So one area I have focused on a lot is consumer financial regulation. This is an area in which people have very strong feelings, most of which are wrong when tested by economic propositions. So why do consumers use credit? It turns out that consumers use credit for two reasons. First is because it's often beneficial to accelerate the time of a purchase of a, of a good. And also because of the way in which people acquire goods over their lifespan, the so called life cycle model. Consider the first idea first. It would seem pretty absurd to say that before you can buy a house, you have to save up for the house and then buy the house in cash. Why? Because during that period, you would still have to be paying rent. And so the logic of a mortgage, consumer credit, is that the consumer can use the asset while they pay for the asset. A good example is that when cars first became popular in the United States, Ford offered to sell people a car on layaway. Where you would send in a check every month, and at the end of that period, they would give you a car, whereas General Motors, the General Motors Acceptance Corp. offered to sell people a car on credit. So that they could use the car, drive the car, have an asset while they paid for it. While, whereas the people who are buying a car on layaway from Ford, the very few who took them up on that, were riding the bus and walking. A good example that will resonate with many people watching this video is student loans. Whatever the value of education, it would be kind of silly to say you should work at a minimum wage job for years to save up enough money to go to college, and then pay cash for college. The logic of student loans is you can borrow against the increased earnings you'll get from graduating from college, and even at the cost of financing that, you'll turn out better in life. The other reason that consumers use credit is the life cycle model. Early in your life, you have a very high demand for credit and a very low supply. You probably have a job where you're being paid less than you ever will. You have no assets because you're young. You might even be insolvent if you've got student loans. You owe more than you're actually worth. And at that period, you have a very high demand for credit to start your life, to buy a washer, to buy a stove, to buy furniture, to move to a new city, to buy a wardrobe, to buy your first car, all those sorts of things. And you don't have enough money, but you need those things in order to live, so people use credit in order to do that. As you get older, you take on additional expenses. Once you get married, you have kids, all these other sorts of expenses accrue. Until you reach middle age, and in middle age, you stop borrowing and you become effectively a lender when you save money in the bank. And then you draw down your savings and retirement. Now, what is the usefulness of this, of this example? Because it shows, it creates a theory of what rational consumer use of credit looks like. And overwhelmingly, those things describe the way most consumers use credit. And so, when we're thinking about consumer behavior with respect to consumer finance, and when we're thinking about regulation of consumer finance, we should start with the presumption that consumers generally are rational. And they're trying to solve certain goals and the purpose of regulation should be to help them accomplish those goals rather than assume they're irrational or they don't know what they're doing or try to push them in some other direction in a situation in which the regulator doesn't know as well as you or I what we're trying to do with our lives.