Well, ladies and gentlemen, this is Current Meald, Grant's Interest Rate Observer of the Air.

And I am Jim Grant, and with me as usual, is Eric Whitehead at the control panel.

And Evan Lorenz, the great deputy editor of Grants.

Evan is remote, not intellectually or spiritually, but just physically. By the way, Evan, do you share

my annoyance with this term social distancing? God, it bugs me. I hate redundancies, especially when

they are sanctified in conventional speech by the authorities. Social distance. How about just distancing?

How about just one word? No? All right, we'll peeve. So we are back from vacation. And I have a feeling that, ladies and gentlemen, you're going to be surprised when you hear where we went. Now, Evan, I think Evan, you did not go far, correct?

No, I stayed within senior Brooklyn. Okay. And I, from my part, the family, went to Bethany Beach, Delaware. We saw the children, the grandchildren, and spouses, all manner of people. He said cast of thousands. And then Patricia and I spent much of that time, and also in upstate New York, where we have a house. And it leaves Eric. And Eric, as you know, is our adventure traveler. And wouldn't you know, I thought he was going to Portland there, Evan, but you know where he went instead? You couldn't get tickets to Portland. You know where we went? He went to Beirut with a whole family. In-laws, nephews, nieces. I mean, it must have been quite a caravan. No, Eric? Yes, yes. Yeah. Well, I think it was probably worth it, though, right? We had a great time, yes.

All right. So we are back today, and I don't know, Evan, it was such a strange time when we were gone.

Here we have the issue of grants dated last week, and we say here that between August 5th and 28th, the gross debt of the United States rose by $132.6 billion.

That was during our vacation.

But for perspective, we say the two-day accretion in the equity market cap of Apple Inc. Following the July 3rd announcement of the iPhone maker's four-for-one stock split totaled $214.8 billion.

So there's your fundamentals in action. But to clarify the whole notion of fundamental

analysis of value investing we have with us today, one of the, I would say, the most imaginative

and thoughtful of members of the value tribe. And he is Andrew McDermott. And Andrew is a principal

of mission value partners, LLC, out in

Sonoma, California. And he's a John Buford is with him side by side. Jazz is John Buford's idea of a

good time and buying low and selling high is Andrews. Not to say that John doesn't mind buying low and

selling high, but I think if you're with

us, Andrew, he might spend a few minutes telling us in somewhat rhapsodic terms about the fabulous

voice and affect of Veronica Swift, no?

Well, if he, and I have to apologize. Well, first of all, thank you. And it's just me today.

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