Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the current yield podcast, a production of Grant's interest rate

observer. I am Jim Grant. With me, as always, is Eric Whitehead of the controls. Phil Grant,

who publishes and writes are almost daily grants, indispensable, almost daily grants, and the great

Evan Lorenz sitting directly across me, the deputy

editor of grants. And joining us today is an alumnus and no mere average alumnus, although there are

none such in the grant stable, but rather Dan Gertner, who as you longtime subscribers will recall,

did the heavy lifting and so much of the substantive analysis, mortgage securities, and housing

in the run-up to and in the midst of the troubles of 2008. So Dan Gertner, welcome to Grants again.

Thank you, Jim. Great to be here. I have felt a little bit sorry for you all these years,

many years now since you left, because of course,

leaving grants constitutes, like I let's say, it a step down and prestige and social standing and the like and if not salary. So it's good to have you back again on this, the 10th anniversary

of, you know, whatever it was that blew up. So the greatest time for financial journalists in

history, I would say.

Was that sweet?

Ah, no, no, it wasn't sweet.

It was a terrible disaster.

Terrible.

Yeah, I'm sorry.

I missed that.

So much to recall.

I want to begin, Dan, by a fateful email or phone call, I forgot in which you got from

a very, very fine investment investor called Alan Fornier, who ran pennant capital. I think he's no longer doing that, but he

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