How about lending standards? Any likelihood of any improvement before the last half of 2010?

You're going to see some improvement, but it's going to be gradual. It's not going to be nearly enough [compared with] what we need to have. You'll only see significant improvement lending standards when job creation materializes and when asset prices stop declining. Those are the two sources, in my mind, of risk in lending. These banks are scared stiff. They got hit bad and they want to see potential lending losses go down before they start opening the pockets up. Job creation has got to be sustained. And then the asset prices. Well, even if you've got job creation and home values continue to decline, or commercial property values continue to decline, I'm not going to give that loan because I don't know how low that could go and I got burned once.

So those are the two key things that have to materialize before you can see that and it's going to take months of a pattern that you see asset prices stabilize and job creation materialize before you're going to get that lending. So I think optimistically you can say “well, maybe that can change in the second half of 2010.” It will pick up its paces, but even then that's just the beginning of the process, I don't think you'll really see things back to normal before 2012.

Do you see it the same way with regard to business investment?

Yes. Keep in mind too that the tight lending standards hit everybody, but apparently it's not hitting the large corporations quite as bad. And fortunately a lot of people miss the point that much of business activity isn't the Fortune 500, it is the small mom and pops.

Any thoughts on how the equipment rental industry will fare in the year ahead?

I'll look at it from the cement perspective. Not only do you have to have an economic recovery then what you have to do is push up utilization. Our utilization rates are extremely low even with a continued recovery this year. We won't reach 80 percent utilization until 2012. I'm guessing on this one, but let's look at ready-mix concrete trucks. Why would I want to go out and buy a new Ready-Mix truck if I've still got some sitting in my lot, I'm not going to go there until I'm pressured, until utilization rates rise and lending materializes. Those conditions, my guess is it's going to lag. You might have an extra year of kind of flat conditions before you see improvement.

At the World of Concrete last year you stated that between now and 2030, the U.S. population would grow by about 60 million people and thus the need for infrastructure spending was huge. Do you still see it that way and are you more pessimistic about the likelihood of those investments being made given the current economic situation and carrying of debt for so long in the future?

It's going to be an absolute requirement; we've ignored it too long. Give Obama credit, he did bring that out. But I can argue that if you re-pave something you haven't really done anything in terms of improving the long-term infrastructure. It's got to be addressed, that's number one. Longer term, I'm even more optimistic than I was before. You still have the demographics. That's still got to be there.

Number two, you are going to have to invest in the infrastructure. But overlaying this now is this green revolution. There is so much opportunity at least in our industry to be tuned in to the green. You hear a lot more now about these wind farms, these are alternative energies, you hear a lot more now about nuclear, you hear a lot more about energy-savings aspects, these are all things that are vital, and we can contribute in terms of concrete because of its characteristics. We've put out a long-term report and we actually identify all these green aspects.

What about the deficit that's being created?

We've taken that into consideration. There's no question in my mind, if you look at not only the deficit being created right now because of Middle East involvement, because of our stimulus involvement, but longer-term we're getting older. So potentially we won't be looking at lower-than-historical averages in terms of economic growth. The Congressional Budget Office has taken a look at this, we are absolutely going to have persistent sustained deficits, that means a structural change potentially in interest rates and tax rates. That's what that adds up to. Even in that context, when we calculate these things, we see a pretty solid future long-term and it's being funneled by the sheer magnitude of the population.