEBER:

Yes.

CRAIG:

Put a few of (inaudible) my people out of work.

SCHIEBER:

I know. I go up there frequently and they remind me about this every time I go up there.

CRAIG:

Yes.

SCHIEBER:

Canada, I think, will continue to be an important partner. But to the extent that we have labor shortages, we have a nation right here on our border where there are tremendous cultural linkages. And I think there's a fantastic opportunity here if we can get this relationship worked out, to really take a step ahead relative to the other nations, developed nations in this world.

I mean, if you about what is encircling Europe and the European Union, Northern Africa, the Middle East, on over into Asia, and the nature of those populations that are exploding and the cultural differences and the reluctance on the part of the Europeans to allow them into their societies. The potential relationship we have here ought to be one that we look at very carefully and try to develop in an extremely healthy way.

CRAIG:

I think that's phenomenally an astute observation.

One of the questions I get asked quite often when I'm out in my state or traveling the country: What's wrong with the French? And it relates to the specific issue at hand at the moment that the world is debating. And I've said, you've got to look at—what's wrong with the French are the French.

I mean, in regards to their whole history and their culture and how they interact. But within that population base is a phenomenal in migration of Muslims over a short period of time that can create great political unrest if they move in certain directions and are trying to factor that into their decision-making. It's the lack of the ability to assimilate them into their culture, it literally put them into, if you will, not a ghetto, but a separate suburb.

SCHIEBER:

It's a ghetto.

CRAIG:

Yes. All right. I didn't want to use that word, but you're right.

SCHIEBER:

Well, when it quakes it's a duck.

CRAIG:

Well, Doctor, your testimony highlights the mutual benefits of U.S. and European investment flowing into developed countries. From the outside looking in, it seems the cultural values undermine the rule of law in many of these countries. What ideas do you have for improving the free flow of business investment into the developing world?

SCHIEBER:

Well, we have institutions that we sponsor here that reach out into nations all over the world and try to help them structure their economies in ways that will enhance the welfare of their people; organizations like the World Bank, International Monetary Fund, groups like that. I believe that they have spent a lot of their energies in recent years focusing on things that maybe should not have been necessarily a first priority.

One of the reasons that behavior is different in some of these less developed countries is that graph (ph) was the way that people got things done. It does not mean that the governments cannot be organized and reorganized and business processes cannot be reorganized to be carried on in a different fashion. I believe we ought to devote more of our energies to helping these countries establish legal frameworks, to establish regulatory frameworks, help them get their capital markets created so there is an infrastructure that will take our capital and allocate it across the market efficiently.

I think in some regards we've made tremendous progress in places like China over the last decade. There's still a great way to go. There's a natural tendency when capital goes into China to try to link that capital up with state-owned enterprises.

And then, it does not become an investment, it simply becomes a way to hide the true cost of these rotting industries that they have. And we really need to work directly government-to-government and through these other entities to try and put in place true market structures that will allow us to take capital and invest it there and have it be used efficiently. Because if that happens, we've tremendous opportunities to raise the productivity and the standard of living of workers there and to repatriate the returns on that capital to help, actually finance the consumption of a larger aging population without having to do it purely on the backs of our workers. I think we really do need to think about this.

(UNKNOWN)

If I can just add one short point? It's that a lot of this investment that's happening in China is coming from companies in the form of foreign direct investment, like Midas (ph) over there, Citigroup is there, General Electric is becoming a major employer, Volkswagen regards China as its second-largest market in the world, larger than the United States. And so, you know, some of this process is going to be accomplished through multinationals, but, you know, still formal, I think. These are substantial role for the multilateral institutions to focus on institutional reform.

CRAIG:

Doctor, one last question to you. Because I guess the think that intrigues me now—you know, during my colleagues years and younger years, one of the things to talk about was the dynamics of the great Japanese economy and all that was going on over there. And we were trying to search out why we couldn't have some of our institutions interrelate (ph) more like theirs did and all of that. And yet, now, of course, we've seen almost a decade of stagnation or flat economy in Japan.

You talked a bit about Japan's economic situation. Are there policy changes that Japan can make to improve their economy now? How do they work their way out of where they are?

SCHIEBER (?):

Frankly, the bottom line is, I'm not sure they can work their way out of where they are right now.

CRAIG:

Somebody referenced to default. Maybe it was you, Doctor.

SCHIEBER (?):

No.

CRAIG:

Oh, it was you Paul. And that's why I thought that question fit most appropriately now.

SCHIEBER (?):

First of all, they do have tremendous structural problems. The way their corporate sector works, the interrelationship with the corporate sector, with the banking sector and so forth. But they are an extremely old society, even relative to most of the rest of the developed world. They are way ahead of us.

Their fertility rates are very low; around 1.25, 1.3. And my guess is they're going to fall. They have virtually no immigration. It's just a closed society.

They have very high rates of saving, personal savings. There's a table in my presentation that shows almost an astronomical, but they have totally squandered that over the last decade. And I think this is the lesson we really need to focus on, because in so many other ways we're very different.

We do have dynamic regulatory structures that allow our industries to change and for their to be a true creative destructive process. We have a lot of immigration. We have high fertility. Many of their problems, we don't have.

But what they have done over the last decade is, they have taken this very high rate of personal savings, they have taken this moment, and for all practical purposes, they squandered it. They squandered it largely through government deficits that they run. They've run from one of the lowest government debts in the developed world to the highest. It's around 1.5 times GDP now.

(UNKNOWN)

It'll be 160 percent his year.

SCHIEBER (?):

Fantastic debt that they've run up. You know, they built the big airport out in Osaka that's now sinking into the sea. And the massive infrastructure project that are not going to provide any rate of return to that society over the long-term.

The thing we have to be very careful about is spending our resources through government regulation or government investment that are not going to net us a return. We have to very careful about protecting dying industries. We need to think very seriously about what we're doing with the steel industry. We need to think carefully about that.

We also need to be very careful about sucking out the savings that does go on in the personal sector of our economy and using it through deficit-financing at the government level, to pour it back into consumption for our relatively young, healthy, what we call elderly population. Because we will eat up our savings in a way that will not add to the value of our overall welfare.

So I think that the waste of the resources they have is something we should pay very close attention to. I don't think they can work their way out of most of the other things.

CRAIG:

The follow-up was going to be lessons learned from them that we ought to apply.

Dr. Geipel, in your testimony you touch on the strength of the voluntary sector, the folks who engage in these activities contribute greatly to the vibrancy of our society. This is, I think, clearly an opportunity. Do you have any policy recommendations at the federal level to better enable the voluntary sector?

GEIPEL:

I think you're very right to highlight that as an opportunity and something that really sets the United States apart. Again, at the risk of straying into Euro-bashing, you know, I spent a lot of time on the continent. And I'm struck by the, you know, the retirement patterns that seem to take people in one of two directions, either toward very inward focus on sort of the tendings of the garden or to whatever few number of grandchildren might exist on the one hand. Or what I would call on the other extreme hand, kind of manic tourism that's sort of notching of, you know, the number of countries one could conceivably visit before strengths dissipate and so forth.

And it seems to me what's missing in that—you know, I don't want to disparage either—once (inaudible) pursuits, but what's missing is the opportunity for something in between, which is something larger than one's own home and garden, but, you know, focused on the community as a sort of a giving back. That with the opportunities that we have through our churches, you know, community organizations, volunteer groups, which I do believe can significantly offset particularly low-skilled labor shortages that might arise in the future with regard to care of individuals in nursing homes, dealing with indigent populations and so forth. But it's clearly an opportunity for us.

What can federal policy do there? I would say, you know, essentially it's looking to stay out of the way. It's one of those things that seems to be working reasonably well in the United States. And what federal policy can do is simply, you know, look for additional opportunities to encourage private philanthropy which very much undergirds the voluntary sector, doing things which, I think, the federal government is already doing. I think the tenor of the so- called faith-based initiative right now is appropriate, because what it does is simply look at what can the federal government do to remove barriers to level the playing field between faith-based organizations, voluntary groups and government agencies with, you know, paying attention all the way to the separation of church and state.

But, you know, what can government do to simply level that playing field to engage those organizations more? The efforts that are being made to create, you know, federal programmatic opportunities for volunteering. I realize there are sometimes controversial to what extent public dollars should be used. Or does that create, in effect, paid volunteers? My attitudes is that it reflects an important experience, things like the Senior Corps now and so forth that reflect, you know, an important experiment. There may be certain individuals in retirement who respond more to those types of incentivised programs for volunteering. So I see no harm in the federal government trying to experiment what the impact of those.

But in essence, I think the bottom line is the best thing the government can do is simply not to do anything that would constrain the health or growth of that sector.

CRAIG:

Between, if you will, I'm not coining a phrase, I'm reusing one that's become—that's deemed attention over the last few months: Old Europe versus new Europe.

I've watched and understood that countries emerging out from behind the Iron Curtain and re-entering a market economy and a more democratic representative process recognized in some instances that they couldn't get all done through government. That they had to work to stimulate a voluntary sector back into their economy.

Is there a difference today between a Poland or a Czechoslovakia and, let's say, a France or a Belgium as it relates to volunteerism and a greater support? Or is this just a European phenomena of the little garden in the backyard, I think you said, checking off the countries?

GEIPEL:

No. I think there are some differences. It's interesting me. To refer to Chairman Greenspan's comment that in earlier times the shortage of labor in the United States urged us to look elsewhere toward technological innovation. I would argue, as you've already alluded, that the absence of the alternative of big governments in some of these emerging post-communist nation has caused more attention to be paid to private alternatives, philanthropic alternatives.

The community foundation movement, for example, which has been driving the United States is, I would argue, further along in some parts of Central and Eastern Europe than it is in the West. That's an indication.

I also think that we shouldn't overlook—I've already alluded to this in my previous answer—the role of the church, of various churches of all faiths, you know, faith-based action. You know, Poland an obvious example, a more religious society, religious in the sense of active participation and practice, not, you know, identification in the secular sense, but active involvement, Poland clearly, and other parts of Eastern Europe, as well, that's more of a role. And I think, again, leads people to find opportunities through the church that, perhaps, they're not finding in places like Germany and France.

CRAIG:

Gentlemen, I wish I had more time. I have more questions, but I'm out of time and I expect probably you are, too.

So we thank you very much for coming, being with us today and helping us build this record. We'll continue to work on this issue. We think it' extremely valuable that collectively, I and my colleagues, know more about and look at what we do here, policy wise, through some of these glasses of understanding. I think it'll be helpful in the long-term. Obviously, in the next decade we've got some very critical policy choices to make here that have long-term impact, and I think you've reflected on those today.

So thank you very much.

The committee will stand adjourned.