sometimes the sharper you can fall. so we don't want to see that at all. taking a look at these earnings is really going to help us decide what the market is thinking of the overall economy right now. >> we may be getting a little bit too into the weeds here, but is there hesitation also among the companies in terms of hiring, in terms of capital growth, in terms of investment, based on all the changes we're seeing in washington, the various tax cuts that are going to disappear, the various taxes that are coming on along the lines of the health care, and kind of the uncertainty among small business about how this is going to play out? it seems like we're all just frozen. >> sure. there's a whole bunch of reasons that -- if you take a look at it, companies have been afraid to hire because they're not sure if the economy is getting better. so they're not hiring. that puts unemployment at just these really high levels. that causes the government to say we need to figure out things that we can do. right now you've got unemployment at 9.7%. it peaked so far just over 10%