 You might actually have to speak to either your parents or your grandparents to understand what was happening in the 1970s in this country when inflation was at or near double digits as it has now found itself once again in 2022. But here's the difference between inflation today and inflation then. When your grandparents were paying maybe 18%, 15% for a mortgage and inflation was double digits. But also go to the bank and get a simple savings account or a short-term CD and get a rate of interest that was at or about the same rate they were paying to mortgage a house, for example. Whereas today, especially up until recently, 10-year treasury rates are flirting with 4% now. But until recently, the delta, the difference between actual admitted CPI, we all know it's higher, right? We all know it's higher. But actual admitted CPI, let's say 8% or 9% and what you could go get on a simple relatively safe certificate of deposit at maybe 2% or 3%, that delta, that difference is unprecedented. So if you're saving money in that environment, you're not even treading water. Our grandparents could get by with simple thrift. Not easy, but simple. They could work hard, save money. Any society that makes that impossible is a society in big trouble. But here's the kicker. As a lot of the world, go talk to people in Turkey, go talk to people in Venezuela. They'd kill for 8% or 9% inflation. They'd be thrilled to live in America. Here's another big difference between our time and our grandparents' time is the amount of debt that exists in the world. If you go back to the financial crisis of 2007, the total global worldwide debt, and by that number I mean sovereign national debts, corporate debt, household debt, individual debt, was about $142 trillion in 2007. Today in 2023, it's $305 trillion. So I'm glad our central bankers and treasury officials around the world took care of all that debt for us back in 2007 because look how solid we are now. So we've had basically a 40-year experiment in lower and lower and lower interest rates. Since about 1982 when Paul Volcker was the Fed chair and the Fed funds rate peaked at about 18% or 19% all the way down to basically 0% interest rates by 2020. We had this 40-year experiment in pushing interest rates down and down and down and down and down. Across the West and shocker, we have more debt as a result of that. It turns out people will borrow money when you give it to them free. And governments like it, too. Governments like it a lot. Let me just add something as a quick aside. At no point during that 40-year experiment in lower interest rates did actual poor people subprime borrowers get any break whatsoever. Throughout those 40 years, you go to Renda Center, you go to those shady car lots where you make the payment every week kind of thing. Poor people throughout this experiment were paying the same old 28%. Some would call it usury. So the banking class benefited, the housing people benefited, the homeowners benefited, the banks benefited. Poor people never got anything from that 40 years. So as interest rates rise, and of course as I mentioned, 10-year treasuries are now flirting with 4%, pretty soon Congress is going to have to spend a trillion dollars every year. The biggest line item in its budget is going to be service on the national debt. Not paying it down, making a minimum payment on the credit card. So that's where we are, folks. 2022 was a pivot. It was a pivot year after those 40 years of downward and downward and downward interest rates. So we all know ultimately that that 305 trillion can never be repaid in a meaningful sense. That might be repaid nominally, but not in a meaningful sense. And when you look at actual liabilities of national and state and regional governments around the world, it's way higher than 305 trillion. Just look at California. You know what their pension promises are to their employees who retire at 50 and get paid 125 grand a year to sit at home? So this 305 trillion is not even the real number. And so there's going to come a time, at least with the younger people here, when we talk about quadrillions, right, 1,000 trillion. The term quadrillion is going to come into vogue at some point. We all know where this ends. This has to end in some kind of de facto or de jure. Let's hope it's de jure, but basically a debt jubilee, almost like a biblical debt jubilee. That's the only way that it ends. Whether we're out in front of that or whether that's just something that happens under the auspices of the IMF or the World Bank or someone like that is really the question before us. So we have a program today, some great speakers. But I just wanted to introduce by saying this is why the Mises Institute exists, to address the civilizational questions, not the technical monetary questions. We're here to try to convince some people, the people who can be saved, that we need to save money, we need to save money from governments and central banks. We have an obligation to future generations, a serious obligation to future generations. None of this is going to come out of DC. They're never going to do this on their own. They're never going to do this proactively. They're never going to fix this. We have to fix it. It's on us. This obligation to future generations is going to happen locally or regionally. It's not going to happen in DC. So if the Mises Institute can do anything, we can try to roll a hand grenade into the proceedings and blow up the public consciousness and say, we don't need government money. We don't need monetary policy. But we do need at least an upcoming generation of people to believe that the actual laws of economics are real and that they exist. Because we can't rebuild anything for our kids or our grandkids or our great-grandkids until we get control of money. Nothing civilizational can happen in an inflationary environment. And all of you know that it doesn't just degrade the economy, it degrades the entire culture top to bottom. So we've got some great speakers today. We're going to address some of these topics and hopefully come away at least a little bit recharged and energized that there are people like the people in this room who are ready to deal with these problems that we have. Thank you so much.