Nick Martell

Your dad ran a trailer manufacturing company, not a typical finance pedigree, even though you ended up in the most finance-y of financial jobs you could possibly have.

I know you got this Midwestern humility, but your resume is jacked, Austin.

We see MIT, we see the University of Chicago, we see Yale, plus a secret bullet point underneath your Yale part, Skull and Bone Society?

Sorry, guys, I've got to go.

What about the secret handshake?

We're supposed to learn that one on here.

Now, Austin, before you worked at the Fed, you worked at the White House under President Barack Obama.

Okay, let's paint the picture, Jack.

First day on the job, January 2009, Lehman Brothers and AIG declared bankruptcy just a few months earlier.

Unemployment was double what it is today, and the stock market was down, get this,

Nearly 50%.

Okay, so no big deal.

Chief Economist, you're right there.

No pressure.

What did you tell the president on day number one of that catastrophe?

Now I feel bad, Jack, because I think January that year, you and I were trying to win a beer pong tournament in college.

And in a way, so was I. So was I. But here's the reason we wanted to start on that note.

You're one of the very few people who's been at the policy table for both the 2009 Great Recession and the financial crisis, and-

the current inflation situation that we've been dealing with for a few years now.

So we wanted to know, what is the one lesson from 2009 that is actually useful right now?