Their main mistake was acting too late to reform the elites

Perestroika Lost
By MIKHAIL GORBACHEV

Moscow

PERESTROIKA, the series of political and economic reforms I undertook in the Soviet Union in 1985, has been the subject of heated debate ever since. Today the controversy has taken on a new urgency — not just because of the 25th anniversary, but also because Russia is again facing the challenge of change. In moments like this, it is appropriate and necessary to look back.

We introduced perestroika because our people and the country’s leaders understood that we could no longer continue as we had. The Soviet system, created on the precepts of socialism amid great efforts and sacrifices, had made our country a major power with a strong industrial base. The Soviet Union was strong in emergencies, but in more normal circumstances, our system condemned us to inferiority.

[N.B. The Chinese are about there now.]

This was clear to me and others of the new generation of leaders, as well as to members of the old guard who cared about the country’s future. I recall my conversation with Andrei Gromyko, the foreign minister, a few hours before the plenary meeting of the Central Committee that elected me as the party’s new general secretary in March 1985. Gromyko agreed that drastic change was needed, however great the risk.

[N.B. The Soviet/Russian elites must have seen some of this during the time of Brezhnev when the war in Afghanistan could not be won. Other voices indicate the decrease in oil prices as a trigger.]

I am often asked whether my fellow leaders of perestroika and I knew the full scope of what we had to do. The answer is yes and no — not fully and not immediately. What we had to abandon was quite clear: the rigid ideological, political and economic system; the confrontation with much of the rest of the world; and the unbridled arms race. In rejecting all that, we had the full support of the people; those officials who later turned out to be die-hard Stalinists had to keep silent and even acquiesce.

[N.B. Had they known would they still have undertaken the changes? How much is the US today captive to "rigid ideological, political and economic system; the confrontation with much of the rest of the world; and the unbridled arms race?"]

It is much more difficult to answer the follow-up question: What were our goals, what did we want to achieve? We came a long way in a short time — moving from trying to repair the existing system to recognizing the need to replace it. Yet I always adhered to my choice of evolutionary change — moving deliberately so that we would not break the backs of the people and the country and would avoid bloodshed.

[N.B. The goals were probably to have another go at empire.]

While the radicals pushed us to move faster, the conservatives stepped on our toes. Both groups must bear most of the blame for what happened afterward. I accept my share of responsibility as well. We, the reformers, made mistakes that cost us, and our country, dearly.

[N.B. Self-serving?]

Our main mistake was acting too late to reform the Communist Party. The party had initiated perestroika, but it soon became a hindrance to our moving forward. The party’s top bureaucracy organized the attempted coup in August 1991, which scuttled the reforms.

[N.B. This should be sent on a postcard to president Obama, possibly rested as following: Our main mistake was acting too late to reform the elites.]

We also acted too late in reforming the union of the republics, which had come a long way during their common existence. They had become real states, with their own economies and their own elites. We needed to find a way for them to exist as sovereign states within a decentralized democratic union. In a nationwide referendum of March 1991, more than 70 percent of voters supported the idea of a new union of sovereign republics. But the coup attempt that August, which weakened my position as president, made that prospect impossible. By the end of the year, the Soviet Union no longer existed.

[N.B. Let's hope that all the divisive talk (gov. Perry of Texas) is hot electoral air.]

We made other mistakes, too. In the heat of political battles we lost sight of the economy, and people never forgave us for the shortages of everyday items and the lines for essential goods.

[N.B. Maybe that postcard to president Obama should include the above as a 2nd line.]

Still, the achievements of perestroika are undeniable. It was the breakthrough to freedom and democracy. Opinion polls today confirm that even those who criticize perestroika and its leaders appreciate the gains it allowed: the rejection of the totalitarian system; freedom of speech, assembly, religion and movement; and political and economic pluralism.

After the Soviet Union was dismantled, Russian leaders opted for a more radical version of reform. Their “shock therapy” was much worse than the disease. Many people were plunged into poverty; the income gap grew tremendously. Health, education and culture took heavy blows. Russia began to lose its industrial base, its economy becoming fully dependent on exports of oil and natural gas.

By the turn of the century, the country was half destroyed and we were facing chaos. Democracy was imperiled. President Boris Yeltsin’s 1996 re-election and the transfer of power to his appointed heir, Vladimir Putin, in 2000 were democratic in form but not in substance. That was when I began to worry about the future of democracy in Russia.

I understood that in a situation where the very existence of the Russian state was at stake, it was not always possible to act “by the book.” Decisive, tough measures and even elements of authoritarianism may be needed at such times. That is why I supported the steps taken by Mr. Putin during his first term as president. I was not alone — 70 percent to 80 percent of the population supported him in those days.

[N.B. Should our deviations from the Constitution be taken on this note?]

Nevertheless, stabilizing the country cannot be the only or the final goal. Russia needs development and modernization to become a leader in an interdependent world. Our country has not moved closer to that goal in the past few years, even though for a decade we have benefited from high prices for our main exports, oil and gas. The global crisis has hit Russia harder than many other countries, and we have no one but ourselves to blame.

[N.B Alright, a 3rd line would be in order: Fighting terrorism cannot be the only or the final goal!]

Russia will progress with confidence only if it follows a democratic path. Recently, there have been a number of setbacks in this regard.

For instance, all major decisions are now taken by the executive branch, with the Parliament rubber-stamping formal approval. The independence of the courts has been thrown into question. We do not have a party system that would enable a real majority to win while also taking the minority opinion into account and allowing an active opposition. There is a growing feeling that the government is afraid of civil society and would like to control everything.

We’ve been there, done that. Do we want to go back? I don’t think anyone does, including our leaders.

I sense alarm in the words of President Dmitri Medvedev when he wondered, “Should a primitive economy based on raw materials and endemic corruption accompany us into the future?” He has also warned against complacency in a society where the government “is the biggest employer, the biggest publisher, the best producer, its own judiciary ... and ultimately a nation unto itself.”

[N.B. We can echo and ask: Should an economy based on imports and endemic corporate and political corruption accompany us into the future?” Can the financial sector remain “the top employer, running its regulatory and judiciary ... and ultimately a nation unto itself?"]

I agree with the president. I agree with his goal of modernization. But it will not happen if people are sidelined, if they are just pawns. If the people are to feel and act like citizens, there is only one prescription: democracy, including the rule of law and an open and honest dialogue between the government and the people.

What’s holding Russia back is fear. Among both the people and the authorities, there is concern that a new round of modernization might lead to instability and even chaos. In politics, fear is a bad guide; we must overcome it.

Today, Russia has many free, independently minded people who are ready to assume responsibility and uphold democracy. But a great deal depends now on how the government acts.

Translation by Pavel Palazhchenko

From Taleb's Twitter Feed

From Nassim Taleb's Twitter Feed:


1. In nature we never repeat the same motion. In captivity (office, gym, commute, sports), life is just repetitive stress injury. No randomness about 6 hours ago via web
2. Using, as excuse, others' failure of common sense is in itself a failure of common sense. 9:33 AM Mar 12th via web
3. Dubai borrowed to put vanity buildings on postcards; America and W. Europe need to borrow to just survive. 4:52 AM Mar 12th via web
4. We unwittingly amplify commonalities with friends, dissimilarities with strangers, & contrasts with enemies. 3:30 PM Mar 11th via web
5. The mark of a mediocre mind is the subdued and passive reaction in front of the truly exceptional. 11:32 AM Mar 11th via web
6. [Explanation: The biggest error since Socrates has been to believe that lack of clarity is the SOURCE of all our ills, not the result. ] 11:22 AM Mar 10th via web
7. Mental clarity is the child of courage, not the other way around. 11:07 AM Mar 10th via web
8. What they call play (gym, travel) looks like work;what I call work (effortless daydreaming) looks like play.They lose freedom trying harder. 3:27 AM Mar 10th via web
9. The differences between Goldman Sachs & the mafia: GS has a better legal-regulatory expertise; but the mafia understands public opinion. 7:13 AM Mar 9th via web
10. Common minds find similarities in stories (& situations), finer minds detect differences [Essay on the Universal & the Particular] 12:47 AM Mar 8th via web
11. I wish to say some day about someone "Voilà un homme!" as Napoleon said upon meeting Goethe: mixture of passion & intellect (& elegance too) 5:45 AM Mar 7th via web
12. Übermen tolerate others' small inconsistencies though not the large ones;losers tolerate others' large inconsistencies though not small ones 6:16 AM Mar 5th via web
13. If you want people to read a book, tell them it is overrated. 1:07 PM Feb 28th via web
14. Their sabbatical is to work six days and rest for one; my sabbatical is to work for (part of) a day and rest for six. 7:05 AM Feb 28th via web
15. City-states organize by tinkering; nation-states produce bureaucracies, empty suits, Bernankes, deficits, and the toobigtofail. Too obvious. 6:49 AM Feb 27th via web
16. answ:[ If you can't detect (w/out understanding) the difference betw sacred & profane you'll never know what religion means. Same with art ] 7:36 AM Feb 26th via web
17. Atheism/materialism means treating the dead as if they were unborn. I won't. By respecting the sacred you reinvent religion. 4:47 AM Feb 26th via web
18. I wonder if a lion (or a cannibal) would pay a high premium for free-range humans. [modern bondage] 8:00 AM Feb 25th via web
19. Writing is the art of repeating oneself without anyone noticing. 12:40 PM Feb 24th via web
20. You know you have influence when people start noticing your absence more than the presence of others. 3:26 PM Feb 23rd via web

A step closer to the core of one of our most common problems

Trading Away Productivity
By ALAN TONELSON and KEVIN L. KEARNS

FOR a quarter-century, American economic policy has assumed that the keys to durable national prosperity are deregulation, free trade and a swift transition to a post-industrial, services-dominated future.

Such policies, advocates say, drive innovation, which leads to enormous labor productivity and wage gains — more than enough, supposedly, to make up for the labor disruptions that accompany free trade and de-industrialization.

[N.B. In fact, labor productivity has been an eternal obsession of the US capitalist, shared at one point by the now-defunct comrades in the planned economies. Have a look at The Politicos vs An old man]

In reality, though, wage gains for the average worker have lagged behind productivity since the early 1980s, a situation that free-traders usually attribute to workers failing to retrain themselves after seeing their jobs outsourced.

[N.B. So what does it mean if this were indeed a failure of the workers? Too bad they could not retrain themselves to become neurosurgeons or derivative traders?]

But what if wages lag because productivity itself is being grossly overstated, especially in the nation’s manufacturing sector? Then, suddenly, a cornerstone of American economic policy would begin to crumble.

Productivity measures how many worker hours are needed for a given unit of output during a given time period; when hours fall relative to output, labor productivity increases. In 2009, the data show, Americans needed 40 percent fewer hours to produce the same unit of output as in 1980.

But there’s a problem: labor productivity figures, which are calculated by the Labor Department, count only worker hours in America, even though American-owned factories and labs have been steadily transplanted overseas, and foreign workers have contributed significantly to the final products counted in productivity measures.

The result is an apparent drop in the number of worker hours required to produce goods — and thus increased productivity. But actually, the total number of worker hours does not necessarily change.

This oversight is no secret: as Labor Department officials acknowledged at a 2004 conference, their statistical methods deem any reduction in the work that goes into creating a specific unit of output, whatever the cause, to be a productivity gain.

This continuing mismeasurement leads economists and all those who rely on them to assume that recorded productivity gains always signify greater efficiency, rather than simple offshoring-generated cost cuts — leaving the rest of us scratching our heads over stagnating wages.

[N.B. Why would few push this, where was the organized labor?]

Of course, just because productivity is mismeasured doesn’t mean that genuine innovations can’t improve living standards. It does mean, however, that Americans are flying blind when it comes to their economy’s strengths and weaknesses, and consequently drawing the wrong policy lessons.

Above all, if offshoring has been driving much of our supposed productivity gains, then the case for complete free trade begins to erode. If often such policies simply increase corporate profits at the expense of American workers, with no gains in true productivity, then they don’t necessarily strengthen the national economy.

[N.B. This seems a clear case when regulation should help protect capitalism from capitalists.]

In this regard, the case for free trade as a stimulus for innovation weakens, too. Because productivity gains in part reflect job offshoring, not just the benefits of technology or better business practices, then the American economy has been much less innovative than widely assumed.

How can we actually increase innovation and real productivity? Manufacturing, long slighted by free-market extremists, needs to be promoted, not pushed offshore, since it has historically accounted for the bulk of research and development spending and employs the bulk of American science and technology workers — who in turn spur further innovation and real productivity.

Promoting manufacturing will require major changes in tax and trade policies that currently foster offshoring, including implementing provisions to punish currency manipulation by countries like China and help American producers harmed by discriminatory foreign value-added tax systems. It also means revitalizing government and corporate research and development, which has languished since its heyday in the 1960s.

Much of government policy and business strategy rides on false assumptions about innovation, and although the Obama administration acknowledges the problem, it has done nothing to correct it. With the economy still in need of government life support and the future of American manufacturing in doubt, relying on faulty productivity data is a formula for disaster.

Alan Tonelson, a fellow at the United States Business and Industry Council, is the author of “The Race to the Bottom.” Kevin L. Kearns is the president of the council, which is an association of small manufacturers.

Brecht/Eco: Unhappy the land where heroes are needed

Umberto Eco

What is your idea of perfect happiness?
A state of satisfaction that lasts a little more than five minutes.

What is your greatest fear?
To lose my sense of humor at the moment of my death.

Which historical figure do you most identify with?
Baruch Spinoza.

Which living person do you most admire?
Let me wait until they die, so to be sure of my feelings.

What is your greatest extravagance?
I quit smoking.

What is your favorite journey?
The years during which I am writing a new novel. I am wandering through a private and secret territory, nobody knows what I am doing, and I feel happy.

What do you consider the most overrated virtue?
No real virtue, if such, can be overrated.

What do you dislike most about your appearance?
Everything—I do not like my image in the mirror. However, I do not feel disturbed, because several times I discovered that a lot of nice people had a different opinion.

Which living person do you most despise?
Once again, let me wait until their death. (They must have time to change.)

What or who is the greatest love of your life?
Since four years and a half, my grandchild.

When and where were you happiest?
When I had time enough for my hobby: work.

If you could change one thing about your family, what would it be?
To have another grandchild.

What is your most treasured possession?
My collection of old rare books.

What do you regard as the lowest depth of misery?
Intolerance (but because I have enough money to live well; otherwise it would be starvation).

What is your favorite occupation?
I said it above: work. But do not forget that I am one of those happy persons who identify their work with their hobby and vice versa.

What do you most value in your friends?
The capacity to keep a secret.

Who are your favorite writers?
Dante, Nerval, Joyce, Borges.

Who is your favorite hero of fiction?
Julien Sorel. No, perhaps Mickey Mouse.

Who are your heroes in real life?
As Brecht said, “Unhappy the land where heroes are needed.”

What are your favorite names?
Aureolus Theophrastus Bombastus, and Jim.

What is your motto?
As James Joyce once said to his brother, “The music hall, not poetry, [is] a criticism of life.”

The politicos vs. An old man

.

P120909PS-0140, originally uploaded by The White House.

Watching Pete Peterson in an interview with McKinsey shows that our road ahead will be bumpy--not to mention the odds of getting off the road completely. One gathers that tax increases and spending cuts are bound to come, yet the recovery is not in sight. Moreover, the economically conservative theoretic machine has set in motion, with resources from Mr. Peterson as well. The elections in 2010 will most definitely see a dramatic change in Congress unless the employment situation doesn't improve.

In case the player is acting up, here's the transcript.

Pete Peterson—businessman, statesman, philanthropist—has developed an economic
perspective informed by three distinct and first-hand relationships with American policy. In this video interview, the cofounder of Blackstone and former secretary of commerce reflects on his storied career and his recent memoir, The Education of an American Dreamer. He also looks forward—sharing his ideas on deficit reduction, changes in private equity, the fate of the dollar, and how to rebuild the US economy for future generations. Rik Kirkland, McKinsey’s director of publishing, spoke with Mr. Peterson in New York in November 2009.

The Quarterly: We’re here today with Pete Peterson, who is cofounder of the Blackstone Group, former secretary of commerce, and chairman emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations. Pete, thanks for being with us today.

Peter Peterson: My pleasure.

The Quarterly: Now, in your long and distinguished career as a business executive and a statesman, you’ve also been an author. Your latest book is The Education of an American Dreamer. So why did you write it, and what are some of the things you learned?

Peter Peterson: Well, you know, when you’re a businessman and you’re pompous enough and presumptuous enough to write books, you have to be prepared to be roasted. And my favorite roaster is Ted Sorenson, who, about my last book said, “Once you put it
down, you will not be able to pick it up.” That was not enough to discourage me, but I think this is the last one. This is a memoir.
Why did I write it? Well, I have nine grandchildren and five children. I’m particularly concerned that the American dream that has made me into an American dreamer will no longer be there for them. So I thought it would be worthwhile for those nine grandchildren, and who else wants to read it, to realize that there are opportunities in this country if you work hard enough and make the right decisions.

One of the lessons I’ve learned is to apply the Adam Smith principle in your business career: comparative advantage. Focus on the things that you do better than the other things that you do, and resist the seductions of a little more pay or a little nicer office or a little better title if it does not play to your strengths. Secondly, pick a field where your passions are, because the combination of playing to your strengths and being passionate about it can make a very big difference in a career.

The Quarterly: The book ends with you taking the fortune you earned when Blackstone went public and putting it into a private foundation, the Peterson Foundation. I was wondering if you could talk about that.

Peter Peterson: There are certain long-term challenges that I call “undeniable, unsustainable, and yet politically untouchable.” I thought of myself on my deathbed looking back and saying, “I’ve been very concerned about these challenges,” of which I include entitlements, Social Security, Medicare, our huge balance of payments, deficits, our foreign debts, our lack of savings in this country, and why I think they’re going to impair
our future.

The Quarterly: So what are some of the things the foundation is doing?

Peter Peterson: Well, we’re doing a number of things. We’re focusing pretty heavily on the young, because it’s their future that’s being impaired. And you know the old joke about the philosophy class where the professor says to the class, “Which is worse, ignorance or apathy?” And some sleepy kid from the back says, “I don’t know and I don’t care.”

Well they had better start caring, because on the track we’re on, their taxes are going to increase dramatically. The unfunded liabilities total nearly $60 trillion, falling squarely on them.

I have a dream, which is that we would be smart enough and lucky enough to set up an organization called the American Association of Young People. We have the American Association of Retired Persons, 39 million strong, who are an enormously effective lobbying group. But I think our kids need a lobby too—they and their parents. So we’re putting a lot of focus on the young.

The Quarterly: This is an issue that you’ve talked about for 20 years very articulately, and it obviously concerns a lot of people in this country. And I mean no disrespect to you, but the fact is, for the whole period you’ve talked about it, the problem hasn’t gone away.

In fact, it’s probably gotten worse. What gives you hope that we will finally begin to deal with it? And how do we deal with it right now at a time when the stimulus bill and the need to get out of this economic slump have made the deficit temporarily bigger?

Peter Peterson: What we’ve got to do is somehow make it safer for the politicians to
do the right thing. And we have to make it unsafe for them to do nothing. So I think a lot of this is the politics of short-termism and the politics of entitlements—one of my least favorite words. We think the time has come for a very special bipartisan commission, composed of equal numbers of Democrats and Republicans.


The Quarterly: It’s along the lines of the Greenspan commission?

Peter Peterson: Yes, with some special wrinkles, in which everything is on the table. And the procedures are a little bit like how we handle military base closings, where we’ve discovered that if you only handle these military bases one at a time, you kind of get cherry picked. What we’re envisioning is a group in which everything is on the table.

You can’t eliminate the need for tax increases. We will need some tax increases. You
cannot avoid the fact that the major part of the burden is going to have to be in spending reductions. We have a political system now in which too many Republicans have never met a tax cut they didn’t like, and too many Democrats have not met an entitlement spending program they don’t adore.

So what has happened? We’ve ended up with both of them. So there’s going to be enormous financing needs. I’m just talking to an expert that I’m working with on this. He’s trying to predict how much the treasury financing is going to have to be. And he said, “I can just tell you, they are skyrocketing and unbelievable.” Well, we’d better start asking the question, “Where’s the money going to come from?” And it’s terribly important, in my opinion, to send a signal to the foreign sources that we’re going to get our fiscal house in order.

The Quarterly: Let me close by asking you about one other area of your expertise, which is the private-equity markets, where Blackstone is a huge player and a very successful player. I’m just wondering if you could sort of both look over the evolution of the industry and look, say, five years out from now. Will it have bounced back to what it was a year or so ago? Will it be different in any fundamental ways?

Peter Peterson: Well, it’s changed enormously since Steve Schwarzman and I started
the firm in 1985. If you stop and think about it, the ’90s were a golden period for any leverage business. If you can get a lot of leverage—and we could get leverage (four to eight times)—and you have low interest rates and you have price earnings ratios doubling as they did during the ’90s, you’d have to be intellectually challenged not to make some money in that kind of an environment. And we got in the habit of believing it was our own financial genius that enabled us to make 30 and 40 percent returns. And it was very importantly a matter of dumb luck—plus whatever abilities we did have.
Now, the recent years have been the opposite. There has not been a lot of money left for leverage. You know, you have to go out and earn it by more productivity and more operational improvements. So the center of gravity of the private-equity business shifted from financial engineering to operational improvements. I have every reason to believe that’s going to continue, because once it starts, those who improve earnings and have confidence in our ability to improve earnings will be able to pay more than the firms that are relying totally on financial engineering.

The Quarterly: There’s been a lot of talk in the last few months about the role of the dollar and the dollar’s role to reserve currency. Do you believe the dollar’s role will be fundamentally different? Will it be about the same? Does it depend?

Peter Peterson: I think the most likely outcome, if we don’t get our act together, will be some kind of crisis in the dollar. And we all know the dollar falls suddenly and steeply. Interest rates rise very dramatically. So we have inflation and recession at the same time.

The Quarterly: So we can do this the hard way or the harder way?

Peter Peterson: The hard way. There are no easy alternatives. We’re long past that point. We’re talking about $60 trillion, in today’s dollars, of unfunded liabilities and promises. Totally unsustainable. And you’re never going to be able to solve this just by increasing taxes. You could get rid of the Bush tax cuts. You could get rid of all earmarks. You could get out of both wars. And it only covers 15 percent of our unfunded liabilities and promises.

The Quarterly: It really is Medicaid, Medicare, and Social Security.

Peter Peterson: Medicare and Medicaid. Medicare is $38 trillion; Social Security is $7 trillion, basically.

The Quarterly: And that’s where all the voters are. So go back to your association of young people, right? That’s what it’s going to take. Pete, thank you for being with us today. You’re still dreaming, and it’s a great story. We appreciate it.

Peter Peterson: Thank you.
__________________________

Now, Pete Peterson may look and sound like the old-wise guy, but doesn't he see any problem with our system/ He should know better, being an insider to many a power circle. A look at his recent book reveals that while he had been CEO of Bell&Howell, an American manufacturing operation, in the '60s, productivity grew under his command, but the sustainability of the business proved to be lacking not long after he left--the Japanese manufacturers saw the future in electronics, the American executive, concentrating on productivity improvements (read, cost cutting, which in today's version spells offshoring) could not see. I'm sure the reader of this blog is smarter than Mr. Peterson lets us in...

Learning hope even though summer will stay coming for a while

Xmas in the 21st century: Bad Salzuflen, Germany. Army of angels and futuristic christmas tree

Xmas in the 21st century: Bad Salzuflen. Army of angels and futuristic christmas tree, originally uploaded by nikkormatftnuser.

...east-Asian angels: Can we dum... err, change our dollars here?

vox populior what I wish I wrote

Steve Jobs

Fremont, CA

[...]

It is every economist's stupidity to think we need to keep expanding the economy to keep us at full employment. We have a few billion people in the world who are slowly reaching to the productivity levels of the developed countries, hence we will need to expand the economy 10 fold to keep them all employed. Alternately, as productivity goes up, we cut down our hours. I would dare to suggest that if Americans merely worked 20 hrs a week on average, we can complete all the work we have plus more. It appears like we work hard for nothing at all.

Europeans seem to be getting it right - you can't really employ everyone at high productivity levels. You can employ everyone and have huge inefficiencies (still pretending to be efficient) or employ a few and give out everyone else welfare checks or cut down hours for all.

_____________________________

I've been thinking about this for a while: Can we indeed go on with our type of economy, or we need to take a page from, say, the Europeans? This is not to say Europe doesn't have its own problems--just ask any young person between 20 and 35 years of age. It only means that we seem to only push harder in directions of diminishing returns, more expensive with less returns, that is. And this goes on for just about everything we do, from wars and foreign policy to K-12 education and local government budgets. The only question I have not been able to answer is whether we can improve the system gradually as it goes, or need a full stop. If history is of any use here, stop ahead--mind the gap! Yes, I do tend to side with history in uncertain times.