and there is really no one better to speak about this than uwe reinhardt. he is an internationally known expert, and i'm sure known to all of you here in this room. he is well regarded for his humor, also for his keen insights and his ability, his keen insight and his ability to communicate these very important issues around access. >> thank you very much, nancy. first of all, i want to add my thanks to bob reischauer's remarks to you. these meetings take a lot of intellectual activity, is it important, someone has to frame it, and then invite the people who would present. and that's only half of it, and then someone has to figure out the logistics, get everyone on line, get the lovely room, get c-span. and what is remarkable about this, if you had to purchase all of this from a regular consulting firm, you would be talking big, big bucks. but most of that is provided sort of free or at or below cost. so the american people should sometimes think these washington outfits that lay on these things, to help reform the policymakers but also for the media and th

but cognizant of the fact that uwe reinhardt -- where is he -- will appear later and regale us in one way or the other, i thought i might end with a little humor, even though it begallos humor and, can i -- what do i do? okay. and, this is just to make this point that fiscal futures can change both up and down, dramatically, in very short periods of time. when i was thinking about what i might say, i came across this chart which was from a talk i gave 8 years ago. and, at the time, we were enjoying a four year period of budget surpluses. and at that time there was a lively debate taking place about how the fed would conduct monetary policy once the public debt was paid off. the projection at that time was that, yes, in 2009, if we devoted all of the projected surpluses to paying off the debt, we would have no public debt. at this point, if we chose only to use the social security and trust fund surpluses, it would take us maybe until 2011 or 2013, to do this. and the question was, you know, how could the fed conduct monetary policy, when all of the public debt was paid off? and the an