One area of growth in the current recession is the cottage industry of former spendthrifts -- the Rosie Millards and India Knights of this world -- lining up to tell everyone how wonderful it is not to have to spend money any more. The lovely India has even parlayed her embrace of the new puritanism into a "how-to" book, explaining how to survive when you're down to your last pair of Manolo Blahniks. It's all vaguely nauseating: these folks still have their well-paying jobs, but they're peddling advice on how to avoid spending too much money on Christmas presents for the family.
Now the media are starting to move on from these posers. We're starting to hear from people who really have lost money in the crash. The Bernie Madoff scandal is producing some truly distressing stories of people who entrusted this creep with their entire life savings and now face being wiped out. The worst story I have heard so far involved a newly-widowed lady who handed her nest-egg over to Madoff less than two weeks before his scheme collapsed.
One of Madoff's victims, the artist and writer Alexandra Penney, pitched up in the Sunday Times this past weekend. It has to be said that she may not have done much to generate sympathy for the cause. It didn't help that she was pictured wearing a fancy mink coat. It didn't help that she owns three houses. It didn't help that she may have to camp out for a while with her son in, God save us all, Malibu. It didn't help that she hasn't had the heart to fire her maid. (Earth to Alexandra Penney: if you didn't have enough money to pay the maid, you wouldn't have to fire her. She'd simply stop showing up. She can't afford to work for nothing).
A lot of people responded to the story when it first appeared on the Daily Beast blogsite by abusing Ms Penney, saying that rich people like her deserved to lose all their money. That's an awful thing to say. Ms Penney is entitled to be angry and distressed, and she's surely entitled to sue Bernie Madoff from here to kingdom come. But it's in bad taste for someone in her position to whine that she may never be able to afford to use a taxi again. Half a million workers in the US are losing their jobs each month; 27,000 in the UK will lose their near-minimum-wage jobs at Woolworths during the holiday season. For Ms Penney to compare her plight to theirs -- her blog is called "The Bag-lady papers" -- is a bit, well, you know...
Monday, 22 December 2008
Friday, 19 December 2008
Brown, OPEC and the Archbishop
Gordon Brown has been hosting a meeting of OPEC oil ministers in London. He has urged the producing countries to keep investing in new production facilities, even though the oil price has fallen precipitously from a peak of $147 a barrel to its current level near $40. Otherwise, he warns, the oil price will soar again once the global economy recovers.
OPEC has not reacted favourably to Brown's demands, which is unsurprising. For most of the OPEC oil producers (and for some of the larger non-OPEC ones as well -- Russia and Mexico, for example), the collapse in the oil price is a disaster. High oil prices have allowed these countries to provide extravagant benefits to their citizens (especially in the gulf states), or to pursue their foreign policy goals (particularly in Russia, Venezuela and Iran). The collapse in oil revenues makes all these things unaffordable, leading to growing risks of internal unrest (especially in Mexico, Indonesia, Nigeria and even Iran). The last thing the producers are likely to do is to heed requests from consuming countries for them to invest in higher production. What they want is higher prices.
So the oil price is all but certain to rise again once the global economy gets up off the mat. However, that doesn't mean that fears that the next spike will carry it all the way to $200 or more will necessarily be realised. Nobody can seriously argue that this year's rise to $147 was in any way reflective of supply and demand. It was the hedge funds what did it, and the fact that the price has fallen so fast has shown most of them up for what they are: not masters of the universe, but old fashioned trend-is-your-friend herd followers. There are a lot fewer of them out there now, and there will be even fewer by the time oil starts to go up in price again. As a result, the next price spike should be a lot more reflective of underlying conditions, which is likely to mean that it won't be as severe as the last one.
If Brown has got it wrong with OPEC, he's done rather better in a surprising spat with the Archbishop of Canterbury. Cantuar has joined the chorus of people saying that the recession is a salutary experience, and is criticising the government for borrowing more in an effort to cushion the blow. Brown, himself a son of the manse, has taken the "what would Jesus do?" approach. The government, he says, can't watch people suffering and simply walk by on the other side of the street. I wouldn't have thought the Archbishop should need reminding of the parable of the Good Samaritan, but we live in strange times.
OPEC has not reacted favourably to Brown's demands, which is unsurprising. For most of the OPEC oil producers (and for some of the larger non-OPEC ones as well -- Russia and Mexico, for example), the collapse in the oil price is a disaster. High oil prices have allowed these countries to provide extravagant benefits to their citizens (especially in the gulf states), or to pursue their foreign policy goals (particularly in Russia, Venezuela and Iran). The collapse in oil revenues makes all these things unaffordable, leading to growing risks of internal unrest (especially in Mexico, Indonesia, Nigeria and even Iran). The last thing the producers are likely to do is to heed requests from consuming countries for them to invest in higher production. What they want is higher prices.
So the oil price is all but certain to rise again once the global economy gets up off the mat. However, that doesn't mean that fears that the next spike will carry it all the way to $200 or more will necessarily be realised. Nobody can seriously argue that this year's rise to $147 was in any way reflective of supply and demand. It was the hedge funds what did it, and the fact that the price has fallen so fast has shown most of them up for what they are: not masters of the universe, but old fashioned trend-is-your-friend herd followers. There are a lot fewer of them out there now, and there will be even fewer by the time oil starts to go up in price again. As a result, the next price spike should be a lot more reflective of underlying conditions, which is likely to mean that it won't be as severe as the last one.
If Brown has got it wrong with OPEC, he's done rather better in a surprising spat with the Archbishop of Canterbury. Cantuar has joined the chorus of people saying that the recession is a salutary experience, and is criticising the government for borrowing more in an effort to cushion the blow. Brown, himself a son of the manse, has taken the "what would Jesus do?" approach. The government, he says, can't watch people suffering and simply walk by on the other side of the street. I wouldn't have thought the Archbishop should need reminding of the parable of the Good Samaritan, but we live in strange times.
Wednesday, 17 December 2008
Ben gets his chopper out
Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke is an expert on the Great Depression of the 1930s. A few years ago he commented that the Fed could prevent a rerun of that lost decade simply by printing dollars and dropping them on the United States from a helicopter. This earned him the nickname "Helicopter Ben".
We're about to find out if he was right, because after Tuesday's FOMC meeting, the Sikorski is revving up on the helipad. As well as cutting the funds target to zero (0-0.25% to be exact), the Fed has announced a programme of printing money, though these days it's more polite to call it "quantitative easing". The Fed will boost the size of its balance sheet, and take the pressure off commercial lenders, by purchasing Treasuries in the new year, and it stands ready to offer credit directly to the commercial and personal sectors.
The unexpected move gave Wall Street a boost, but there are already fears that the Fed has shot its bolt: if this doesn't work, what else can it do to revive to US economy? Well, it can't cut rates below zero, but it can keep the quantitative easing going for a long as it takes to be effective. With the incoming President apparently having a fiscal stimulus plan all set to go right after his inauguration, there's no doubt that the US is doing everything it can to prevent a return to the dirty thirties. There'll be a price to pay later, of course -- all that public debt will have to be repaid, and the Fed will have to remove the stimulus very abruptly once the economy starts to turn: failure to do so would trigger an almighty bout of inflation.
I'd have been happy to live out my days without finding out whether this part of the Keynesian textbook is correct, but there you go. One thing that strikes me, though, is that in one sense today's policymakers have it harder than their forerunners in the 1930s did. In an electronic age, people expect everything to work instantly, including economic policy. In more "normal" times, when a central bank cut rates, media commentators would carefully point out that it took time for monetary policy to take effect -- anything from 9 to 18 months. That's all gone out of the window. Nobody's prepared to wait and see whether the record low interest rates already in place are going to work. They haven't worked yet, we need more action, and we need it yesterday!
One of the worst at this is, of course, my old pal Anatole Kaletsky. Having failed completely to spot the onset of the credit crunch, and having downplayed its seriousness for many months, he is now looking not just for Plan B but a whole alphabet of new measures. His latest wheeze is that the UK government should give itself access to a cheap source of borrowing by doubling reserve requirements on the commercial banks. How that makes sense so soon after the Government recapitalised them so that they could resume lending is quite beyond me. But it suits the temper of the times (or should I say, The Times?). Kaletsky has decided that the banks are not doing enough, so we need to do something else RIGHT NOW. There may well be a need to do more, but it would be nice if we at least avoided doing things that undermine what's already been put in place.
We're about to find out if he was right, because after Tuesday's FOMC meeting, the Sikorski is revving up on the helipad. As well as cutting the funds target to zero (0-0.25% to be exact), the Fed has announced a programme of printing money, though these days it's more polite to call it "quantitative easing". The Fed will boost the size of its balance sheet, and take the pressure off commercial lenders, by purchasing Treasuries in the new year, and it stands ready to offer credit directly to the commercial and personal sectors.
The unexpected move gave Wall Street a boost, but there are already fears that the Fed has shot its bolt: if this doesn't work, what else can it do to revive to US economy? Well, it can't cut rates below zero, but it can keep the quantitative easing going for a long as it takes to be effective. With the incoming President apparently having a fiscal stimulus plan all set to go right after his inauguration, there's no doubt that the US is doing everything it can to prevent a return to the dirty thirties. There'll be a price to pay later, of course -- all that public debt will have to be repaid, and the Fed will have to remove the stimulus very abruptly once the economy starts to turn: failure to do so would trigger an almighty bout of inflation.
I'd have been happy to live out my days without finding out whether this part of the Keynesian textbook is correct, but there you go. One thing that strikes me, though, is that in one sense today's policymakers have it harder than their forerunners in the 1930s did. In an electronic age, people expect everything to work instantly, including economic policy. In more "normal" times, when a central bank cut rates, media commentators would carefully point out that it took time for monetary policy to take effect -- anything from 9 to 18 months. That's all gone out of the window. Nobody's prepared to wait and see whether the record low interest rates already in place are going to work. They haven't worked yet, we need more action, and we need it yesterday!
One of the worst at this is, of course, my old pal Anatole Kaletsky. Having failed completely to spot the onset of the credit crunch, and having downplayed its seriousness for many months, he is now looking not just for Plan B but a whole alphabet of new measures. His latest wheeze is that the UK government should give itself access to a cheap source of borrowing by doubling reserve requirements on the commercial banks. How that makes sense so soon after the Government recapitalised them so that they could resume lending is quite beyond me. But it suits the temper of the times (or should I say, The Times?). Kaletsky has decided that the banks are not doing enough, so we need to do something else RIGHT NOW. There may well be a need to do more, but it would be nice if we at least avoided doing things that undermine what's already been put in place.
Tuesday, 16 December 2008
"Jews hit hard by Madoff scheme"
Odd headline, isn't it? Yet that's how Slate is covering the $50 billion fraud perpetrated by New York financier Bernard Madoff. Sadly, though, it's appropriate. It seems Madoff deliberately targeted his co-religionists for his massive confidence trick. Worse, a large number of Jewish charities were heavily invested in the scheme too, and have been effectively wiped out. This would weigh heavily on his conscience, if he actually had one, which he probably doesn't, considering that one of his last acts before he was arrested was to reveal the whole scam to his two sons -- and then tell them to keep quiet while he divvied up the rest of the cash. Fortunately they were too honourable to comply, and blew the whistle on him.
Where has all the money gone? One analyst has said that a lot it has gone to "money heaven", but that's unlikely unless you think that heaven is someone else's bank account. A Ponzi scheme is by its nature a zero-sum game. (Will we stop calling such things Ponzi schemes now? Ponzi was a two-bit crook by comparison with Madoff, and the apparent losses we are looking at here dwarf anything ever seen in the past. "Madoff scheme", anyone?) We know who a lot of the losers are, and we'll get back to them in a second, but a lot of the people who "invested" with Madoff early made some nice returns, albeit at the expense of the latecomers, and presumably got out whole. That group must include more than just the Madoff family, especially as his sons had no idea what was going on. There are suggestions that some of those who did well will be called on to return the money, on the basis that it represents the proceeds of crime. Given that they didn't know that at the time, that might seem unlikely, but there's a precedent, albeit on a much smaller scale.
Then there are the losers. The investment "superwoman", Nicola Horlick, had about 9% of the assets in one of her funds invested with Madoff. She is bleating that it's all the fault of the SEC, which should have spotted what was going on. I don't think that washes, for the humourless Nicola or for any other fund manager who got caught in the same way. It looks as if the entity that actually held the money within the Madoff empire was not in fact regulated. Investors pay Nicola and her ilk big commissions to figure such things out -- it's called due diligence.
Then there are the commercial banks, with Santander, HSBC and RBS already owning up to big exposures. When I first heard this, I thought it was outrageous for banks to be raking in deposits with government guarantees, then investing them in schemes like this. But that doesn't seem to be the story: most of the exposure apparently arises through loans made to individuals to help them to buy into Madoff's funds. It's hard to criticise banks for lending to wealthy clients against apparently sound collateral, though like Nicola et al, they all seem to have been oblivious to the fact that the key Madoff entity was unregulated. The borrowers are still on the hook for the loans, so the eventual scale of the banks' losses may be smaller than they have initially estimated, though with so many people claiming to have been wiped out, that may be a faint hope.
The Madoff fiasco has set me to thinking about how financial regulation might be recast when (if?) things settle down. A former President of my old firm in Canada used to say that banks accepting personal deposits supported by government insurance or guarantee should be limited to investing in high-quality assets -- Government bonds, mortgages, companies' working capital, and so on. Financing for riskier purposes -- capital projects and such -- would have to be raised directly from institutional investors and more risk-tolerant private investors, without relying on any Governmental guarantee. The argument was that this would force both borrowers and investors to price risk more accurately -- and it would, of course, reduce the burden on Government deposit guarantee schemes.
I can see all sorts of problems with this. For one thing, it looks awfully cumbersome for corporate borrowers, compared to the "one stop shopping" of the current system. For another, it's hard to know where you draw the line for eligible assets for the banks. As I suggested above, a loan collateralised by assets in an investment fund such as Madoff's might well be acceptable. There's no way that all risk can be eliminated, no matter how conservative you think you are. Still, with governments everywhere guaranteeing almost all deposits, and with banks having rather conspicuously failed to manage the risks they take with those deposits, serious change is inevitable. More regulation, less risk, better disclosure, smaller bonuses: isn't banking going to be fun?
Where has all the money gone? One analyst has said that a lot it has gone to "money heaven", but that's unlikely unless you think that heaven is someone else's bank account. A Ponzi scheme is by its nature a zero-sum game. (Will we stop calling such things Ponzi schemes now? Ponzi was a two-bit crook by comparison with Madoff, and the apparent losses we are looking at here dwarf anything ever seen in the past. "Madoff scheme", anyone?) We know who a lot of the losers are, and we'll get back to them in a second, but a lot of the people who "invested" with Madoff early made some nice returns, albeit at the expense of the latecomers, and presumably got out whole. That group must include more than just the Madoff family, especially as his sons had no idea what was going on. There are suggestions that some of those who did well will be called on to return the money, on the basis that it represents the proceeds of crime. Given that they didn't know that at the time, that might seem unlikely, but there's a precedent, albeit on a much smaller scale.
Then there are the losers. The investment "superwoman", Nicola Horlick, had about 9% of the assets in one of her funds invested with Madoff. She is bleating that it's all the fault of the SEC, which should have spotted what was going on. I don't think that washes, for the humourless Nicola or for any other fund manager who got caught in the same way. It looks as if the entity that actually held the money within the Madoff empire was not in fact regulated. Investors pay Nicola and her ilk big commissions to figure such things out -- it's called due diligence.
Then there are the commercial banks, with Santander, HSBC and RBS already owning up to big exposures. When I first heard this, I thought it was outrageous for banks to be raking in deposits with government guarantees, then investing them in schemes like this. But that doesn't seem to be the story: most of the exposure apparently arises through loans made to individuals to help them to buy into Madoff's funds. It's hard to criticise banks for lending to wealthy clients against apparently sound collateral, though like Nicola et al, they all seem to have been oblivious to the fact that the key Madoff entity was unregulated. The borrowers are still on the hook for the loans, so the eventual scale of the banks' losses may be smaller than they have initially estimated, though with so many people claiming to have been wiped out, that may be a faint hope.
The Madoff fiasco has set me to thinking about how financial regulation might be recast when (if?) things settle down. A former President of my old firm in Canada used to say that banks accepting personal deposits supported by government insurance or guarantee should be limited to investing in high-quality assets -- Government bonds, mortgages, companies' working capital, and so on. Financing for riskier purposes -- capital projects and such -- would have to be raised directly from institutional investors and more risk-tolerant private investors, without relying on any Governmental guarantee. The argument was that this would force both borrowers and investors to price risk more accurately -- and it would, of course, reduce the burden on Government deposit guarantee schemes.
I can see all sorts of problems with this. For one thing, it looks awfully cumbersome for corporate borrowers, compared to the "one stop shopping" of the current system. For another, it's hard to know where you draw the line for eligible assets for the banks. As I suggested above, a loan collateralised by assets in an investment fund such as Madoff's might well be acceptable. There's no way that all risk can be eliminated, no matter how conservative you think you are. Still, with governments everywhere guaranteeing almost all deposits, and with banks having rather conspicuously failed to manage the risks they take with those deposits, serious change is inevitable. More regulation, less risk, better disclosure, smaller bonuses: isn't banking going to be fun?
Monday, 15 December 2008
The broken Hallelujah
It doesn't matter which you heard
The holy, or the broken Hallelujah!
(Hallelujah, Leonard Cohen)
Turns out though, it does matter.
Since its release in the 1980s, Cohen's biblico-sexual epic Hallelujah has turned into a kind of secular hymn. Everyone and his dog has had a crack at it. A couple of months ago BBC2 ran a one-hour documentary on the song, featuring umpteen different versions by a host of singers, known and never-to-be known, with each trying to explain what they saw in the song. They all agreed it was the mysterious lyrics that drew them to it, though given that no two versions ever seem to include the same verses (Cohen wrote more than 80, of which about a dozen are still used), I find that a bit unconvincing. I think it's the simple tune and the chord progression, which Cohen helpfully (if bizarrely) spells out: "the fourth, the fifth, the minor fall, the major lift".
It's been suggested that Hallelujah is the greatest song ever written. I suppose it might be, but you could equally argue that it's not even Cohen's best. (For your consideration: Alexandra Leaving, from Ten New Songs; Joan of Arc, from Songs of Love and Hate).
Alas, nothing is so perfect that Simon Cowell can't ruin it. He had all three X-factor finalists record Hallelujah, and the version by the winner, Alexandra Burke, has now been released, with every expectation that it will be the Christmas number 1. It's pretty bad. She only sings three verses; she adds a word in the first verse (it's only "and", but you don't mess with Leonard!); and she bellows out the last verse in an appalling Celine Dion/Whitney Houston stylee. With so many good versions of the song out there, it's sad to think that this racket will be many people's first exposure to it.
In fairness to Ms Burke, though, hers is not the worst version I've ever heard. Cohen's own rendition is not that great. Much worse, though, is one that I have on a Cohen tribute album ("Tower of song") in which Bono mumbles an almost inaudible version. Neither the words nor the tune comes out unscathed. Hallelujah survived that, so I suppose it can survive Ms Burke too.
The holy, or the broken Hallelujah!
(Hallelujah, Leonard Cohen)
Turns out though, it does matter.
Since its release in the 1980s, Cohen's biblico-sexual epic Hallelujah has turned into a kind of secular hymn. Everyone and his dog has had a crack at it. A couple of months ago BBC2 ran a one-hour documentary on the song, featuring umpteen different versions by a host of singers, known and never-to-be known, with each trying to explain what they saw in the song. They all agreed it was the mysterious lyrics that drew them to it, though given that no two versions ever seem to include the same verses (Cohen wrote more than 80, of which about a dozen are still used), I find that a bit unconvincing. I think it's the simple tune and the chord progression, which Cohen helpfully (if bizarrely) spells out: "the fourth, the fifth, the minor fall, the major lift".
It's been suggested that Hallelujah is the greatest song ever written. I suppose it might be, but you could equally argue that it's not even Cohen's best. (For your consideration: Alexandra Leaving, from Ten New Songs; Joan of Arc, from Songs of Love and Hate).
Alas, nothing is so perfect that Simon Cowell can't ruin it. He had all three X-factor finalists record Hallelujah, and the version by the winner, Alexandra Burke, has now been released, with every expectation that it will be the Christmas number 1. It's pretty bad. She only sings three verses; she adds a word in the first verse (it's only "and", but you don't mess with Leonard!); and she bellows out the last verse in an appalling Celine Dion/Whitney Houston stylee. With so many good versions of the song out there, it's sad to think that this racket will be many people's first exposure to it.
In fairness to Ms Burke, though, hers is not the worst version I've ever heard. Cohen's own rendition is not that great. Much worse, though, is one that I have on a Cohen tribute album ("Tower of song") in which Bono mumbles an almost inaudible version. Neither the words nor the tune comes out unscathed. Hallelujah survived that, so I suppose it can survive Ms Burke too.
Thursday, 11 December 2008
Steinbrucksblitzkrieg
You never want to see news stories that include the words "German" and "surprise attack" in the first sentence, but this was posted on the Virgin media website on December 11:
In a surprise attack, German finance minister Peer Steinbruck derided the headline 2.5% cut in VAT announced by Chancellor Alistair Darling in the Pre-Budget Report while warning that a generation of taxpayers would be saddled with the debt.
In an interview with Newsweek magazine, he described the Government's switch to a "crass Keynesianiam" to try to spend its way out of the economic crisis after years of preaching fiscal rectitude as "breathtaking".
Needless to say Gordon Brown has dismissed the criticism out of hand, ascribing it to internal German politics and pointing out that Germany is introducing a stimulus plan too. I also think that Steinbruck has got it wrong, but not for the reason Gordon is implying. There's nothing wrong with Keynesianism at this time, something that most Governments have acknowledged as they've unveiled their own stimulus packages. Where Herr Steinbruck has got it wrong is in his suggestion that the UK has moved "crassly" into deficit after years of fiscal rectitude. I must have slept through those years; the cardinal error of Brown's economic policy, which may yet come back to haunt the UK, was his failure to rein in spending during the boom years, when the economy was in no need of stimulus. In fairness to Herr Steinbruck, he does talk about "preaching" rectitude, rather than practicing it; even so, it looks like a misrepresentation of UK economic policy.
Herr Steinbruck also derides the VAT cut as too small to have much stimulative effect, but he also warns that it could create a fiscal burden that will take "a generation" to pay off. I tend to agree on the first point, but not on the second. The UK budget deficit is set to soar from an initially-projected £43 billion this year to a forecast £118 billion in 2010, but the VAT cut only accounts for about £12 billion of that. The rest is down to the impact of the slowing economy on tax revenues and "locked-in" spending, and is largely unavoidable. The purpose of the VAT cuts and the Government's other stimulus measures is to make the slowdown as short as possible.
I've argued here before that doing nothing was not an option for the Government. If the public debt becomes burdensome in the future, it won't be because of the VAT cuts, but because of Gordon Brown's inappropriate fiscal policy between about 2000 and 2007.
In a surprise attack, German finance minister Peer Steinbruck derided the headline 2.5% cut in VAT announced by Chancellor Alistair Darling in the Pre-Budget Report while warning that a generation of taxpayers would be saddled with the debt.
In an interview with Newsweek magazine, he described the Government's switch to a "crass Keynesianiam" to try to spend its way out of the economic crisis after years of preaching fiscal rectitude as "breathtaking".
Needless to say Gordon Brown has dismissed the criticism out of hand, ascribing it to internal German politics and pointing out that Germany is introducing a stimulus plan too. I also think that Steinbruck has got it wrong, but not for the reason Gordon is implying. There's nothing wrong with Keynesianism at this time, something that most Governments have acknowledged as they've unveiled their own stimulus packages. Where Herr Steinbruck has got it wrong is in his suggestion that the UK has moved "crassly" into deficit after years of fiscal rectitude. I must have slept through those years; the cardinal error of Brown's economic policy, which may yet come back to haunt the UK, was his failure to rein in spending during the boom years, when the economy was in no need of stimulus. In fairness to Herr Steinbruck, he does talk about "preaching" rectitude, rather than practicing it; even so, it looks like a misrepresentation of UK economic policy.
Herr Steinbruck also derides the VAT cut as too small to have much stimulative effect, but he also warns that it could create a fiscal burden that will take "a generation" to pay off. I tend to agree on the first point, but not on the second. The UK budget deficit is set to soar from an initially-projected £43 billion this year to a forecast £118 billion in 2010, but the VAT cut only accounts for about £12 billion of that. The rest is down to the impact of the slowing economy on tax revenues and "locked-in" spending, and is largely unavoidable. The purpose of the VAT cuts and the Government's other stimulus measures is to make the slowdown as short as possible.
I've argued here before that doing nothing was not an option for the Government. If the public debt becomes burdensome in the future, it won't be because of the VAT cuts, but because of Gordon Brown's inappropriate fiscal policy between about 2000 and 2007.
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