my name is randy smith, i am the chair in business journalism at the university of missouri and also the past president of sabu in 92 and '93. over the last 40 years of my career, i can't imagine a worse time as far as covering what happened to the economy in 2007-2008. i was in the industry at that time. i don't think we saw things go any further south as fast as we did at that time. to put some of that in perspective and also to look ahead a little bit, we're very lucky today to have two great guests with us, janet yellin, the vice chair of the board of governors of the federal reserve, and alan sloan who, i think, all of us know is the senior editor at "fortune" magazine and also a seven-time winner of the loeb award. janet has a long and distinguished career which is in your program, but very quickly she was president and ceo of the federal reserve of san francisco beforer current post, chair of the white house council of economic advisers under president clinton. and she's also been a professor at the university of california at berkeley. i'm going to turn it over here to alan.