Well, welcome to Current Yield, the Grants Interest Rate Observer podcast.

And with us today is Lakshman Akuthan, who is the chief operating officer of something called

Ekri.

And we're going to hear a lot from Lakshman in a moment.

But I want to introduce the rest of the cast of characters.

My immediate left is Eric Whitehead, our very well-traveled engineer.

Hello, Eric.

Don't say anything.

And across me in diagonal direction is the great Evan Lorenz deputy editor of Grants.

I am Jim Grant, and I am a little bit post-party because we had our, not postpartum, post-party.

We had a conference on Tuesday,

right, Evan? It was the 35th birthday celebration, a grants interest rate observer, folded into the annual fall conference we put on in, I'm going to say, Evan, this is in a dispassionate

and objective way. I'm going to say it was fabulous.

It was great. What do you think? Yeah. I think the champagne at the end was only half as good as a conference. And it was good champagne. I told Eric to get the second most expensive. Well, okay, fine.

If it was that good, it was that good. We'll pay for it later. But as I say, today we are, first of all, this is a commercial enterprise, so we're sponsored by us,

Grant's Interest Rate Observer, and presently you will be hearing from John Domberto, who is the long-serving,

the overseer of our subscribers.

He signs them up, and when they choose to depart, which is infrequently, mercifully.

He sees them off with a little sad sales pitch.

He's sad at the end because it's not working.

But John is going to tell you a few things about branch you might not know.

So he's coming later.

...