Unless you’re short — and other than the great St. Patrick’s Day holiday where we all get to be green — not many silverlinings these days.
Except one big one: The planet Earth is happier.
Maybe shutting down everything will give the planet a chance to breathe again?
After all, in terms of our stewardship of Earth, we’ve all acting like kindergarteners…
… so it’s fitting that the solution to climate change might very well be a global time out!
Everyone is weighing in on Coronavirus prognostications.
I will try to keep mine to just the ones I feel are fairly unique.
My theme? We couldn’t be better prepared for exactly the crisis we’re going to be going through.
* This isn’t like the last two great crashes.
The 2001 “Dotcom Crash” was based on massive valuations with zero profits — and in many cases, zero revenues.
The 2008 “Great Recession” crash was based on artificially pumped up real estate prices, not real productivity gains. (It was also exacerbated by skyrocketing oil prices, due to political, not fundamental, issues… and had twice the unemployment we have now.)
Whatever we’re calling 2020 — The Corona Crash? — we’re starting with real businesses, with real revenue growth, making real profits, involved in real productivity gains, historically low unemployment, and extraordinarily low oil prices.
In other words, we’re already starting with a much stronger hand.
* Ironically, many of the productivity gains of the last decade involve remote technologies, i.e., letting employees work from home, ordering pretty much anything online, and, as important, socializing from a far.
So, in many ways, the last decade or two has been great practice for this exact situation: Remote working, remote living, and social distancing.
* Not only are the remote technologies in place, but the entire millennial generation prefers to socially distance.
Half the time millennials have their heads buried in their phones — even when they’re sitting right next to each other. So do you really think they care whether they’re in the same room or a different state? Not at all.
* While older generations panic about bailouts and handouts and such, the entire millennial generation knows nothing but bailouts and handouts.
So do millennials think we’re in a crisis? Absolutely not. Feels pretty normal to them, like it’s just something we go through every once in a while. What’s the fuss?
* And finally: The market needed to be popped. Markets aren’t supposed to go straight up, like they did almost the entire month of February.
So we’re down 20%? I can easily make the case we were 30% overvalued. Because markets aren’t supposed to go straight up.
I’m not saying it’s not going to be rough, but I am saying we seem to be particularly prepared for this crisis. It’s like a lot of what we need to do is already done.
We’ll see.
Royal Blog 