Six Years of Zero Growth, $786B Spent

Unknown · 00:00Jase: Welcome to episode 275 of The Numbers Game. I'm Jase. I'm here with Nick. How are you, mate?

Unknown · 00:05Nick: Very good. Yeah, feeling good. Sun's out. I think this might be our last week of sun before the cold sets in, so we're making the most of it.

Unknown · 00:15Jase: Yep, making the most of it.

Unknown · 00:15Nick: Just smashed out a couple of episodes. Lots to talk about.

Unknown · 00:17Jase: Lots to talk about. I've got a question for you. How much free public transport have you been taking advantage of since we're in the midst of our couple of months of free transport here in Victoria? For those playing at home, if you're not in Victoria, apologies that you're probably still paying for public transport wherever you are.

Unknown · 00:32Nick: Uh, zero, zero. I, um, yeah, I live very close to work, so I don't have the need for public transport.

Unknown · 00:39Jase: I'm the same. I went out of the way to catch public transport just to get some money, just to save some money, just, no, just, just to get some of my taxpayer dollars back. So I wanted to, you know, we're talking about productivity crisis here today, great episode being driven by you, but I wanted to just kind of start the It was a really great video that caught my attention this morning before we came here to record.

Unknown · 00:58And it was Jacinta Allan on Sunrise, you know, sharing how amazing it is to provide public transport for free for Victorians at a cost of $400 million to taxpayers. Now, when she was challenged by Nat on Sunrise, which phenomenal, like tip of the hat to Nat.

Unknown · 01:18This, you've got to go and find this video if you haven't seen it. Nat was like, 'How can you afford to give away public transport for free for the 2 months and then half price in June?' Whatever they've announced. You know, and she's going, 'Oh, we're the only state on the east of Australia that's going to deliver a budget surplus.' And it's like, cool, like nice spin on the answer, but you're $200 billion in debt.

Unknown · 01:42Nick: Yeah.

Unknown · 01:43Jase: 'Yes, Nat, but we're delivering a budget surplus.' And Nat just wouldn't have a bar of it. She just slammed her and was like, 'No, you're not listening, Jacinta. It's...' It's how are you giving away $400 million of transport when you're in such a huge amount of debt? The interest bill per day. So, we're talking about spending.

Unknown · 01:59Nick, I'll throw to you.

Unknown · 02:00Nick: Well, I think she just keeps putting another nail in the coffin, right? But— I hope so. How much longer has she got? Did you see her cry the other day online?

Unknown · 02:08Jase: I didn't. We've got to start sending each other these videos.

Unknown · 02:11Nick: Yeah, yeah, yeah. She welled up over— I know we're hijacking this conversation, but— petrol prices and the impact that can have on, you know, single families and single mums in particular. I do understand why it's a serious, quite serious topic.

Unknown · 02:27But yeah, she brought the tears on and I just can't cop that. I just really—

Unknown · 02:32Jase: You reckon that was a bit of crocodile tears?

Unknown · 02:33Nick: Oh yeah.

Unknown · 02:34Jase: Yeah.

Unknown · 02:35Nick: Yeah. She's had acting training for sure.

Unknown · 02:36Jase: Well, yeah, she didn't handle Nat's questions too well. Shit the bed there. But anyway, what's happening, Nick?

Unknown · 02:41Nick: As you're the accountant, Joe, you should be well aware there's some big budget reforms that were announced by Mr. Chalmers and I'm not gonna talk about all of 'em, but we'll talk about the important ones. Changes to the capital gains tax. So basically they want to reduce the CGT discount.

Unknown · 02:58Jase: Always gets a mention.

Unknown · 02:59Nick: Always gets a mention. They've been talking about it for a long time. It's just a matter of time before something happened.

Unknown · 03:04Jase: No one's been successful for quite a while, but watch that space.

Unknown · 03:07Nick: Changes to negative gearing. So limiting that, I believe, to 2 properties per individual or per group. I assume it's per couple, per group. There was some changes around EV tax, which we won't go into. There was—

Unknown · 03:21Jase: Family trusts.

Unknown · 03:22Nick: Family trusts and also taxing gas was the other one. So basically the government bringing in more money, they need more money. So what I wanted to talk about today was the, what seems to be a disconnect in the government spending money and the government bringing in revenue.

Unknown · 03:42And I guess what really got me thinking about this, and you will relate to this, that as a business owner, as an SME, the easiest thing that you can do in most cases in your business is save money.

Unknown · 03:57So for us, when we get to the close to the end of the financial year and we're looking at the next venue, we're looking at our budgets and they're not quite where we need them to be, whether it's from a net profit point of view or a surplus point of view in the government's case, it's very hard for us to manipulate revenue.

Unknown · 04:15It's very difficult because you have to bring more clients in. Bring more clients in, that costs money. You're then reliant on salespeople bringing more clients in, for example, in our business. Whereas you can look at your cost base and it's generally pretty easy to drop a certain percentage off.

Unknown · 04:32'Cause most businesses when they do, they're doing well, get this thing called margin creep, where they're doing well, so they spend a little bit here, spend a little bit there, and all of a sudden their margins weigh out. So I know for a fact when we do our budgets and we've gone through that process at the moment for, we're going through that process for next fin year, starts with the cost base because that's a guaranteed saving and it's one that we can actually have a result, a guaranteed result on.

Unknown · 04:56So I look at the current government and the consistent increase in spending. We won't go into it, NBN, NDIS. I saw something on TV last night that suggested there's, you know, they can wipe $30 billion out of the NDIS from a cost point of view, just with the click of a finger.

Unknown · 05:18Jase: Just from better fiscal management so it doesn't cost $50, $60, $70 billion a year.

Unknown · 05:23Nick: Lots of stuff going on there that's just mind-boggling if you want to go down a rabbit hole on what you can actually get via the NDIS. So I look at the current government and these new budget reforms, which are going to have significant impacts. We know what capital gains tax is going to do to the investment landscape.

Unknown · 05:40We know what it's going to do to people renting houses and the cost that they're going to have to pay to rent a house. We know what negative gearing is going to do. They're talking about a retrospective tax on foreign investors. Now, that's got all kinds of issues all over it because if you're now going back and taxing people in an environment that was 20 years ago, what confidence do they have to continue to invest?

Unknown · 06:06And obviously we've got to worry about the future. So I just want to talk about productivity. At what stage does our government stop spending money instead of just bringing money in? I've got some numbers for you. So Australia has had zero productivity growth for 6 years straight.

Unknown · 06:25Our labour productivity has actually fell by 1.2% last year. The government's projected spending next fin year is $786 billion against revenue of $749 billion.

Unknown · 06:42And this is the crazy one. Tax to GDP ratio is climbing to 23, just above 23%. So we've got a serious issue here and we won't go on the AI journey because we're going to talk about that in other episodes, but If you look at what you and I are trying to do in our business, which is productivity, less money out, you can only control the money in to a certain degree.

Unknown · 07:07We've gotta get the productivity up. Productivity then obviously impacts inflation. People seem to be doing less with more. At what stage does the government start looking at productivity and then the money that they're actually spending before just trying to tax everyone and really sending this country, not just myself, but a lot of people believe, into the abyss because the future is very uncertain.

Unknown · 07:34It's an unattractive place to invest now for a lot of people unless you've bought a property in Brisbane or Perth in the last few years. But they seem to be siloed, those two areas, from a growth point of view. So yeah, I just wanna have a chat about that as a business owner.

Unknown · 07:51What do you, what do you think?

Unknown · 07:53Jase: Oh, look, it's mind-boggling that there isn't the lens of running our country like a business. And, you know, love or hate Donald Trump, he came into power with the entrepreneurial business mindset and then looked to do things around, you know, making the country a better place, bringing in more revenue, reducing costs.

Unknown · 08:10You know, Elon came on as his— whatever the name of his fancy title was, but it was all about cutting government spending on, on useless areas that were kind of bleeding money for no reason. Now, won't go into that side. Focusing back more on Australia, just go, you know, politicians earn their six-figure salaries, they're there for a certain amount of time, and then they get their government pension off into the sunset.

Unknown · 08:32But what are the KPIs? You know, we know that when we hire staff, we have team members that work for us, they've got billable targets or sales targets, they've got revenue requirements they need to meet. We know how to look at what they cost our business and then what we need in return to continue to be profitable and to survive and pay all our bills.

Unknown · 08:51You'd love it if the same lens was applied to government spending as opposed to spending more than they actually bring in consistently. Like, we don't get to a trillion-dollar debt without consistently spending money that we as a country do not have.

Unknown · 09:09So it's— it is mind-boggling.

Unknown · 09:13Nick: And what's the biggest expense line for most people?

Unknown · 09:15Jase: Wages. Yep.

Unknown · 09:17Nick: Second biggest. And it might be below the expense line. Tax. Yeah.

Unknown · 09:22Jase: Oh, correct.

Unknown · 09:22Nick: So, yeah, you know, here we are as business owners and a lot of Australians out there and a lot of SMEs doing everything we can to be more productive so we can be profitable. And you just continue to get more and more taken away from you by the government.

Unknown · 09:37And it's just stifling. It's stifling investment. It's, you know, people don't want to grow anymore and people don't want to progress. Because of what's going on. And if you flip it the other way and you promote that growth, then everyone is better off.

Unknown · 09:57And I know there's more to it than that, but if you tax people less, particularly small business or any kind of enterprise, and you give them incentive to continue to grow, you give them incentive to invest, they then hire people, those people pay income tax and the country progresses.

Unknown · 10:13Is prosperous. But we are, the real thing that I struggle with is it's common sense. And as business owners, it's common sense for us that, okay, we need to bring more money in if we can, but we definitely need to spend more.

Unknown · 10:31And if we do that, we're gonna have more profitability and that means we can invest more into our businesses and we can continue to grow. So that to me is common sense. So seeing what you see now from a government point of view, is what's really frustrating, particularly when you look at the whole productivity issue and the divide in the public sector.

Unknown · 10:51So the government versus you and I, the private sector. And you look at non-market sectors such as health, education, and public admin. So their percentage of the economy is growing because they're spending more money there, but they're subtracting 0.3% every year from productivity.

Unknown · 11:11There's some old stats here that say since 2017-18, healthcare productivity alone has decreased by 13.5%. Just healthcare. So I don't know, this might sound like a bit of a rant, but I just, I would love, I don't know how we fix it.

Unknown · 11:29Clearly the people that run the country are not smart enough. So there's an underlying issue there as to how do we get smarter people in government to do things that seem absolutely Sensible.

Unknown · 11:44Jase: Common sense.

Unknown · 11:44Nick: Common sense.

Unknown · 11:45Jase: Correct. Correct.

Unknown · 11:47Nick: But we just, you know, we just can't seem to get there. And we've, you look at all the productivity gains that we're getting privately now through AI, even things like offshoring, however many years ago. Like we are, look, we have conversations in our business about the productivity gains that we expect to get over the next 2 to 3 years.

Unknown · 12:09I did some numbers for our board meeting last week. Our broker productivity in the last 12 months is up 38%. That's crazy. So the amount of loans lodged per broker in this business is up 38% on the same time last year. And we are obviously investing in AI, but not massively.

Unknown · 12:29Like we're being cautious and from a spend point of view, we're being cautious, but we're not spending heaps and getting significant gains.

Unknown · 12:37Jase: So I think we'd be showing similar numbers. Revenue up 10%, wages up 1 or 2% in a sense of just natural, you know, natural growth. But all other expenses have maintained pretty steady. We've literally just been more productive through whether it's technology or also just the team getting better and better and more consistency too.

Unknown · 12:54I mean, yeah, and you'd love the same thing applied to government. Like, you know, where can they seek just some smart policies? And then, you know, I think we touched on in the gas episode, um, David Pocock, and I've been an avid watcher of all of his content now since that episode.

Unknown · 13:11But, you know, somebody needs to go out on a limb and start to create policies that, you know, don't necessarily make the big lobbying gas companies and mining companies happy. You know, Sportsbet, there's gambling ads around Sportsbet where those things are happening, and he's advocating for getting rid of advertising, which is sucking in young, you know, young people into gambling and betting when they shouldn't be.

Unknown · 13:34So there's, there's some common sense policies that are being advocated for and promoted, and you just wonder why we don't have more people like David Pocock that are doing, you know, things that make sense, as opposed to when it goes to vote and everybody votes against taxing gas 25%, or almost everyone.

Unknown · 13:51Why? Like, what do we as the general punter out there not know that's going on behind closed doors up at government level? Yeah.

Unknown · 14:00Nick: And clearly a lot.

Unknown · 14:01Jase: Yeah.

Unknown · 14:01Nick: There's clearly a lot we don't know.

Unknown · 14:03Jase: I mean, the other ones, again, this sounds like a bit of a rant. Love people's comments in the comment section if you want to get some stuff off your chest. But there was the $15 billion that went missing through CFMEU and government projects in Victoria around construction. Now, that $15 billion disappeared and there was a vote for an investigation into corruption.

Unknown · 14:22And the government voted against it. The government that were in control of the final say of whether they would do an anti-corruption and an investigation into where $15 billion of taxpayer money went. Under Labor's hands, they got the final say and they went, nope, we're not investigating, move on.

Unknown · 14:38That's our taxpayer money. How can you just decide to not investigate where $15 billion disappears to? Yeah.

Unknown · 14:45Nick: Crazy.

Unknown · 14:46Jase: If that was your business or mine, at a much smaller scale, we would want to know where that money went.

Unknown · 14:51Nick: Well, what about the COVID debacle? And, you know, they come out with the small business package. Now, you and I both know that half the businesses that got that package did not need it. It was common knowledge that— More than half.

Unknown · 15:04Jase: Way more than half.

Unknown · 15:05Nick: Way more than half. For me, it was common knowledge that people were fudging numbers because it wasn't audited. So you could basically put in the system what you, from memory, I'm trying to think about how it worked, but you basically put in what you expected your loss of revenue to be over that COVID period.

Unknown · 15:25And it was like throwing mud at the wall, right? Yeah.

Unknown · 15:27Jase: And it was like a 2-week period now versus a 2-week period there was your revenue difference, but you get to pick your 2 weeks.

Unknown · 15:33Nick: Yeah.

Unknown · 15:34Jase: Like, you know, it's pretty easy to gamify that to still show the right result to pass the box. But it didn't mean you're actually entitled to it. There was no means testing as to whether you could have afford, not afford and yeah.

Unknown · 15:46Nick: So they openly come out and said that we got that wrong, but we're not gonna go through the process to audit it. We're just gonna move on. And then, so not only do they want more from us continuously and it feels like they're relying on other people to fix the problem for them, but then now you've got this tax debt issue where now is it 11% or something on any tax debt that you owe?

Unknown · 16:12Jase: Yeah, interest charges, non-deductible.

Unknown · 16:14Nick: Non-deductible, so you then can't claim claim that. So, you know, we're doing a lot of work in our commercial lending business now, refinancing tax debt or giving people money to pay tax debt out because not only can you not get a decent payment plan, but you're paying 11% that you can't then claim as a tax deduction.

Unknown · 16:32So you refinance that into a normal lender where you might pay 13%, 14%, but that's tax deductible. So you're ahead and you can get decent payment terms. So they want more from us, they won't negotiate on the repayment terms. And you look, look, I know there are businesses out there that probably should have paid their tax and have maybe used the ATO as a line of credit facility, but there's a lot of small businesses that are generally doing it tough and dealing with the way our tax system

Unknown · 17:02works is not easy. So people can fall into troubles, particularly with what's going on in the particularly in Victoria at the moment where business is difficult for a lot of people. So yeah, I just don't know where we go from here.

Unknown · 17:16Jase: Well, I've got a question to throw back at you, which is something that I, you know, comment that came along in defending our politicians. So they earn, call it half a mil, you know, average salary, $300,000, $400,000, $500,000. But if we look at the CEOs of our top 10 ASX listed businesses, that, you know, by GDP and revenue and whatnot, were not even comparable to what Australia as a country might be.

Unknown · 17:42They get millions and millions and millions of dollars as their CEO salaries. Yeah. Would you be comfortable with Albo having a $10 or $15 million salary if it meant that our country was run better?

Unknown · 17:56Nick: It's the only way it works. I think that's, that, that's always been the issue for me. And, you know, there is the The trade-off that, and don't quote me on how it works exactly, but they do get a lifelong pension. So they can go in there and be public servants and they basically live happily ever after.

Unknown · 18:12That frustrates people.

Unknown · 18:14Jase: Get a board seat at a gas company.

Unknown · 18:16Nick: Yeah. And that frustrates people even more because there's no KPIs. At least with a CEO of a major listed business, there's KPIs, there's long and short-term incentives. If you don't hit your KPIs, you don't get your incentives. Yeah, I think the reality is that $500,000 these days, a lot of people might think this is a throwaway comment, but $500,000 for that kind of role is absolute peanuts.

Unknown · 18:40And you've just explained what you can get at somewhere, somewhere else. Not that these guys would probably get a job somewhere else. I know some of them do, but it's only because of handshakes. But I think that's one of the first issues. It's what is the— what does the package look like?

Unknown · 18:56But also what is the criteria to get into these roles? Do you have any business experience? You know, I listened to a podcast this morning with Pauline Hanson on it. It was actually pretty good. And she was going through her experience and I know she's got some, yeah, she's got some policies that people won't, or beliefs that people won't agree with.

Unknown · 19:18But talking about her career, you know, working in a fish and chip shop, then ran a plumbing business with her partner at the time. So, general business experience. And imagine if you had a politician, and to be a politician— this is a pipe dream— but to be a politician, you had to have 4 to 5 years in the private sector in small business or something.

Unknown · 19:41Jase: Yep.

Unknown · 19:42Nick: You know, running a small business, or then you had to get the right education to upskill to be able to do what a politician does, which in its own— has its own, you know, well, you've got to learn how to not answer a question for starters, but maybe you don't have that training. But you see, the training's wrong. Like, it's— yeah.

Unknown · 19:57So, you've got these people that are good at doing politics, being politics, good at politics and being politicians.

Unknown · 20:04Jase: Yeah.

Unknown · 20:04Nick: But they have no idea how to run a budget or, you know.

Unknown · 20:07Jase: Well, and we saw that in some of the questioning of the Minister for Finance when she couldn't answer.

Unknown · 20:12Nick: I see, from Pocock. Oh no, it wasn't Pocock.

Unknown · 20:15Jase: It was, yeah, that other bloke. Didn't know if it was net or gross. So, was that net or gross savings?

Unknown · 20:20Nick: Had no idea.

Unknown · 20:20Jase: Oh, I don't have those numbers. Well, no, no, you've just said it was $100 billion. In, in—

Unknown · 20:24Nick: She looked at her phone like her phone was going to give her—

Unknown · 20:26Jase: They kind of like unlocked like she was going for the calculator. Like, and again, I go, right now, would I, would I be interested in doing something in politics knowing what I know about the exposure, the potential income you could get? I mean, it's not that appealing.

Unknown · 20:40Nick: No.

Unknown · 20:41Jase: So we're not really attracting the best of the best to run our country. And again, like, you know, we throw to that Norway thing, but Norway taxing gas and creating a $3 trillion fund which was worth, you know, $450,000 AUD per citizen of Norway because they made the policy to tax gas for the benefit of their country.

Unknown · 20:59Nick: Yeah.

Unknown · 21:00Jase: Who's making the decisions for the benefit of Australia and Australian people? You know, it doesn't seem like there's that many that are in there truly advocating and making the decisions what is best long term. A lot of it, government by government, is what, what can we do while we're in power for this 2 or 3 year term?

Unknown · 21:16To try and appease the people and keep people happy enough. But while bringing in enough revenue and then spending what we can to look good, like the new road, the new hospital, the new school, whatever it is. But it's spend, spend, spend.

Unknown · 21:30Nick: Yeah.

Unknown · 21:30Jase: Someone's just got to come in, take to the budget like what we do with our business and go, where can we cut some stuff out that is deadwood, that is not needed? Yeah. You know, and I'd love to kind of see, you know, they open up the books and, you know, the independent audits the advisors.

Unknown · 21:45But I mean, look, you've got the top 4 that are paid big dollars to sit there and kind of work with the government as well. So, there's too much lining of each other's pockets without the vested interest of the everyday Aussie. And when you look at the tax to GDP number, we are just getting robbed every direction we can.

Unknown · 22:02The everyday Aussie versus the big corporates, the multinationals. Again, if they are going to focus on revenue rather than cutting spending, Focus on bringing in revenue from the big top end of town as opposed to the everyday small business that generally sees very limited tax cuts or tax concessions.

Unknown · 22:22Nick: Yeah, but then balance that carefully not to stifle investment. Correct. And that's the big risk at the moment. Yeah. Yeah, look, the only hope I think at the moment is, in the current environment, is the exposure that we're getting to this stuff.

Unknown · 22:37You know, we would never have been having these conversations 10 years ago. Um, you look, look at what, um, Pauline and Barnaby Joyce are doing. Whether you like them or not, they've got far more following now. Um, so that would never have been the case. There's definitely a different landscape now where people are fed up with it.

Unknown · 22:55More people are talking about it. Yeah, I talked about the Karl Stefanovic podcast, which I've just started listening to.

Unknown · 23:01Jase: Yeah, with Albo.

Unknown · 23:02Nick: I haven't listened to that one yet.

Unknown · 23:03Jase: That's But definitely get on to that one.

Unknown · 23:06Nick: All about this stuff. It's all about Australia, our country. If you look at the intro to his podcast that talks about— better give us a plug too, by the way. Yeah, Carl, if you're listening. If you look at the intro to his podcast, it actually talks about his growing up, you know, growing up on the outskirts of Brisbane, disappearing on the bike all day, coming home, you know, it's a good old days, what the weekends were like.

Unknown · 23:27And if you look at all the guests he's had to date, it's politicians, it's, you know, it's Clive Palmer, it's Pauline Hanson, just trying to get a an objective view on what's going on because he's clearly concerned about the direction the country is heading and he's been big on the, the fuel prices.

Unknown · 23:43So the awareness is there is where I'm going with this. And you're starting now to get smart, educated people that want to make a change. I think now whether they have the power or not to make the change, who knows? But holding on to hope that, you know, we are moving in the right direction, particularly from an awareness point of view.

Unknown · 24:03Jase: And you know what, I think that's the message, right? That if, if the everyday Aussie pays attention, gets involved, you know, there's petitions that pop up. And if there's one thing we can take out of social media, the TikToks and the Instagram Reels that is showcasing some of the, the, um, the shortfalls of our, our current ways and the way the government goes about it, there's this awareness piece.

Unknown · 24:25And there's simple things you can do, like sign the petitions. If you can afford to donate to the right people so that they can you know, run the right parties and make the right awareness campaigns. Like, again, David Pocock's running ads against the oil and gas companies because they've come out and all over Canberra there's billboards saying how much tax oil and gas companies pay because they're trying to get into the politicians' heads to go, we don't need to change the policy on taxing gas.

Unknown · 24:51Look at all these billboards at the airport. You get off the plane at Canberra and they put billboards up everywhere saying how much tax they're actually paying. And then David Pocock was raising money to run ads the other way to go, don't listen to this bullshit. It's all lies.

Unknown · 25:06Like, here is the number you need to look at. So again, there's more awareness. There's, you know, we're paying a bit more attention to it. We're discussing it. Karl, our mate, is discussing it too.

Unknown · 25:15Nick: Karl's discussing it.

Unknown · 25:16Jase: Yeah.

Unknown · 25:16Nick: One more thing before we close out. Did you see the latest campaign on saving fuel? No. That cost them $20 million.

Unknown · 25:23Jase: Oh yes. Sorry. Oh my God. Yeah.

Unknown · 25:26Nick: Pump your tires up and get rid of your roof racks.

Unknown · 25:28Jase: $20 million. That was the other like epic sunrise video of Albo getting interviewed on that.

Unknown · 25:35Nick: And that's, you know, that's the same thing. That's 20 mum and dads retiring for the rest of their lives. Done. That's what $20 million means.

Unknown · 25:42Jase: To pump your tires and take your roof racks off.

Unknown · 25:44Nick: Yes.

Unknown · 25:44Jase: Like, come on. Who?

Unknown · 25:46Nick: It's embarrassing. It's actually embarrassing.

Unknown · 25:49Jase: Yeah. It is embarrassing. Well, anyway, anyway, if you've listened, we'd love to know your thoughts, whether you're on YouTube or Spotify or wherever you get your podcast. Chuck a comment. We'd love to see what you think about the productivity of Australia and what we can do to change it up.

Unknown · 26:05Nick: Productivity of our government.

Unknown · 26:06Jase: Productivity of our government. Correct. Sorry, we're very productive. Here we are. They keep telling us to be more productive while they spend more tax more and deliver less, something doesn't add up. Game over. This podcast is for educational and informational purposes only.

Unknown · 26:24The conversations are of a general nature and do not qualify as financial or tax advice. We recommend before you make any financial decisions, you consult a licensed professional. Individuals on the podcast may hold positions in the companies discussed. ---