but cognizant of the fact that uwe reischauer, 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 be-gallows humor. what do i do? this is to make the 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 today, last night, i came across this chart which was from a talk i gave eight 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 surpluss 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 2011 or 2013 to do this, and the question was, you know, how could the fed conduct monetary policy when all the public debt was paid off? and the answer that most economists gave