Carl, of course, moving from geopolitics back to our markets and M&A, I want to introduce my next guest.

He is Paul Taupman, the founder, chairman, and CEO of PJT partners for those who are unfamiliar.

Of course, a public company for the last 10 years.

And Paul, you and I, of course, go back.

I hate to say it, but probably 30 years at this point.

We're a young man back at Morgan Stanley back in the

days. But I love to sort of talk about the current moment. Let's start with M&A. We can go a few other

places as well. You know, we're seeing a certain manic level of activity in certain parts of our

market, not so for mergers and acquisitions. You've made that clear, in fact,

on your latest conference call and some of your comments. I don't want to call you cautious,

but you certainly don't seem to be saying that things are on fire. Right. Well, maybe not cautious,

but realistic. First of all, David, we've known each other forever. It's great to finally be here

and spend some time doing this.

I think the real answer is that we're in this incredible super cycle,

and you're seeing CAPEX deployment like we've never seen it before,

and you're seeing scale matter more,

and the level of scale, the level of capital investment

is truly unprecedented. And the M&A market is healthy. I'd argue the only thing that's

gotten easier is the regulatory environment. There's no doubt we're in an environment today

that's fundamentally different than it was in the prior administration.

All you need to do is look at the various indicia.

In the last year of the Biden administration, there were six early terminations.

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