Well, this is Grant's interest rate observer of the year.

I'm Jim Grant, and we had been away, but now we're back.

And Eric White is back at the controls.

Phil Grant, the editor of Almost Daily Grants, the not almost, but immediately, must-read daily

briefing on the markets and directly across

from me is the great Evan Lorenz deputy editor of grants. So we've been away for a couple of weeks,

and I think that we owe you an explanation. Well, we've taken some mid-semester vacations around

here. Now, Eric Whitehead, to my left, chose to visit Vietnam.

Now, before Eric and his family went to communist Cuba, now they went to communist Vietnam,

and I know from looking over his shoulder his computer that he has booked a flu season

reservation at the Pyongyang Days Inn next February.

Enjoy. Enjoy it. Eric. As for me, I've got to confess that Patricia and I, my wife, Patricia,

and I'm Dr. Kavanaugh, and I took a cruise, yeah, a cruise to New Zealand and Australia.

In Australia, we talk some grants readers. It that was lovely but I think that I owe you

the listeners to this grants podcast an explanation of how it came to be that my wife and I went on

this bull market jaunt like 17 days at uh and supreme luxury I mean it's it's almost indefensible

but we had a good time James Creighton are you listening James is is a listener ordinarily, and he wants to know what I'm reading.

Why?

I don't know, but he does.

So on the cruise, James, I read Flobert's Madame Bovary, a fabulous novel,

and I read a biography of Charles James Fox, the 18th century English parliamentarian, a great guy, very funny, incidentally, and a great

exponent of liberty. So that's what I did in the cruise.

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