This is Current Yield, and I am Jim Grant, and welcome to Grant's interest rate observer of the air.

Joining me today, as always, Eric Whitehead, who was at the podcast control panel and the great Evan Lorenz, the deputy editor of grants.

Gentlemen, now welcome to our podcast, ladies and gentlemen, welcome to our welcome.

And Evan, it seems to me we have some timely topics to discuss today.

I'm thinking, first of all, the Fed is embarking indeed, and Monday did embark on a year-long listening tour.

It's going to find out from the American people what they want out of their monetary policy masters.

And that's one topic.

And a second topic, of course, might be, well, Bill Gross. He has opened up to Bloomberg and through Bloomberg to us. And I think the ball is now in our court. Is it not? I think it's only

fair. Yeah. And I should also mention, in addition to these two timely topics, we are sponsored by ZipRecruiter,

which is the place to go when you need help.

And who doesn't need help?

Yeah, who doesn't need help?

And we are sponsored also, and not least by a grant's interest rate observer, which is

kind of the hometown paper right here, and especially by our conference on April 9th,

which is going to be merely terrific. And I'll get into the details of that presently. But Evan,

first up is the Fed's listening tour. Now, when people listen, do they simultaneously talk?

Not as I understand it. And looking at the Fed, they can't shut up. No, no, they can't. Well, I guess if you are holding forth in a podcast,

you really can't complain too much about people holding forth.

But the Fed, you know, there was a time when discretion was thought to be one of the prime monetary policy virtues.

In the old days, classical central banks, gold standard era, would conscientiously say nothing,

but rather let their interest rates and their balance sheet do the talking for them. But now it's

kind of the talking monetary system. What are they going to say, well, what they want to hear

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