BREAKDOWN: ENCORE – Luke Gromen on the History and (Declining) Future of the Global Dollar System
CoinDesk Podcast Network
CoinDesk
4.8 • 689 Ratings
🗓️ 27 November 2020
⏱️ 75 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
As some start to wonder about a post-Bretton Woods economic system, macro analyst Luke Gromen explains how that post-World War II system came to be.
This episode is sponsored by Crypto.com and Nexo.io.
One of the most significant macroeconomic questions facing the world is what the future of the global reserve system, dominated for the last 80 years by the U.S. dollar, holds.
Today’s episode is a replay of NLW’s epic conversation with macro analyst Luke Gromen from April 2020. In it, Luke discusses the entire history of that U.S. dollar system, including:
- Bretton Woods and why the world went on a USD-based system rather than John Maynard Keynes’ idea for a non-sovereign “bancor” world reserve currency
- The move to the petrodollar in the 1970s
- The financialization of commodities that started in the 1980s
- The monetary policy vacuum after the Cold War ended
- How a shift in executive compensation rules led to many of today’s problems with Wall Street
- The export of Treasury bills as a business model
- The economic fallout of 2008 globally and domestically
- The end of Treasury bill buying in 2014
- Why the Federal Reserve is the only sugar daddy left
Find our guest online:
Website: fftt-llc.com
Twitter: @LukeGromen
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | I think this is understood at high levels, and you can see inferences of that from Ben Bernanke |
| 0:04.2 | when he talked about the benefits of QE. One of the first things out of his mouth was, well, stock |
| 0:08.0 | prices rose. And so if you understand that consumption's two-thirds of GDP and consumption can't |
| 0:14.1 | rise unless stocks are rising, you sort of arrive at this place where it's a political utility. |
| 0:20.5 | The policymakers have as policy, |
| 0:23.8 | they have to have as policy, again, because of decisions Clinton made 30 years ago, |
| 0:28.6 | they have to get stocks up no matter what. |
| 0:32.3 | 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. |
| 0:42.3 | The breakdown is sponsored by crypto.com and nexo.io and produced and distributed by CoinDest. |
| 0:49.8 | What's going on, guys? It is Friday, November 27th, Black Friday. Hope you had a great Thanksgiving |
| 0:56.6 | yesterday and are just relaxing today. So today we're doing a little something different. |
| 1:02.1 | There is perhaps no bigger question in macro than the future of the dollar status as the |
| 1:08.3 | world's reserve currency. The dollar is emblematic of a Brettonwood system |
| 1:12.7 | that simply doesn't work for so many anymore, and even many would argue has deleterious |
| 1:19.0 | consequences for the U.S. in terms of the robustness of national supply chains, local economies, |
| 1:25.6 | etc. But how did this system come to be? This is a question that I |
| 1:31.3 | asked Luke Gromman in his first time on the breakdown. And the interesting thing is that that |
| 1:37.7 | first show was in April and we get more listens in a week now than we did in a month then. So many of you probably haven't |
| 1:46.4 | heard this really, really awesome conversation, this real masterclass, frankly, from Luke. |
| 1:52.4 | So I thought for the holiday weekend, I'd run an encore of that episode. Tomorrow we'll be back |
| 1:58.3 | to normal with regular original first-time run content. |
| 2:02.4 | But if you haven't caught this one yet, I know that you're going to really enjoy it. |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from CoinDesk, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of CoinDesk and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2025.