bibacks, according to the first nine months of this year, are about 516 billion, okay. 516 billion.hat does that mean? well, for a half a trillion of seed corn, isn't going to be around for the future. what do i mean by that? well, listen, i'm not the first. this is say well worn subject. of course as we get close to liftoff potentially for normalization, the notion of how many fewer shares there are and how that's affected earnings per share and the fact that, you know, the reason that you need to keep a little seed corn is because if you eat all the corn, what are you going to plant the next year, the year after that? it's a lot -- the same and the effects of the future economy. so if we look at it in the most p palatable perspective, all things being equal, might stay on the low side. but where's the worst power going to come from? not to mention the notion that anybody who doesn't understand how low interest rates have given this lazy recycling of cash, some of it back to investors, whether it's good or bad. but it really isn't the best thing. i'm sure when you think of it in te

whether it was bibacks and takeovers. we had beaterman beaterman beaterman on today. we could talk about all the complicated issues. brought up ben bernanke's book. those who defend the fed. in the end, it was the access to cheap capital that was one of the driving forces on the underpinnings of the finance side of the takeovers and buy backs. so where does that leave us? just on the surface, what isn't talked about much, is there's going to be a swath of america when rates go up that get higher income. then we have the cans and the can'ts. the people who have been able to get credit. do you think they're going to suffer by a small normalization of rates? i don't think so. they've had access to credit. what have they done with it? those who can't, well, they haven't been able to access in many areas. think mortgages here. due to some of the dodd/frank issues and the overreaction to what really was a government issue that fed into doing anything and everything and throwing the kitchen sink at the part of the economy, the culture that provides funding for mortgages. now