Hey, it's Adrian Ma, indicator reporter here.

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It is December and we are officially in the home stretch of 2021.

Back in January of this year, I was sure that by now, COVID would be long behind us and

everything would be back to normal or at least normalish.

But of course, that was not the case. 2021 was a really difficult, really surprising year in a lot

of ways, a lot of indicators going in very different directions. And back in January here at the

indicator, we set some intentions. We set three indicators that we were going to watch.

Indicators that we said we would look back on to give us a sense of the kind of year that 2021

was. That was of course back with my co-host, Cardiff Garcia, who was now offering his own podcast

company and we missed him a lot. But today on the show, I am going to check back in on those

three indicators that we set out to watch in 2021. This is the indicator from Planet Money.

I'm Stacy Vannick-Smith. And I'm Cardiff Garcia.

I'm Garcia. We couldn't do these indicators without having you back.

Welcome back. You know, you were so convincing. I almost thought you were going to do the whole

thing yourself. I was like, wait. No, of course, Cardiff, we had to bring you back. We're so excited

to have you. I'm not going to lie. I'm a little nervous. I'm going to be honest with you.

Just buckle in and prepare for a look back at 2021.

...