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.

What's going on, guys? It is Tuesday, August 19th, and today we are doing a Jackson Hole retrospective and look forward.

Before we get into that, however, if you are enjoying The Breakdown, please go subscribe to it, give it a rating, give it a review, or if you want to dive deeper into the conversation, come join us on the Breakers Discord.

You can find a link in the show notes or go to bit.ly slash breakdown pod. All right, well, today we have something a little different. We are deep in the summer doldrums, and while there's still plenty of going on, a lot of the news is hyper-fixated on whether the Bitcoin Treasury Company bubble is bursting. People's opinions are fluctuating wildly from day to day, and there's only so much of that market coverage, especially in the absence of actual news, that we can actually do.

Instead, with Jerome Powell quickly becoming a lame duck at the Fed, I thought it would be

interesting to take a look back at his tenure as Fed chair. And because it's the end of summer,

that means it's time for Jackson Hole, the most

important central banking event of the year. Each year in August, central bankers descend on rural

Wyoming to talk policy, economic theory, and monetary strategy. Jackson Hole caps off the year

in central banking, and the Fed Chair typically uses their keynote speech to set the stage for the year

ahead, often marking turning

points in monetary policy.

Curiously, this year's event takes place just before the Fed is expected to recommence their

cutting cycle.

And these are the exact same conditions that were at play this time last year.

The theme for the event also says a lot about the core issue on the minds of central bankers.

This year, the theme is labor markets in

transition, demographics, productivity, and macroeconomic policy. Given how AI labor disruption in the

global retirement wave are shaping everything in macro, that seems like an extremely important

topic to get to grips with. Powell is set to speak on Friday morning for what will be his

final keynote address at Jackson Hole.

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