Quite frankly, the Fed hasn't been in full control of the dollar-based system for the last 20, 30 years anyway.

So using these big blunt tools and trying to make them sound as if they are super effective and really are going to move the needle,

you know, only just conflates and actually confuses the matter, but people buy into it because the Fed operates really through expectations channels and their announcements of these big programs help move markets, but the markets

themselves still do most of the heavy lifting.

Welcome back to The Breakdown with me, NLW.

It's a daily podcast on macro, Bitcoin, and the big picture power shifts remaking our world.

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What's going on, guys? It is Monday, December 28th, and today on the breakdown's end-of-year

extravaganza, I am joined by George Goncalvez. George is a macro expert who is particularly

known for his understanding of the bond markets, and even more specifically, for sharing the

signals that bond markets are trying to tell us at any given time. I'm really

excited to have George back to the show. So without any further ado, let's get to the conversation.

All right, George, welcome back to the breakdown. It's great to have you here again.

No, look, it's great. It's a great time of the year, you know, wrap things up. And it's been

great to listen to all your podcasts. I really enjoyed it and I learned a lot as well.

Awesome, man. Well, so let's dive in. I think you're going to have a really great perspective

on a lot of these questions. And to start off kind of at the biggest, highest level,

what, in your opinion, was the most important economic story of 2020. Well, you know, that's one that's really hard to kind of pin down.

But I guess front center, obviously, COVID and what it did and the fallout, both on the,

on the health side of things, as well as on the economy.

But then what took place in parallel to that and was really like in, you know, in reaction to the sort of policy that was put in place by central banks and the fiscal, the whole K recovery, this idea that like those that were, you know, close to financial assets or, you know, were still gainfully employed, were able to benefit tremendously from

this massive, just really epic amount of response from central banks, you know, to a health

...