Well, this is Grant's interest rate observer of the year.

I am Jim Grant and welcome.

And with me, as always today, Eric Whitehead to my left of the dials, Phil Grant, the editor

of Almost Daily Grants, the not almost, but perfectly indispensable daily update on the financial markets.

And the great Evan Lorenz deputy editor of grants. We're all here. Yeah. And we are brought to you

today by Health IQ, and that's for the hard bodies who are listening. And also you are listening

to us courtesy of ourselves. We are sponsored by grants itself in a very reasonable rate,

too, I might say. We are sponsored, in fact, specifically by the grants spring conference, April 10th

at the Plaza Hotel. We'll see you there. So, you know, Evan, I cannot forbear, but talk a little

bit about the issue. This went to press on Tuesday night. It got sent out over the digital

wires yesterday. And ordinarily, we kind of keep these things into our hat because the paying

customers deserve to get first crack. But sometimes you just have to blab. If something is so

exciting, you can't hold back, you must talk about it. So let us talk about the extraordinary thing that is

the People's Republic of debt, China. One in the same. Okay, please, Evan, favor us with some,

as it were, vital signs from the People's Republic. So the numbers from China are always fantastic,

but now they're especially so. Banking assets in China now foot to

$40 trillion. And just to put that in perspective, that's 51% of world GDP. And to give you a

sense of scale, China's GDP last year footed to $13 trillion. U.S. GDP last year was $19.4 trillion.

U.S. banking assets are only $17.4 trillion. And if you go back in the historical record,

about as far back as we have it, which kind of goes back to 1980, U.S. banking assets is a percent

of world output peaked at 32 percent in 1985 right around the time of the plaza accords

when the dollar soared to unusually high heights. And for Japan, its banking system peaked

...