 Walter Block is the Harold E. Worth eminent scholar and dad chair in economics at Loyola University Of course he's a scholar at the Mises Institute and the Hoover Institute author of defending the undefendable privatization of roads and highways which we have here labor economics with free market Perspective which is on sale out front employing the undefendable and it goes on and on and on as you've heard He's the he's the author of thousands of articles Who knows how many refereed? articles This man has been nothing but a machine of production Since he took up this cause many many years ago And I think he said numerous times and hopefully he talks about it in his talk that He had a man who very much inspired him and showed him the way a guy named Murray Rothbard and I am so pleased to be awarding this award tonight because I think Murray looks down upon both of us right now with a big smile on his face and Says that a boy to Walter and and myself, but Anybody who's been to Mises University will know that after a grueling day of Classes from 8 in the morning till 8 at night Probably somewhere around 9 o'clock Somewhere either in the bookstore or somewhere in the building you're going to see a Covey of of people a circle of people and you're going to know who's and these people are students Still they're very hungry for knowledge Plenty of questions and you absolutely know who's in the middle of that circle and it's the man to my right Walter block and he has taken up a tradition I think that Murray started that is long as there were questions as long as there were students to be asking Those questions he was he was there to answer them I've called him many times the pied piper of Austrian economics I've called him the father Flanagan of Austrian economics because he tends to get a very diverse group that you just saw follow him around to pursue economics as as a profession and There is really no one else in our movement who has done this like Walter block There is no one who has produced What is now a thousand points of light? Austrian lights like Walter block has and he has done it the old-fashioned way. There is probably no one Other than Murray Rothbard who was more low-tech than Walter block But one person at a time that he influenced Has turned into dozens has turned into hundreds and now those hundreds teach thousands and those thousands have Technology that who knows they are going to change the world. This is a guy who's changed the world. I agree with Dan D'Amico Walter block has set the standard for what the Gary G. Schlarbaum award should be going forward And it is my pleasure with the help of Deanna for Bush my wife That's a jack has Vanna. I have Deanna To award Walter block the 2011 Gary G. Schlarbaum award This metal This metal is as heavy as a manhole cover. So believe me Walter is in great shape always has been just had a little work on his hip. I guess but these certainly very very deserving Walter take it away Thank you. Thank you very much It's an honor to get the Schlarbaum award I just wanted to mention the fast company that I'm in with by winning this award Otto von Hobsburg 1999 Ralph Raco 2000 Anthony flu 2001 Bettina BN Graves 2002 Ron Paul 2003 Hans St. Holtz 2004 William Peterson confidant of Mises 2005 Hans Hoppe 2006 Robert Higgs my buddy down here 2007 Pascal Salon 2008 Haysus where the the Soto 2009 Jim Rogers 2010 And I'm very very happy and delighted to be part of this August company To give a retrospective talk as opposed to a substantive talk You have to have accomplished something and the way we tell whether you've accomplished something or not Modern day is is there a t-shirt in your honor and I'm happy to say that there's not only one t-shirt But two t-shirts in my honor The first one is old guys rule That was meant for me the other is My first book in 1976 which is still selling so go out and buy some Not only you have to have something accomplished. You have to be old And I'm now old. I just turned 70. I Used to be the on-farm terry, but I don't know what happened. I'm an old guy I get on a plane into these young guys that want to put my luggage up on the top of the thing And I feel like smacking them, but they're way bigger and stronger than me, so I'd better not That I'm trying to put groceries in the car and they try to help me It's sort of like I'm an old duffer or something. It's just horrible I can't even pick stuff off the floor the floor has gotten lower every year And this is before my hip operation now, you know, I can just sort of wave at the floor. It's just horrible Not only am I getting old physically, but I'm well, I was gonna say I'm getting old mentally But I think I've always been old mentally even when I was young. I sort of have this intellectual Soapsism or incest or something weird like I'll write a lot of stuff and I'll forget what I wrote And I'll start reading it and I'll forget that I wrote it and I'll start saying yeah, this is good stuff You can't get more solipsistic than admiring yourself and not knowing you wrote it I've had Two experiences that I have to share with you One is this guy Brooks who criticized me on coasts and Demsats and I wrote a rejoinder and then six months later I forgot that I wrote that rejoinder when I wrote another rejoinder That's amazing and then I wrote two book reviews of William Easterly's book White man's burden and I didn't realize that I'd written one before I wouldn't write two of them if I'd known And those are the only two I'm aware of I mean there might be others I know But I'd better not keep continuing with my foibles. Otherwise, they'll take this award away from me. They'll say what? What a maniac, you know, give us back that award. So I'm gonna stop right now on that. I Want to give three topics. I've been assigned a half hour, so I'm gonna try to do ten minutes each I haven't given the speech so I don't know how it'll work out, but let me try I want to give my personal story. I want to talk a little bit about me and libertarianism and then a little bit about me and Austrian economics. I Justify the first on the grounds that being old I actually Touched hands or shook hands with people like Mises Rothbard ran Friedman Hayek. I once played chess with Hayek I got a picture of me playing chess with Hayek Hut people like that. So if you come up and shake my hand I can channel these people for you You know you shake my hand you're shaking Mises's hand if I haven't washed my no I've washed my hand since then Murray Rothbard Has been for me the the inspiration And I've got a lot of similarities with Murray. We're both short fat Jews from New York City We both married Christian girls. Marie Beth say hello. There's my wife We both have PhDs from Columbia Columbia University in economics. We both had trouble with Arthur Burns there Murray's trouble with Arthur Burns was Arthur wouldn't sign off on his dissertation and he had to wait until Arthur Burns went to become head of the Fed to get his PhD Otherwise, he never would have got it. My problem with them is I had to pass a macro prelim And he was teaching and all he's talking about is his days with Nixon. So I never learned macro and horrible We both have silly senses of humor. We're both Austro libertarians and a co-capitalist We both publish a lot now I won't compare my publications with Murray in terms of quality but in terms of quantity. I'm getting close because I do publish a lot Usually in my early career I would keep track of how many pages I published in a day And if I did five a day that is double space type written pages of 300 words or 1500 words in a day I think it was pretty good and every once in a while I get up to 10 pages maybe 15 one day I did 23 pages and It took me, you know, eight in the morning until two in the morning and I called up Murray and I said well How many pages do you do and Murray goes meh meh who keeps track of that? but Doug was kind enough to call me various things about the movement But I'm also the Jewish mother of the movement and as Jewish mother I'm a great whiner and I have threats I can throw a filter fish at you or Wine stuff like that. So I was very pestery with Murray. I said money. I'm not getting off the phone till you tell me He said eight pages an hour Eight pages an hour. I mean my whole my biggest day of work was like three hours of his Now a professional typist could type faster than that but Murray is creating Stuff right out of the top of his head at that rate. I mean that's unfair. I mean the government should step in and take We should have a little redistribution I Think I'm the only person who have ever co-authored anything with Murray I've co-authored a lot of stuff and of course I'm the most proud that I've co-authored stuff with him. I Also channel him in some weird ways like he stole a lot of my ideas It's true. He published them 20 years before I even thought of them But still he stole my ideas because I thought of them independently and then I go read about him saying it Here's something very interesting I wrote a review essay of the book by Eleanor Ostrom who just won the Nobel Prize governing the commons and What I said was this is an evil book. I use that pejorative advisable He's also a basically mistaken volume, but we'll get to that in a moment Why is it a wicked publication a description rarely applied to a dry term in economics? That's my opening statement on the Ostrom book Here is Murray on Hayek's Constitution of Liberty as written by Roberta Madoño in these secret letters that just came out and I swear I wrote my thing on Ostrom before I read this thing in Madoño. Here's Murray on Hayek FAA Hayek's Constitution of Liberty is surprisingly and distressingly and extremely bad and I would even say evil book Who writes like that? I don't know if anyone else except me and Murray but was sort of I don't know We were weirdly connected Another a motto I've adopted from Murray is hatred is my muse and What Murray would mean like that he'd say he'd read something. So I'm gonna get this if it takes me the rest of my life I'm not gonna let that stand without a without a rejoinder and a lot of my writing is based on hatred Another parallel, you know, I've written a book defending the undefendable where I have a whole bunch of Articles defending people who are a little off the beaten track to say the least But they're compatible with a non-aggression axiom and they're reviled or illegal. Well, I just read in Murray The demagogue The demagogue is hero. No, I I've been thinking about that but he stole that from me He wrote it many years ago, but you know the demagogue is hero. It's just so defending the undefendable ish And and he beat me to it again Murray had great patience with me When I first met him and I'll tell you how I got to him in a second when I first met him He he converted me to anarchism in about five minutes Austerlism took a little longer and I saw a picture of Mises on his wall and I said Murray How do you have a picture of Mises on his wall? He's not an anarchist He believes in government opera or something and maybe just smile very patiently at me Whereas a lot of people would have kicked me out of their their apartment or something for you know I'm saying why do you have a picture of Mises? Isn't that a little pushy? But you know we Jewish mothers we're pushy, so I Also had some interaction with Mises I attended Mises's last seminar at NYU because Murray took a whole bunch of us living room crowd people there and Mises was very elderly then and he could hardly hear and Percy Graves had to translate both ways But it was still an honor and a pleasure to be in the same room with Ludwig von Mises. I Regard Ludwig von Mises and Mary Rothbard as two of the greatest economists that ever ever lived ever wrote Let me tell you about I'm Rand I Was a pinko commie Jew in Brooklyn which is sort of redundancy because everyone I knew was Was like that and you know the big question in my family was well Do you actually carry a commie card or are you just a fellow traveler and that was sort of the level of? Discourse in my family and I was at Brooklyn College and I heard I'm Rand is coming to lecture and I said oh I'm gonna boo her and his heart because she's evil She believes in free enterprise and you know There'll be dead babies in the street and stuff like that And so I came and I listened to her and I booed lustily and there must have been about 3000 of us in the audience and Afterward the the iron ran study society or whoever was the host and invited her said well There's gonna be a luncheon in her honor and anyone can come to the luncheon even if you disagree and I hadn't had enough of booing And hissing at her. I really wanted to smash her So I I came to the lunch and there was this long long table maybe 50 people on a side And there was iron ran sitting over there and I found your Brandon and Alan Greenspan and a few others of her coterie And I was relegated to the foot of the table over here and I turned to my neighbor and I said was this capitalist crap You know socialism is the way to go and he says well, you know I don't really know about that, but the people who do are over there So I was a hoodspinic in those days still am and I stuck my head between iron rands and Nathan's and I said You know there's a socialist here who wants to debate someone on socialism capitalism and they said who's that I said me I was a senior in college. I was you know 21 and you know Filling my oats and Brandon was very generous He said I'll come to the other end of the table and I'll talk to you during lunch on two conditions one You don't allow this conversation to lapse and be the end of it But we keep going until we settle that this and to you read two books that I'll recommend to you well the two books were Atlas shrug and economics in one lesson by Henry Haslett and I read that Atlas shrug it took me one week and I couldn't put it down It's 1,100 pages of small type. I just sort of blew me away And I read Haslett and I went to on on Rand's apartment several times and I Was sort of a classical liberal. I was a libertarian not an anarchist, but a classical liberal the problem with the Rand It was really cultish You couldn't you know the typical question that you could ask after the the event was well miss Rand on page 456 You said this could you please expound? Well, you know, that's really a softball you can't say well You said over here on page 7 27 here page 32 in their contradictory. How do you how do you account for that? I always encourage my students to argue with me But she didn't and you know if you asked her a tough question. She would just kick you out. So it wasn't really Very nice. It wasn't academic. It wasn't intellectual. It was a little cultish But these were the only people I knew that were free enterprises and then I met Larry Larry Moss who is a Student at Columbia with me and he said you got to meet this guy Murray Rothbard. He's an anarchist and I said oh an anarchist That's crazy. I don't want to meet Murray Rothbard, but but somehow Larry Moss and Jerry Wallows his roommate prevailed upon me to go meet Murray and then as I said in about five minutes he converted me You know, I would say well, how can we have armies courts and police privately said well how about the post office and the post office will have competition and The usual argument and that was it. I was an anarchist. It took me a lot longer to become an Austrian because I had a vested interest I was now getting my PhD in in mainstream economics and you know, you ask those guys about Austrianism and they think that's a cult So I had a hard time getting my hands around the idea of monopoly and a few other things But and certainly practical logical stuff But finally I did become an Austrian. I Want to mention another person in addition to Murray Rothbard, Ludwig von Mises and on land who've affected my my persona my abilities my My career and that's my buddy Bill Barnett He mentioned that we have Offices next door to each other and a lot of times he'll pound on the door Which is a signal for me to go scurrying into his office to see what he wants Before I got the before I I got to Loyola University in 2001 And I just looked it up and I had a hundred and thirty five publications and referee journals And now I have 395 so I published two hundred and sixty in the last ten years an average of 26 each Each year I'm a sort of a workaholic Bill had about ten articles or maybe five or eight or something like that before I came and now He's got about sixty so he did fifty in the interim roughly. These are rough numbers and a lot of people think Well, he never published squat before I got there now. He publishes a lot a lot in Coauthorship with me and therefore he is writing on my coattails Well the very opposite is the truth. He's been my mentor I've learned more from him that I've learned from anyone else with the exception of Mises and Rothbard Especially in macroeconomics, and it's been a delirious pleasure for me to be part of Loyola University Mainly because of Bill. I have two other good colleagues. So Dan is one of them. John the Venice is another and a few other good people But with that bill it wouldn't be the same There was a week where we didn't have lunch we have lunch every day pretty much And it was the the wind sort of fell out of the balloon a little bit So I think that you've heard Bill before you can see his knowledge of what's going on with Austrian economics He's been my tutor my mentor, and I'm deliriously happy with him Oh another thing in addition to being the Jewish mother of the movement. I'm also known foreign-wide as Walter moderate block Why because I'm not a full anarchist I've Agreed that the government has got a step in there is one market failure and that is that not everyone has read Atlas shrugged Manny commune state in human action and the sole function of the government is to coerce everyone to read those three books But apart from that I'm an anarchist. So you see I'm really moderate. I'm not I'm not an extremist. I'm a moderate anarchist Okay, I think I've given you a little bit of my personal stuff And I said I would do that for the first third and now I want to talk very briefly about my connection with libertarianism And then a little bit about my connection with Austrianism In libertarianism, I think my most famous book is defending the undefendable Let me tell you how I came to write that what happened was I was writing my PhD dissertation on a rent control for Gary Becker, he was my thesis advisor and I hated it I absolutely hated it because all it was was math and stat and econometrics and stuff like that and The whole thing was sort of neoclassical Because you know What I'm supposed to show is that rent control screws up housing and I had an econometric equation model And most of the time I got the right signs and most of the time I got significant t-values and all was well But every once in a while I'd get the wrong sign and every once in a while the wrong sign would be statistically significant and I'd show it to Gary Becker and You'd think if he were consistent with his own neoclassical view. He would say Wow, I've got this genius block who's gonna change everything. We know about the rent control instead. He said block you moron Go out and do it again till you get it right So what's testing what is the theory testing the econometrics or is the econometrics testing a theory? So the whole experience was if anything worse than my experience with all the burns But I had to get the dissertation because my alternative was to go be shot out in Vietnam or shoot people And I didn't want to do that. So I I was you know turning it away But I had to come up with a reward system So every time I did one more equation or I found one more thing I would reward myself with a whole day to do anything I wanted and what would I do in a day? I'd write about what a great guy the pimp was Well, what a great guy the drug pusher was or something like that or how blackmail is really should be legalized And the blackmailer is a great guy And at the end of this at the at the end of the dissertation I had like 35 of these essays and I put them together in a book and that was the defending the undefendable So that was my reward for getting through the PhD Murray wrote One sentence about blackmail and man economy and state for which he was severely excoriated by reviewers. I Have written a lot more not more wisely, but a lot more I must have written maybe 35 journal articles on why blackmail is great and why everyone who says blackmail is bad is Is wrong and I'm coming out with a book of all these articles. So that's one of my things in libertarianism another is on abortion and evictionism Pro-life pro-choice what I'm trying to say is that the usual view is this pro-life and pro-choice But the true libertarian view is a third view. It's a completely distinct view and it's called evictionism I believe that life starts with the fertilized egg, but the unwanted fetus is a trespasser Because the mother owns the womb. It's a little complicated. You have to get into it if you're interested, you know email me and I'll Give you some stuff on that. By the way I'm associated with very good colleagues here of John LeVendis and Bill Barnett Dan D'Amico and Talk about creation of students when I was at Holy Cross I was the only one and the other econ professors would tell the students not to take my courses Here we're a team and I can produce a lot more with three colleagues who are sympathetic to me than with With others who are not of course the people over in sociology tell Their students not to take any economics, but that's a whole different question The point I'm getting at is we do have seminars on Friday afternoon twice a month We have seminars on Thursday Lunches so if you want to be on my list of people to notify of events Libertarian events that occur like the Mises Institute coming here or Juan Paul email me and I'll put you on my email list And I will notify you of upcoming events Another thing I did was punishment theory to teeth for a teeth to teeth for a tooth plus Cost of capture and scaring My view there. We're very draconian. We don't like crime So suppose I steal your TV. Well, the first thing to do is I got to give you your TV back And if I broke it, I have to give you an equivalent amount of money But if all I do is give it back. Well, that's hardly a utilitarian punishment. I have to give you one of mine I have to give you my TV but even there that that's not very very draconian but and and if what I did after I stole your TV is I Turned myself into the police and I said hey, sorry. I stole a TV. It was a moment of weakness here I am do with me what the law requires. Well, then there were no costs of capture, but if I Worse in my crime by not only stealing your TV, but then trying to hide well Then any anyone who's been deputized to look for me. I got to pay them too But when I stole your TV, I scared you You're you're feeling for private property is lessened. So we got to scare me And how are we gonna scare me go boo or something like that? No, you make me play Russian roulette With the number of bullets and the number of chambers proportionate to how badly I scared you the average man I mean, you know Arnold Schwarzenegger isn't gonna be too scared because he's macho, but the average guy So this is a very draconian thing. It's been very controversial among libertarians, but what the heck I Sort of like controversy. I don't know if you got that Yet, but I do Another one is voluntary slavery My child has a dread disease. It'll cost five million to cure him I don't have five million, but I love him whereas Doug over here's won't wanted me to be his slave And he's very rich. So Doug pays me five million. I give the five million to the doctors and now I become Doug slave Is this justified in libertarian law? Well, the only other person that I found who agreed with me is Robert Nozick Which is sort of wonky because he's not really a bit I'm not a big fan of his every other libertarian disagrees including Murray Rothbard But that's my view and all I can say is, you know, I've got a paper trail on this and if you don't like it Get off your rear end and write something about it. Let you know, let's get it on Not physically but that's the way you get to the truth You write something somebody else write something else. I'm involved with Andy Young in an article or two or three I forget how many where we're disputing Real business cycle and other things and that's the way you get closer to the truth You never get fully there, but you move in that direction. So My open invitation is to those who disagree. I've got a paper trail. Don't just say I'm wrong Write something about it. Write a rejoinder. I I'm forever writing criticism people like coasts and Friedman and Buchanan and Hayek and Mises and Rothbard. We're not a cult. We're allowed to criticize each other That's that's the academic way of trying to get that one inch closer to the truth Other areas that I've contributed a little bit to libertarianism or on immigration I Don't usually attack lefties. It's sort of like shooting fish in a barrel. So I usually go for other libertarians or conservatives Okay, that's my bit on libertarianism. I now want to do a little bit of substance with you I realize it's late in the day, but the hell with it. We're gonna kick some butt here these interest rate tables Everyone got one if you don't have one I've got a few extras and there's gonna be a quiz After this you're not gonna be allowed out of the room unless you answer these correctly. So you better have one Are there any people that don't have one? I've got extras here. No, everyone's got one Okay, so let's get to it. I Have made some contributions to Austrian economics mostly as Bill Barnett's junior partner We've really ripped in the Roger Garrison and Hayek on his triangle Oh, Roger had a very interesting response when I asked him about they said triangles yesterday Triangles today triangles tomorrow triangles forever. He's from Alabama. So you can understand why he would say that Also on fraction reserve banking borrowing short lending long optimal amount of currency These are some other articles that I've done with Bill Barnett. Okay on to the Interest rate tables and I think this is very complimentary Building on what Joe Salerno said Joe Salerno said there was a misallocation And I'm going to try to illustrate Austrian business cycle fury Misallocation of resources based on interest rate tables It's sort of a way of putting numbers on it because not only do we Austrians have numbers on the pages for the page numbers But we actually do look at numbers. We do look at econometrics. It's just we have a different interpretation We say that econometrics illustrates or not economic law it doesn't test the economic law economic law comes first Okay, the top thing on the Compound interest multiplier That's if you take a dollar and you put it in the bank and you leave it for any number of years at various rates of interest How much will you have at the end of the time period? So for example, if you leave a dollar in the bank for a year for four years at four percent interest rate You will have how much at the end of the time period? $1.17 everyone with me if you leave Money in the bank at 8% for 30 years. You'll have $10.06 If you leave $10 in the bank for two years at 2% You'll have not a dollar for but ten dollars and 40 cents because you move a decimal point over. Okay. That's the easy one That's just the ordinary stuff that Little kids are told when they're five years old about interest rate tables and you see the lights perk up in their Eye about greed and you know they want to put money and get more so that's the easy part the second part is Present discounted value. What's present discounted value present discounted value is The value that you place now on money receivable in the future and to in order to make things simpler I'm going to assume that you get the money for sure and That there's no inflation just to abstract from those problems So what would be the profit maximizing bid for a dollar receivable in 10 years at 10% interest? The right answer is minus infinity Namely I have to pay you an infinite amount of money to take this off my hands right but What would be the present discounted value of the thing where you'd make no profit in other words? I'm offering you in 10 years that I'll deliver you A dollar and the interest rate is 10% If you bid this amount you'll make no profit off the deal and what's that amount? 38.6 cents everyone with me there you look in the 10-year column and the 10% column Why is this why is it that you'll make no profit if you? Did 38.6 cents for a dollar receivable in 10 years at 10% interest rate because if you would have put 38.6 cents in the bank and leave it in the bank for 10 years at a 10% interest rate guess how much the bank would give you a dollar So that's present discounted value Let's take one more case. What's the present discounted value namely the value right now of money receivable in three years at 3% 91.5 cents. Yes, everyone. Okay. I want more enthusiasm. Yeah. Yeah, right on. Okay. Good. That's better That means that if you put 91.5 cents in the bank and leave it there for three Three years at 3% they'll give you a dollar So the value of the thing receivable in three years from now at 3% is 91.5 Okay, now that I've given you the preliminary. Let me give you the Austrian take on the business cycle Suppose that the Fed in its glory and in its wisdom lowers the rate of interest from 5% to 3% The Fed lowers the rate of interest from 5% to 3% and Let's think of a investment that has only a one-year duration Well at 5% if the interest rate were 5% What would the value of a dollar receivable or an investment made now where the fruits of it would come through in a year? What would it be worth right now? What is the present discounted value of a dollar receivable in a year at 5%? 95.2 But we lower the rate of interest to 3% and now the value of it is 97 cents So by lowering the rate of interest we've made an investment of one year worth 2% more than it was before give or take without rounding numbers namely 97 is 2% more than 95 cents So there will be a slight misallocation of resources toward investment made In for a one-year duration now come down with me to 40 years What is the present discounted value of an investment that will come to fruition or bear fruit in? 40 years at 5% 14.2 cents But now we lower the rate of interest to 3% and what's the value of it? 30.7 or 31 cents roughly double So if you have a slight teeny Incentive to start investing more in short-term stuff. You've got a gigantic stupendous Incentive to invest in a 40-year project or in a 50-year project when it goes from 8 cents to 22 cents, which is almost triple Do you see that So what a lowering of the rate of interest you see the mainstream when they think of a lowering of the rate of interest all They think of as well, you know, there'll be a little more inflation. They don't realize that that interest rates intermediate present and future money or investments So what happens is that you have? When you when you lower the rate of interest and they've lowered it to I don't know a couple of basis points They lowered it practically down to zero and they're Complaining that they can't go below zero What this means is that they've given an incentive to make long-range investments very heavy and very very slightly for short-range Investments, so is it any wonder that we have too many houses and too many cars? Because it takes a long time to make a house in a car if you start with the mining of the stuff and the making of the bricks and The pipes for the house and all sorts of stuff now Yes, there is the CRA the community reinvestment act and there's There's Fannie and there's Freddie and there's hot and they also pushed us toward too much housing I don't deny that but everyone knows that or any means even a mainstream economist would realize that But it's only the Austrians that see that this too is another cause pushing us in the direction of heavy investment That's the misallocation with a boom. I think was Joe Salano said that the I forget who it was Tom that the recession or Bob Higgs was saying that the recession is a cleansing of these misallocation misallocative investments Okay, I've done a little of my personal story. I've done a little bit of that libertarianism I've done a little bit of Austrian economics. I thank you from the bottom of my heart for the schlaubahm award I am just delighted to be a winner of that award. Thank you