Well, this is Current Eild, Grant's Interest Rate Observer of the Air, and I am Jim Grant,

and with me as usual is the great deputy editor of Grant's Evan Lorenz.

Our friend Henry is at the control panel, and joining us today is John Hamburger, who was the

moving force behind a superlative publication called Restaurant Finance Monitor, and these other

irons in the fire of financial publications, but we'll concentrate on his fine work in restaurant

finance monitor. But first, Evan, I have been overwhelmed by a sense of

nostalgia this morning. You know, the Ukrainian businesses, I suppose, not everyone has struck most by

nostalgic feelings, but I was taken back to the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962. I was around, certainly reading the papers

and, you know, absorbed the propaganda from both sides that Russia felt free to install its missiles

in Cuba, and we felt free to say, if you do that, it's all over. And there's similarities,

of course, with today's Ukrainian business. But what most struck me in the nostalgic vein this morning was a headline.

Evan, it was a quote, city to lay out plans for generating better returns.

That's from Reuters.

And I was taken back 100 years.

Now, I just was starting in finance 100 years ago, but I remember as if it were yesterday,

Citibank's problem with a concentrated loan book in Cuba, it's underwriting Cuban sugar industry.

And wouldn't you know it, a slip of the judgment of the credit committee allowed city to be exposed 80% of its capital

to Cuban sugar loans.

And you know, it was then as now sugar was a somewhat cyclical commodity.

And it did recover its then prices, but not until 1945.

And in the meantime, Citibank struggled and its then CEO Charles Mitchell allowed, conceded

to the Pecora Committee investigating such things.

...