Hello.

And welcome to...

So good to see you.

No, no.

Yes, Merset.

Introduce yourself.

I am Mercer Baradaran. I am the author of most recently the color of money, black banks and the racial wealth gap.

And I'm also a professor of law at the University of Georgia.

And so we are going to have a whole color of money edition in honor of Mercer Barataran.

We are going to talk about black banking. We are going to talk about black banking. We are going

to talk about black wealth. We're going to talk about reparations. We're going to talk about

opportunities zones. We're going to talk about history. We are going to put this all in context.

We are going to go back centuries. We are going to talk about Haiti. We are going to talk.

You have no idea how much amazing knowledge is going to get dropped in a relatively short podcast. This is going to be dense, fun, interesting. It's going to be not just Mesa, but it's going to be me. I should introduce myself. I am Felix Siamond of Axios. It is going to be Anna Schimanski. Hello. And also Emily Peck of the Huffington Post. Hello. And all of this is going to be

coming up right here on Slate Money. So let's start with your book, which has been out for a while

and everyone has read it already. But for those people who haven't read it already, what's it called?

It's called The Color of Money, Black Banks and the Racial Wealth Gap.

And this is an amazing history of black banking in America,

and not just black banking, but also just the way that African Americans found it incredibly hard to hold onto their money and

they tried to create their own banks, which you would think would help them hold onto their money,

but it didn't really work out that way. Yeah. I mean, if you look at the way banks work, right,

you need, you know, this fractional reserve lending, right? So the money multiplier works if you're

...