Economic Update: Seattle Firm Converts to a Worker Co-op

Summary

Economic Update with Richard D. Wolff
Episode: Seattle Firm Converts to a Worker Co-op
Date: November 29, 2018

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Episode Overview

In this episode, host Richard D. Wolff analyzes current events through a critical economic lens, focusing on themes of corporate power, government subsidies, and systemic inequality. The episode culminates in an in-depth interview with Matthias Shiplainer, founder of Seattle’s Metis Construction, which recently converted to a worker cooperative. The discussion centers on the practicalities, challenges, and transformative potential of worker co-ops as alternatives to traditional capitalist enterprises.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Corporate Subsidies: The Amazon HQ2 Controversy (00:10–11:15)

• Wolff critically examines the Amazon “HQ2” bidding war between U.S. cities, highlighting:
  • Massive taxpayer subsidies (over $5.5 billion) granted to Amazon, a highly profitable corporation led by the world’s richest man, Jeff Bezos.
  • Lack of accountability on promised job creation:
    • “Politicians and the corporate leaders throw out whatever number they think will impress the public...there’s no follow up. No one ever knows how many jobs were created, of the type or salary promised.” (03:16)
  • Failure of public officials to condition subsidies on concrete deliverables or penalties for non-performance.
  • Wolff's summary: “Socialization of the costs, privatization of the profits. That’s how American capitalism works.” (06:30)

2. Popular Protest & Public Power: Lessons from France’s ‘Yellow Vest’ Movement (11:16–13:43)

• Wolff discusses the November 2018 mass mobilizations in France protesting high fuel prices:
  • Emphasizes the French tradition of direct action rather than passively waiting for elections.
  • Illustration of government accountability:
    • “Government is there to serve the people, the French insist. And if they don’t, they’re right there in the streets.” (13:17)
  • Critique of the lack of similar action in the U.S.

3. Corporate Bankruptcy & Inequality: The Sears Case (13:44–15:10)

• Criticism of $19 million in bonuses for Sears executives during bankruptcy proceedings while thousands of employees get little or no severance.
  • “When you run a business that way...that’s what you get. While the company’s working, it takes care of the people at the top. And when the company dissolves, it takes care of the people at the top.” (14:40)

4. Drug Prices & Political Reality (15:10–16:23)

• Pfizer announces price increases on 41 drugs despite political promises to reduce drug costs.
  • Wolff notes the ineffectiveness of both rhetoric and regulation:
    • “And right after they announced it, what we got from Mr. Trump was silence.” (16:10)

5. Inequity in Public Services: California Wildfires (16:24–16:47)

• Discussion of wealthy individuals hiring private firefighters, contrasting with underfunded public fire services for everyone else.
  • “The very rich are not relying on the community and the community services... They’re getting their own.” (16:36)

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Interview: Metis Construction’s Transition to a Worker Co-op

(16:48–28:30)

Introducing Metis Construction and the Transition (16:48–18:09)

• Matthias Shiplainer recounts founding Metis Construction in 2008 with a group of skilled contractors.
• The co-op conversion process began in 2012 and was completed in 2016.
• Motivation:
  • “It just didn’t make sense, to be honest, to do this any other way.” (17:34)

Why a Worker Co-op? (18:10–19:50)

• Dissatisfaction with the construction industry’s traditional, hierarchical structure.
• Desire for a collaborative, non-hierarchical environment to take on larger projects and enjoy work.
• “We’re craftspeople, we like to build things. We didn’t want to work...for other contractors. I don’t know that any of us had had a really great experience doing that.” – Matthias Shiplainer (19:03)

Business Advantages of Worker Co-ops (19:51–21:09)

• Data-driven advantages: Worker co-ops are more productive and profitable; higher worker retention and lower costs for training/hiring.
  • “Co-ops are more productive, they’re more profitable than traditionally held companies...lower costs in terms of training, lower costs in terms of recruitment.” (20:42)
• Personal fulfillment:
  • “There’s nothing more quintessentially human than the desire to participate in the shaping of the circumstances under which you live and work.” – Matthias Shiplainer (21:09)

Ownership Arrangement – The Worker Trust Model (22:35–24:51)

• Metis Construction is owned by a worker-ownership trust, designed to ensure perpetual worker ownership.
• Profits go primarily to current workers; responsibility to steward the company for future craftspeople.
  • “The trust owns it for the benefit of the workers...the trust provides a way to ensure that that will not happen. If you convert the company, it will stay worker-owned in perpetuity.” – Matthias Shiplainer (24:11, 24:39)
• Unique approach: Ensures company can't be sold off or reconsolidated by any member into private ownership.

Challenges in the Transition (24:52–26:36)

• Retaining necessary industry roles (project manager, lead, carpenter, etc.) but redefining them in non-hierarchical, collaborative terms.
  • “Having those positions doesn’t imply the hierarchy. ...we have a lot of new staff coming in. And so there is a process of enculturation, if you will...” – Matthias Shiplainer (25:52)
• Transition is a long cultural process: “We’ve grown up in a very different system...it’s an ongoing process.” (26:13)

Solutions & Workplace Culture Building (26:37–28:18)

• Emphasis on role rotation to prevent rigid hierarchy buildup (e.g., Shiplainer’s recent shift to hands-on carpentry).
• Instituted “pizza and policy workshops”: Monthly company-wide gatherings where all employees—members and non-members—rewrite workplace policies and vision together.
  • “Once a month the entire company...just rewriting the rules. Basically...that process has been...remarkable.” (27:45–28:18)

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Notable Quotes & Moments

• Richard Wolff on Amazon subsidies:
  “That’s not a public-private partnership. That’s the private ripping off the public on a grand scale.” (07:24)
• Matthias Shiplainer on human fulfillment:
  “There’s nothing more quintessentially human than the desire to participate in the shaping of the circumstances under which you live and work.” (21:09)
• On acculturation challenges:
  “It’s an ongoing process. To be honest, we’re still really working on building a culture...that part’s been far more challenging than I imagined.” (26:13)

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Key Segment Timestamps

• 00:10 – Opening, Amazon HQ2 analysis, corporate welfare
• 11:16 – France’s ‘Yellow Vest’ protests and government accountability
• 13:44 – Sears bankruptcy, bonuses for executives vs. workers
• 15:10 – Pfizer drug price hikes and political promises
• 16:24 – California wildfires and inequality in public services
• 16:48 – Introduction of Metis Construction interview
• 19:51 – Advantages of worker co-ops (productivity, profitability, retention)
• 23:06 – Metis’ trust ownership model
• 25:15 – Challenges and role of hierarchy in worker co-ops
• 27:45 – Culture-building: “pizza and policy workshops”

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Conclusion

This episode uses timely examples—Amazon subsidies, French protests, the Sears collapse, drug pricing, and California wildfires—to interrogate the failures and inequalities of late-stage capitalism. The feature interview provides a tangible, hopeful alternative through the lens of a worker-owned and managed business, offering practical insights, honest reflections, and a model for transforming workplaces and economies alike.

Transcript

[A]

Welcome, friends, to another edition of Economic Update, a weekly program devoted to the economic dimensions of our lives. Jobs, debts, all the kinds of income issues that make our lives the way they are. I'm your host, Richard Wolff. I've been a professor of economics all my life. And I hope it has prepared me well to offer you these economic updates about that economy we depend on, live in and that shapes so much of what we do. Well, much of the last two, three weeks and even earlier, has been devoted to a discussion across all mass media in the United States about the activities of two of our major cities, New York and Washington, D.C. basically. And one of the richest and biggest corporations in the United States, the Amazon Corporation, whose CEO, Jeffrey Bezos, is now the richest person not just in the United States, but as far as we can tell, in the world, with a reported wealth in excess of $150 billion. Personally, here was the issue. For those of you that may not have paid attention. Amazon wants to build a second headquarters. And it invited cities and states across the United States to compete with one another to bid, if you like, for Amazon to locate their second headquarters in that particular state or and or city. So we had a spectacle actually been going on for over a year, a spectacle of cities and states and the politicians who run them, begging literally on their knees for the money, the jobs, the investment to come into their jurisdiction. A pretty amazing spectacle. Democratic institutions, or at least supposedly so, begging for corporations to do what they otherwise would have to do without being begged. Long story short, New York City and state won. And so did Crystal City in Virginia and the state of Virginia. Together, these jurisdictions, states and cities will bring a split headquarters, two parts, one to the suburbs of Washington, D.C. and the other to the suburb or actually part of New York City on the edges of New York City. Five and a half billion dollars is the amount of money that the New York Times reports will be given. That's taxpayer money will be given to an already highly profitable company that has made its CEO the richest person on earth. By the way, five and a half billion dollars is an enormous amount of money. If it were split between these two cities, it could transform them. It could make the subways of New York, for example, beautiful and clean instead of their current condition, which is roughly the opposite. It could make Crystal City in Virginia able to provide all kinds of services, but that money is not going to be used for the subways of New York or for the services because it's being given to one of the richest companies in the world. And it's $5 billion. Which for example, if it were taken away from Mr. Bezos, would still leave him the richest person on earth, but would allow these two cities and states not to use taxpayer money for something other than providing services to, to the majority of the people in those jurisdictions. But I, I'm even more angry, if you like, about such a thing. Here's just a couple of dimensions for everyone to understand. First, the number of jobs that this is supposed to bring has been said to be 25,000 jobs. That's what the mayor of New York said would come to the New York area. That's what apparently the company has also said. Well, I've been involved in these kinds of projects many times in my life. The politicians and the corporate leaders throw out whatever number they think will impress the public. Why? Because there's no follow up. No one ever knows how many jobs were created. Were they created of the type of jobs that were promised at the salaries that were promised in the time frame that was promised? The answer is nobody checks, nobody follows up. We'll never know. And if in fact we wanted to hold the company to doing what it promises to get that subsidy, well then we would make conditions, wouldn't we? We would say like when we hire a construction company, if you get the job done when you say you will, fine. But if it takes you an extra month, there'll be a penalty to pay. Why not say to Amazon, you create the job, 25,000 jobs at the salaries you've said and you do it within two years. Or we go back and collect the taxes you should have paid anyway, rather than give you a subsidy because you haven't delivered on your glowing promises. We didn't do that. We made no connection. We of the people of New York or the people of Virginia, no conditions of fulfilling anything. The 5.5 billion that will be given of taxpayers money will generate many good profits for Amazon. The profits will be kept private for Amazon. But we the people are paying more than half the cost of this project. Socialization of the costs, privatization of the profits. That's how American capitalism works. And this is as ugly an example of the undemocratic injustice of this system as anything I have seen in a long time. When the mayor of New York said this is one of the most large projects of this public private partnership, all I could think of was that's not a public private proper partnership. That's the private ripping off the public on a grand scale. My second update has to do with France and a lesson from France on November 17, 700 locations across France were the site of the same demonstration. People wore yellow vests across the country in protest against the high prices, particularly of fuel. Fuel to run your car or your truck, and particularly diesel fuel. The French government, in cahoots with French oil companies, had raised the prices repeatedly and the French people had enough. And very interestingly, this captured everybody's attention, as of course, anything like that would. Something in excess of 300,000 people participated in these demonstrations. Given the population difference, that would be the equivalent of several millions of people doing that in the United States. But of course it doesn't happen in the United States. The French people are famous since the French Revolution of going into the streets to. To make things happen. They don't there wait for the election so that a politician figures, oh, I do something two or three weeks before the election and then I can go to sleep and forget about the promises I make until the next election where three weeks before I'll again make lots of promises. No, no, no, no, no. Not in France. They don't wait for the elections. They make sure that they are changing the attitudes of people long before the election. So by the time the election comes, the politician who hasn' should is already in deep trouble. And so it is for President Macron, Emmanuel Macron. He is now at the lowest level of popular support he's had since he got in there. If there were an election now, he wouldn't be the dog catcher, let alone the president. Government is there to serve the people, the French insist. And if they don't, they're right there in the streets, changing the politics by exposing leaders that don't do what the people need. My third update has to do with a dissolving company. Sears Roebuck, an icon of American economic history. But what struck me this last week was the provision that the Sears management, as it goes through bankruptcy, the ending of Sears, wants to set aside $19 million in bonuses to top executives who stay with the through the bankruptcy proceedings. This is remarkable when there are thousands and thousands of CS Roebuck employees who have been denied any severance pay, or if they make big enough noise, eight weeks of severance pay, little or nothing for the mass of the employees. 19 million in bonuses for the executives at the top. When you run a business that way, with a tiny number of people at the top, the way capitalism organizes it, that's what you get. While the company's working, it takes care of the people at the top. And when the company dissolves, it takes care of the people at the top. There's a lesson here. There's a lesson here. And in the second half of today's program, we will have an interview with a group of workers who made their company go from a capitalist company to a worker co op. Very interesting. And I urge you to stay with us about it. The Pfizer drug company last week announced it's increasing the prices on 41 key medications produced by Pfizer. Why am I telling you this? It isn't all that remarkable. Well, President Trump and the GOP have been promising over and over again to do something about drug prices. By something they mean bring em down. And what do we see one of the biggest drug companies in the world doing going the other way they need to for their profits? They explain. Yes, of course. And so here's an example in which all the words, all the verbiage, all the lip service of the Trump GOP government about what they're going to do comes up against the reality that these prices are set by private corporations. And when they feel the need, and after a little bit of time, when they can posture as though they are listening to this president on that subject and listening to the mass of people suffering from high drug prices, once all of that hoopla is done with, they go back to quietly doing what they've always been doing was raising prices, not lowering them. And right after they announced it, what we got from Mr. Trump was silence. Much of what the Trump administration is promising to turns out not to happen or to take a long time. And to be fair, that's not unique to Mr. Trump and the GOP. It's not that different in terms of the previous administrations from both parties. Then too, this last week there were the terrible fires in California. My heart goes out, as all Americans does, to the suffering there, the loss of life, the loss of homes, the devastation. It really was quite something to see. Some of the pictures of the fire ravaged areas looked like you were looking at another planet that never had had real life there. But the economics of it once again is what we're concerned with here. And what struck me there was a lesson. Celebrities, wealthy celebrities, it turns out, were able to save their homes in part because they had private firefighters. They weren't reliant on the public service of fire departments that all the rest of us are, that we pay taxes for. It turns out that rich people and big corporations who get out of paying their fair share of taxes, as we've reported on this program many times, then use a portion of the money they don't pay in taxes to hire their own private firefighters who will give them the protection they want and then they don't have to pay for the protection for everybody else. A public service that we share as members of a community in a democratic way are disappearing in America as the country splits into a small number of very rich and everybody else. The very rich are not relying on the community and the community services, not the private public schools, not the public police, not the public fire services, not the they're getting their own. It's cheaper for them to take care of just themselves than to be good citizens in a community. And therein is a lesson about the flaws of this system. Well, that does it for the first half of the show. But before we meet today's very important guest, I want to ask you please to remember to subscribe to our YouTube channel. Very easy to do. Just find us on YouTube Economic Update. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. And that you can easily do by going to our website, democracyatwork.info and as always, I want to thank the Patreon community for its support, for its encouragement and for its partnering with us in the project of bringing these kinds of updates to the largest possible audience. There is other material for the Patreon community. I urge you to take a look at it as well. Stay with us. We will be right back. Welcome back friends to the second half of Economic Update. I'm very proud and very happy to be able to introduce someone who is going to talk with me about worker co ops, about that alternative kind of entrepreneurship if you like, or business organization that we talk about a lot on this program, often comparing it to the hierarchical and undemocratic capitalist way of having a few folks at the top who are shareholders and boards of directors making all the basic decisions for the majority of people in any enterprise. Who are the workers who make it happen. So my guest today is Matthias Shiplainer. My apologies. He's a longtime carpenter, builder and a student of history from the Seattle, Washington area. So he's come a long way to speak with us here in New York today. He founded the Metis Construction Company in 2008, but in early 2016 he and the 17 co workers were with him completed the process of restructuring the Metis Corporation into a worker controlled trust held cooperative. That's right. They went from a top down conventional kind of economic organization to a worker co op. And that's what I want to talk with him about today. And I think you will find very interesting this concrete conversation of a very concrete experience of worker co OP as an alternative way to organize something as important as how you produce goods and services. So Matthias, thank you very much for joining us today. So for our audience, listeners and viewers, give us a quick thumbnail sense of what your company is and particularly why you decided to convert it into a worker co op.

[B]

Metis Construction is a mid sized construction firm. There's right now about 40 of us, a little less than half of which are member owners of the company. We build primarily restaurants and bars. We do a lot of tenant improvements, but we also do new construction, residential construction. This is a. I've long been working with this group of people. It's a pretty impressive group of people. When Metis originally started back in 2008, there was just a group of small contractors and we kind of drew on each other as resources to take on larger and larger projects. And with time, more and more of these were coming into this group through Metis, under the Metis umbrella. And at that same time, it became apparent that a number of my kind of co contractors had a real interest in worker co ops and that's kind of how the conversation started. So why the worker co op? I mean, I suppose there was another direction this could have gone, but I had worked alongside these people for a long time and had a tremendous amount of respect for the skill and just the work ethic that they brought to what we were doing. And it just didn't make sense, to be honest, to do this any other way. And so it took a lot longer than we thought. It was quite a process. We started the conversation probably around 2012, and in 2016, as you mentioned, February, we finally converted to worker ownership and never looked back since.

[A]

Well, let me pull out of you a little bit that one line you said. It didn't seem to make sense to go in any other way. Well, but most business in the United States, small, medium, large, is organized very differently with a small group of people at the top, Owners, major shareholders, boards of directors, if they use the corporation form and they make all the decisions, and the mass of the workers, the employees have to live with those decisions, but have no role in making them. I mean, it's not democracy, but it seems to be something that most Americans have gotten used to and accept. So what was it, do you think, in your mind and in the minds of the others who joined you that made it not sensible to go in that direction? What was it that tell us a little more about why you did that?

[B]

You know, I think we were all drawn to what we were doing for a love of the work I mean, we're craftspeople, we like to build things. Right. We didn't want to work. I mean, we'd all worked for other contractors and I don't know that any of us had had a really great experience doing that. It's an industry that's known for being probably more hierarchical even than most. And you know, in order to keep doing the work we were doing and to create kind of a context in which we enjoyed doing it, we obviously, that's why we founded our own small businesses. But there's a real limit on your own to how far you can go with that. And so it was really about kind of taking on the larger projects and doing so, you know, working under conditions that we all enjoyed and in a situation that was non hierarchical.

[A]

Good. Tell me, imagine yourself speaking to an audience not that familiar. What are the advantages, what would you say are the major advantages of a worker co op? Of a collectively democratic way of a group of working people to produce a successful enterprise? Because you've grown now for a long time, you know, you're a successful enterprise. And so what are the advantages? How would you tell that to another person?

[B]

You know, I think there's multiple advantages. There's a lot of different ways to look at this from a business perspective. Co ops are more productive, they're more profitable than traditionally held companies. I think there's a Rutgers University study that found that they're 4% more productive, 14% more profitable. Worker retention. Worker co ops retain workers more easily. That's, you know, lower costs in terms of training, lower costs in terms of recruitment. So there's a lot of advantages. Just from a strictly business perspective, would.

[A]

You say interrupt you? Would you say that it's more satisfying to an individual? It seems to be more satisfying to work in a co op environment day in and day out from 8 to 9 to 5 or whatever it is than in a hierarchical. So that you retain the worker because the experience on the job simply is better.

[B]

You know, I would say that in my opinion, there's nothing more quintessentially human than the desire to participate in the shaping of the circumstances under which you live and work. I mean, that's who we are as human beings. We find ourselves thrown into the world. We live in what is essentially a game world structured around market capitalism. I know the rules of that system. I know they don't apply to all people in the same way. And somewhere in the back of my head I know that those rules were written by other human beings. Right. But I still Go through the world as though these are as real as rock. Right? And know it or not, simply by living my life out docilely within this system, I contribute to the rewriting and writing of those rules, to the legitimization and the religitimization of a system of enforced inequality. So I think the question really is how do we move beyond that? How do we begin to intentionally participate in, in the shaping of the conditions under which we live and work? How do we move from the tacit acceptance of what is and ask the question, what do we want this to be? What could the world be? And I do think worker co ops are a step in that direction and.

[A]

That that's the appeal also and makes your retention of people work better than if you didn't organize it that way.

[B]

Oh, without question. And just to come to work each day feeling like you're a part of something bigger than yourself, you're doing some small thing towards making the world a better place. That's worth a lot.

[A]

Yes, it is. Yes, it is. Tell us a little bit about the sort of unique ownership arrangement that your particular co op did. Because the co op working together is one thing, how you organize the ownership is another. You could have a variety of ownership systems or arrangements, but that all left the workers to collectively coordinate and organize their work. So what's the particular ownership pattern you took in your case, and why did you do that?

[B]

You know, oftentimes what happens in the conversion from individual ownership to worker cooperative is the company regarded as property is just passed along to a group of workers. And there's tremendous value in that. At Metis, we were wanting to do something a little different. We thought, thought that there was something about the idea of ownership of a company that's based on a trade as old as carpentry depended so much, drew so much on the knowledge commons that we wanted to kind of question that. So we actually had the company set up in terms of trust ownership. And what that allowed us to do is to ensure that Metis would continue to exist as a worker co op in perpetuity. So the idea is that the members at any given time, time, benefit from the company in the sense that the vast majority of the profits go to the workers, but they also have a role of stewardship with respect to the company. They have a role in which they're expected to pass on a healthy, strong company to future co op members, to future craftspeople in Seattle.

[A]

And so the ownership is set up exactly how, who owns the thing?

[B]

So legally the trust owns it, but it's a worker ownership trust. So the trust owns it for the benefit of the workers. But for somebody who has a company and is considering converting it with the possibility that the worker owners could at some point reconsolidate ownership or they could sell it off back, essentially selling it back into a sole proprietorship, the trust provides a way to ensure that that will not happen. If you convert the company, it will stay worker owned in perpetuity. And that was something that really appealed to, I think, the entire group. We were very willing to pursue this path, but we wanted this to be around for the future.

[A]

Okay. Skeptics would say it can't work. You have to have a hierarchy, you have to have the boss and you have to have everybody else. Clearly you don't feel that way. You chose it on their path. But no doubt you have your set of problems. Give us a sense of what the problems were and maybe what the solutions were that you found when you made this conversion.

[B]

You know, picking up on what you're saying with respect to hierarchy, I mean, I think that there is a, you know, we do in terms of governance, we're very much democratically run in terms of daily operations. We do have all the positions that go along with the typical construction company. And that's what makes this work, right? We, we have project managers, we have project leads, we have carpenters, we have beginning carpenters, etc. And yet those positions don't have to fit in a strictly hierarchical system. They're really roles. And the company's going to function much more efficiently if those are collaborative roles, if you have collaboration between a project manager and a lead and carpenters. So having those positions doesn't imply the hierarchy. And yet when you convert a company, you know, our members of course are very on board with what we're doing, but we have a lot of new staff coming in. And so there is a process of enculturation, if you will, you know, like.

[A]

Leading up, getting uncomfortable in this new arrangement.

[B]

Right. And we've all been, you know, just, we've grown up in a very different system. And so it's, at first there's kind of a disbelief, really, is this how we're supposed to operate? And so it's an ongoing process. To be honest, we're still really working on building a culture, a workplace culture that's appropriate to a worker co op. And that part's been far more challenging than I imagined. Just how stuck in our ways of doing things we tend to be as human beings.

[A]

Well, you're making a major transition and you have to be fair to yourselves. It's going to take some adjusting to get done.

[B]

It does.

[A]

There's a very old idea about enterprise because the co op idea isn't new. It's been around for thousands of years that one of the ways you avoid hardening into hierarchies is that you rotate that people who are a project manager on one occasion are playing a different role on another. So they understand the different roles and they don't become wedded to one position relative to others.

[B]

Oh, certainly. I was lucky enough this past summer to spend two months framing a house with the crew and that was the highlight of my year, to be honest. It's why I got into this. Right. So I got to leave the desk and put my bags on and drive nails.

[A]

Yeah. Okay. Any particular ways you found that worked to help that acculturation, to help working people make the transition from what they were used to to this new and different way that they prefer, but that they have some difficulty adjusting to? Anything that you found that might help others who want to consider doing this?

[B]

You know, we've tried a number of things and I think one of the things we're doing now that is really successful is we have what we call these pizza and policy workshops. And once a month the entire company, that's members and non members all gather together and we are just rewriting the rules. Basically. We're taking the employee handbook, we're taking everything just like how do we want to do performance reviews in the future? How do we, you know, want to both have the staff reviewed but also have our managers reviewed? You know, how do you know, what are our long term goals? What's our 10 year plan for the company? And that is remarkable. That process has been.

[A]

That is absolutely remarkable because it really concretizes the notion that in a worker co op, you're a director, you're constantly in charge of what it is. We've come to the end of this part of our program, the interview portion. It's been wonderful. I want to thank you for doing. I want to thank the audience and hope that this is as interesting to you as it is to me. And I want to also remind you that if you go to patreon.com economicupdate you can see the continuation of this interview and we invite you to do that. For all of the rest, thank you for joining us and I look forward to speaking with you again next week.