Dr. Lehman, welcome back to capitalism.com. It's been a year since we've hung out here.

So thanks for coming back.

Thank you for having me.

Glad to be here.

For anyone who didn't hear our first podcast episode together, Dr. Lehman is the economics professor at Indiana Wesleyan University that changed pretty much my viewpoint on the world.

I think studying economics made me more of an educated person than any other field of study,

besides maybe 15 years as an entrepreneur.

But Dr. Lehman, when we were here a year ago, we were right in the middle of

the government's response to the pandemic. And my first question to you is, are you surprised

in any direction about how the markets and how the economy has responded to the government

policy of the last year?

Yes and no, I guess the surprising aspect of it is that as I look out over macroeconomic

statistics and data today, on the surface, the economy

looks very strong and very good. And I guess over the past year, the surprise has been just

how quickly the dip. It was, of course, not, you know, a conventional recession.

This was not a conventional from the perspective of most economists, me included, this would not

be your typical business cycle kind of recession. This is very much we would call a kind of

random exogenous shock outside the system, just disrupting things,

government policy responses disrupting on the supply side.

But I'm pleasantly surprised at how things have responded very quickly.

Now, you'll notice I said, you know, on the surface, things look

pretty strong, pretty good. So that would be the, that would be a part, part of the surprising

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