Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Current Yield, Grant's Interest Rate Observer of the Air.

I am Jim Grant. One of your hosts with me, as always, is Eric Whitehead, and the great Evan Lorenz,

who is the deputy editor of Grants. And joining us today is Christopher Balding. Christopher, good evening.

I was going to say good morning, which would be appropriate for the Eastern Time Zone,

but you are anything but in the Eastern Time Zone. He is today an associate professor

at the Fulbright University of Vietnam after nine years on the faculty of the HSBC Business School

of Beijing University Graduate School in Shenzhen, China. Christopher, why aren't you in China?

Basically, I was let go for my teaching contract,

even though I supposedly had a contract without an end date. And I could sense the winds changing in

China. I did not expect things to get politically as bad as they have in China. But I saw the writing

on the wall and I looked to leave China.

And thoroughly enjoying Vietnam, it's a wonderful country. People are wonderful. There's a lot of

things happening. And this is one of the few countries that is actively cheering on the trade war.

For those of you listening who don't know Christopher's work, he's a darn polymath is what he is.

His interests range from, I don't know, health policy and planning to international trade and finance.

And he once wrote something on capital controls using copper as collateral with which to disguise capital flows.

And not to mention implied homicide rates of

international adoptees. Christopher, you know, when we in this country in America look at China,

we see in a way, I suppose we want to see. You saw a great deal in your, what, nine years there.

What was the most dramatic change, perhaps, that led to your decision

or a mutual decision for you to leave Proto? When I really began to feel that things had really

shifted, from the time I walked into China, you kind of always felt that cloud that, you know,

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