Are we in the Next Great Depression?

Have we begun "The Next Great Depression?"  Personally, I think we are in what will ultimately be a Great Depression, and we have crossed the threshold (10%+ GDP drop) that makes this offically an economic depression.  But will things get as grim as this video depicts?  I'll let you decided.  This is a really depressing comparison between our world today, and the Great Depression of the 1930's. 

Where student loans go... SLABS explained

When you ask most people what SLABS are, they tend to reply, "That's the big concrete thing under my house, right?"  Yeah.  That concrete slab (if you don't have a basement), is one kind of slab.  But the SLABS explained in this short, and very well explained video, are Student Loan Asset Back Securities.  

These are the investments that are created from a whole bunch of student loans.  If nearly everyone is paying their student loans back on time, they're quite safe.  But we're in weird times, and not everyone's paying their student loans back on time.  The problem I see with SLABS is that they're nearly identical to the subprime Mortgage Backed Securities that crashed, and brought the banking system to its knees in 2008.  Except that there are over $1.6 trillion in student loans, as opposed to $1.3 trillion in subprime mortgages in 2008.  $1.3 trillion of those student loans are through the federal government, the rest are from private lenders. 

We are now 1 year into the economic crisis: The Phoenix Great Depression

Here's a Bloomberg news report from September 17, 2019 talking about some banking thing called the Repo Market.  I'm a geek on this stuff, and I didn't know what the Repo Market really was.  Here's a short video explaining the Repo Market.  But this seizing up of the little known (to average people) Repo Market was the real start of the depression (yes, it's technically a depression now) we're in.  Most people paid little attention.  But the Federal Reserve (of New York) had to rush in and create $50 billion+ in one day, to keep the banking system from crashing.  Then it had to create more money shortly after, and it became an ongoing bailout, day after day, week after week, flying under most people's radar.  Then, the virus hit our shores, which became the bad news the stock market couldn't ignore, and then came February/March stock market crash, followed by the business shutdown, which is when everyone realized there were serious issues in the U.S. (and world, economy). 

  "The Phoenix Great Depression" is the name I gave to this economic crisis, which I've been blogging about for three years.  I have been watching some ultra-long term trends and cycles play out, and could tell in late 2017-2018, that "the next recession" was really going to be a serious one, and possibly a long, full blown, depression or great depression.  I coined the term, "The Phoenix Great Recession" in my old, personal blog, (Steve Emig: The White Bear)  in October 2019.  Nobody was ready to hear the word "depression" yet.  Most people still aren't. 

Basically, The Repo Market functions kind of like a pawn shop for banks.  A bank needs a few million bucks to make its quotas for the night's books.  So it sells something of value to another bank, usually U.S. treasury bills/bonds/notes.  The borrowing bank gets the money to cover its short term needs, and it buys back the T-bills (or whatever) the next day, or maybe two days later, and pays the lending bank interest.  "Repo" stands for re-purchase, not repossession.

What happened last September is that some banks (probably part of the "shadow banking system"), looked so sketchy, that nobody wanted to lend to them, so they charged much higher interest than normal.  That seized up this overnight market, and freaked out Big Banking insiders, and The Fed came to the rescue.  The Repo Market played a big role in keeping Lehman Brothers alive back in 2008, before if finally became insolvent and closed up, the turning point in the 2007-2009 Great Recession.  So this time around, The Fed started bailing the system out, and it's been bailing the system out ever since.  The money they've created out of nowhere, and "injected" into the banking system is the money that's driven the rise in stocks and real estate since last year.  The markets aren't rising because of solid, fundamental reasons, there's just a ton of money for banks to gamble with right now.  The Fed can't keep doing what they're doing forever, without completely devaluing the dollar until it  loses all value.  Right now the whole system is being propped up, and nobody knows a good way out of this mess.  So that's where we are a year into this economic crisis. 

It's Labor Day weekend 2020: So what IS the REAL unemployment rate?

While the stock markets began to correct a bit, from their insane highs last Friday, "good news" came out.  The U.S. unemployment rate dropped to 8.4%.  So what does that mean?  Most people think that means 91.6% of American adults have a job, right?  Actually, no, that's not even close to true.  

The 8.4% number is considered the "official" unemployment rate by Washington and the major media, it's the red line is this chart above.  The reason is because it's the lowest rate, and it looks the best in TV and web reports.  That 8.4% number is the U-3 number, for August 2020, from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS).  The problem with the U-3 unemployment number is that is doesn't include a lot of people who are not working, in fact doesn't include most of the people who are not working.  In any "normal" time, unemployment at 8.4% would be catastrophic, economists want to see real unemployment at about 3% to 4%.  So this U-3 more than number is double that.  That's bad, horrible, in fact, in "normal times."  But in a year when close to 50 million lost their jobs in a few months, most of them"temporarily" lost, 8.4% is LESS BAD, than the 15% a couple of months ago.  The problem is, the U-3 number doesn't count about 3/4 of the U.S. adults who are actually not working.

There's another unemployment number, the U-6 number, and it's just as official as the U-3 number, and it's also put out by the BLS, that's the U-6 unemployment rate.   The U-6 number dropped to 14.24% for August 2020, and that's the gray line above.  What's the difference?  The U-3 number basically counts people with traditional jobs who applied for unemployment insurance, that's all.  The U-6 number takes that, and adds in people who are forced to work part time, because they can't find full time work, and people who have been discouraged from looking for work in immediate future, they don't think they can find any job soon.  So this U-6 number, makes more sense, it's every bit as official as the U-3 number, and it tells us that over 14% of working people in the U.S. aren't working right now.  

So what's that scary blue line above, that figures U.S. unemployment at 27 to 28%?  That's the number by this website, shadowstats.com, and it takes the U-6 number, and adds in the "long term discouraged" workers, those are American adults of working age, who simply have completely given up looking for work altogether.  They either don't think they can ever find a job again, or they have some way to survive without working.  

The total American "workforce," is just under164 million people, out of the total 328 million (+/-) Americans.  The shadow stats number is the closest to actually showing us how many of the people in the "workforce" are not working right now.  So if we figure 27% of the "workforce" isn't working right now, that's 44.5 million American adults NOT working, out of 164 million.  If you go through all the actual Bureau of Labor Statistics numbers, you'll find that well over 44.5 million American adults are NOT working right now.  Here, dig through the numbers yourself.  Here's the official stats for August 2020.  If you look at the "participation rate" on this chart for August 2020,it says 61.7%.  That means 38.3% of the "American workforce" isn't working right now.  Some of those are housewives who take care of the kids, or dads doing that job, and some others who don't work a job or business.  So the shadowstats number, roughly 27%, is the closest to  a "people who should be able to find work, but can't" number, which is what the unemployment number is supposed to be.

This number doesn't include gig workers, and microbusinesses (1 person business), and small businesses that have lost a lot of their income, but are technically working.  So even the 27% number doesn't really give us a good look at how bad of a hit the economic crash (which started with the Repo market in Sept. 2019) AND the Covid-19 shutdown, have hit real world working (and potentially working) Americans.  

There's a large group, 7 million + men, and a growing number of women, American adults, who don't even try to find work.  This group seems to be living largely on YOUR tax dollars, permanently, getting government checks, from Social Security Disability and other sources.  The only person who has looked into this growing group is Nicolas Eberstadt, in his book, Men Without Work.  This is a big part of the long term unemployed, and pretty much no one is studying this major American issue right now.  And we really need to.  Here's a short news clip on his work (February 2017), and here's a full speech by Nicolas Eberstadt, explaining this issue in detail, from 2017.

The Bubbles still left to pop- With Robert Kiyosaki, Harvey Dent, Stan Harley

Robert Kiyosaki, best known as author of Rich Dad, Poor Dad, does a regular (weekly, I think) radio show/podcast about different aspects of money, investing, and the economy.  He gets some really good, really smart people on this show.  This is a scary, but very good show, with Harry Dent and Stan Harley talking about the current bubbles in stocks and real estate.  These guys are seeing historically economic BIG bubbles that are getting close to popping.

"The greater the bubble, the greater the burst." 

- Harry Dent, in the interview above

It's late August 2020, as I'm writing this.  In my opinion, we are now 11 months into what I'm calling The Phoenix Great Depression.  That's my own term, but I see this as the beginning of a 5 to 7 year (minimum) economic downturn.  There are a couple of long term trends and cycles, and several shorter term ones, that have brought me to my conclusion.  This current crisis started with the seizing up of the Repo Market, in the banking industry, in September of 2019.  The Federal Reserve (aka The Fed), had to begin injecting billions of dollars, weekly, then daily, into the financial system, to simply keep the banking system from collapsing.  That slipped under most people's radar.

Then, the Covid-19 coronavirus (aka Sars Cov-2), hit U.S. shores, which was the "black swan" event that tipped the U.S. stock markets into collapse.  As we all know, the shutdowns have led to all kinds of problems, millions have lost their jobs, mandatory business shutdowns, and tens of millions of people now struggling to simply pay rent.  I saw a huge economic collapse coming, and have been blogging about it for three years.  

The two guys in the interview above, Harry Dent and Stan Harley, have come so very similar conclusions, using completely different cycles and models.  One of the things that is amazing to me about our current economic mess, is that several, really smart economic thinkers, investors, and forecasters, have come to the same conclusion about a huge peak and then crash, right now, in this 2019-2022 period.  But all of these thinkers (myself included), have come to very similar conclusions, from very different forecasting directions.  We're all looking at different data sets, different cycles and theories, but coming to the conclusion that this is going to be a historically huge economic downturn.  You can easily discredit me, I'm a bum, but it's hard to deny the thinking of Robert, Harry, and Stan above, as well as Ray Dalio, Jim Rogers, and several others.  Even internet marketing expert and entrepreneur Gary Vaynerchuk has been waiting for this collapse, and has talked about it.

That said, this interview above is one of the most intelligent looks at what's happening in the economy these days.  If you're interested in running a business in the next few years, and/or investing, watch/listen to this interview above.  It's a lot to take in, so maybe watch it a couple times, or until it begins to make sense.  

Yesterday, I predicted that the Nasdaq would drop before 8,000, before the November 3rd U.S. presidential election, and I predicted really low numbers for the Dow and the S&P 500 as well.  All conventional wisdom, all common sense right now, says it's completely INSANE to think that The Fed would let the stock markets drop before the election.  The Fed's main job right now (in many people's eyes), is to get Donald Trump re-elected.  I know my prediction seems completely nuts.  My January 26th prediction that the Dow would drop below 19,000, was also completely nuts, according to conventional wisdom then.  Yet, it happened.  

My reasoning for yesterday's crazy prediction is that we are now sitting on several financial bubbles, any of which could collapse at any time, triggering the collapse of the rest.  When one really begins to go, it will start to topple the others.  That toppling will lead to a world financial system wide crisis, and that will bring down the currently over-inflated stock markets.  Here's a quick list of businesses and markets that will hit crisis point, could reach a collapse point, and trigger a mess that would bring down stocks, and everything else.

-SLABS (Student Loan Asset Backed Securities) market- There's no good data, but probably 50%-70% of student loans are being paid right now.  When this market goes, everything topples.

-CMBS (Commercial Mortgage Backed Securities) market- Commercial real estate?  Yeah, not good these days.  When this market collapses, like subprime MBS and CDO's in 2008, other things start collapsing as well.

-CLO (Collateralized Loan Obligations) market- CDO-type investments made from business loans.  Business loans in 2020?  Yeah, not a good bet after the Covid-19 shutdowns.  Smaller than the two above, but if this collapses, it will start the other two above toppling.

-Deutsche Bank- It's been struggling for many years.  If it goes bankrupt, it will send shock waves through the worldwide financial system.  That will start other houses of cards falling.

-A major banking/corporate bankruptcy in the U.S.-  Boeing is known to be struggling.  GE is known to be struggling.  Capital One is known to be struggling.  Many other major corporations are loaded with debt and struggling under the crazy conditions the pandemic and 2020 has thrown at us.  If one MAJOR corporation goes bankrupt, especially one tied to banking, it will send shock waves through the financial system, and these other things begin to topple.

-Serious evidence of a likely Joe Biden presidential win-  If the polls turn dramatically in Biden's favor, Wall Street will react, believing much less money will be thrown at them in the future, sending markets down.  The stock markets are completely detached from the real world economy, and from reality, at this point.  We're at a Tulip Mania level, and there WILL be a huge correction sometime.  Personally, I think a Democrat presidential victory is likely, and is basically our only hope of survival as a nation and democracy.  Just for the record, I'm an independent, and not a fan of Joe Biden.  But we need a semi-functional government, and less money thrown at Wall Street, and more at the American Public, to get through the current, and the coming crises.  Short term, the markets will throw a temper tantrum, and drop significantly, giving us the much needed correction.  In the long term, this will help the economy, bringing all types of assets down to real world values.  This alone could drop the stock markets before the election.  My personal thinking right now is that one of the things above, not a big Biden lead in the polls, will be the cause of the drop, but huge poll numbers for Biden COULD send markets down pre-election.

-There are many other things that could send all these houses of cards tumbling before the election.  Bad Q3 earnings for major businesses, major commercial real estate numbers dropping significantly, national residential real estate numbers dropping significantly, a large virus surge in a major city, causing another short term shutdown.  Lots of things COULD happen, any one of which would send all these houses of cards toppling down.  My bet is that one of these will happen before the election, and will cause massive chaos in other areas, which will ultimately bring down the hyper-inflated stock prices.  There are just too many possible triggers of potential collapse for The Fed to continue to prop everything up for two more months.  This is very similar to my thinking in January.  

I know this is a very controversial call, we'll see how things play out.

Jim Rickards and Peter Schiff both see $15,000 gold as a possibility

This Kitco interview from July 31, 2020, has a couple of the best guys to listen about gold.  Gold just hits its all time high in dollars, though it's still a bit below the inflation adjusted high from  2011.  Is gold a bubble about to pop?  Or does it have room to run as the dollar get devalued?  Both of these guys see gold likely going much higher in the next few years, and see $15,000 and ounce gold by 2025 a serious possibility.  

Part 2 of this interview

Part 3 of this interview 

Peter Schiff, who's been predicting the collapse of the dollar for 15 or 20 years or more, takes over at the end of part 3 of the interview, and doesn't let Jim finish explaining his idea on the "velocity of money," which is an important concept to understand right now.  So here's a quick video of Jim Rickards explaining the idea.

This is OFFICIALLY a Depression now: 2020 Q2 GDP drops a record 32.9%

The U.S. GDP dropped 32.9% in the second quarter of 2020, with numbers out this morning.  There were already many issues in the economy, like the Repo Market seize up in September 2019, before the second quarter came around.  But it was the Covid-19/coronavirus pandemic shutdown that was the "black swan event" that really sent things downhill.  For those not up on economics, the GDP is the Gross Domestic Product, basically all goods and services bought in the U.S. the second quarter, April, May, and June, of 2020.  The next biggest drop was about 28%... back in 1921.  Even in The Great Depression of the 1930's, no single quarter's economy dropped this much.

I love how the CNBC hosts say, "It wasn't as bad as the 34.7% drop expected."  That's a lot like saying, "Today I expected to catch Covid-19, have a car accident, get mauled by a grizzly bear, get hit by an asteroid, and be in a plane crash.  And I ONLY got in a plane crash, caught Covid-19, and got attacked by a small bear, so it wasn't as bad as expected."  It's that ridiculous. 

If you look at the "definitions" section for an economic depression on this Wikipedia page, you'll see one of two things define an economic "depression."  Either there's a recession that lasts for 2 years or more (Investopedia and the traditional definition is 3 years), OR there's a 10% decline in GDP.  Today's numbers tripled that level.  Again, we had a 32.9% drop in GDP.  So, like it or not, this economic downturn is OFFICIALLY a depression.  When this time is written about in history, it will be called a depression, or a maybe great depression, if it lasts more than five years. 

I'll be fair, this depression would have happened if anyone was president.  Donald Trump didn't cause the depression.  But the Trump administration did do things that made it worse.  The completely inept reaction to the pandemic when it first hit U.S. shores has not only killed thousands more Americans than it would have, but it is making the economic situation far worse, in the long term.  The Trump tax cuts were a windfall for the uber-rich and major corporations, and that helped prop up a weak economy for many more months.  Because the recession that should have started in 2017 or 2018 was held off, markets went much higher, and financial bubbles got much bigger.  Because of that, the economy had (and still has) much farther to drop. 

Also, when Fed chair Jerome Powell started raising interest rates in late 2016, and into 2017, pressure was put on him to reverse course, because higher interest rates were freaking out the stock market.  At that time, Powell was trying to get interest rates from a historical low position, to a more "normal" level, which would give The Fed more ways to deal with the next recession.  But he suddenly reversed course, apparently under heavy pressure from the  White House and others, and eventually lowered rates, to help prop up stocks and other financial markets.  This also propped up a weak economy that desperately needed a serious correction, a recession. So when a crash did finally come, it was a much worse one than it would have been if it hit in 2017 or 2018. 

So why does it make a difference if we're in a recession or a depression?  A depression is simply more intense, and will likely last quite a bit longer.  Simply acknowledging that we're in a "depression," should make people think more intensely about how to survive and work out of it.  It should also get us to look at this as a longer term, serious issue, not just something that will work itself out in six months.  The downside is that a lot of people freak out when they hear "depression."  And people are freaked out already. 

My personal opinion is that it's better to state it clearly, accept that this is a major deal, and then get to work looking for solutions in all the issues facing us, like 28 million people on the verge of eviction.  We don't need millions more people on the streets or living in cars suddenly.  But our jacked up political system likes to spin things, even serious things, hoping the problems will go away if they can convince enough people it's not that bad.  Politicians can call this whatever they want, but if you get an eviction notice, shit gets serious... real quick. 

This is a serious economic crisis.  It's not being handled well, though the trillions of dollars The Fed has created have helped big business, wealthy people, and many recently unemployed people... for a while.  But this help comes at a huge cost later on, in the form of heavy inflation, possibly full blown hyper-inflation.  We need to put on our Big Boy and Big Girl pants and work out some really big solutions soon to some really big problems, and get a handle on keeping struggling people housed, finding new jobs, saving small businesses, and everything else we're dealing with. 

Here's my recent blog post explaining why I started calling this economic downturn The Phoenix Great Depression several months ago.  There are a lot of really long term trends and cycles converging, making this much more than a typical recession.

What is "The Phoenix Great Depression?"

When looking for a visual example of the phoenix myth, it's hard to beat this scene from Harry Potter.  When the time comes, the phoenix goes up in flames, and then is reborn from the ashes.  Metaphorically speaking, that's what I see happening in the decade of the tumultuous 2020's, here in the United States, and elsewhere.

I believe we are several months into a period of time that I've dubbed "The Phoenix Great Depression."  In my thinking, it started with the seizing up of the "shadow banking system," and the Repo Market last September, 2019.  This was the first shudder in this current economic collapse.  While most people could ignore the Repo Market mess, the Federal Reserve had to rush in and pump tens of billions of dollars a day, ultimately every day, to keep our banking system functioning.  They're still doing that now, in addition to "printing" money at a breakneck pace.

Then in February 2020, the Covid-19 strain of the human corona virus hit U.S. shores, bringing the pandemic here.  This was the "black swan" event that triggered a stock market collapse that was already waiting to happen.  Then came the mandatory business shutdown, for a couple of months, which we're emerging from as I write this, on June 23rd, 2020.  With the opening up of businesses again, another surge of virus infections is occurring in many states, and we're still in the first major wave of infections in this pandemic.  There are one or two more waves to come, most likely.

In addition to that, we had a video taped killing of George Floyd, in Minneapolis, by police officers. That sparked another aspect of The Phoenix Great Depression, massive social unrest, widespread protests, and calls for change, to policing, in this instance.  We have had statues being pulled down by protestors in parts of the country, something I always associated with Third World revolutions.  Shit's gettin' crazy.  I believe these chaotic economic and social events are our future for the next 3 to 5 years.  Five years of economic contraction is a "great depression."  Three years of economic contraction, or a 10% drop in GDP (Gross Domestic Product), is a "depression."  No matter how manipulated the numbers for Q2 2020 are, it appears the GDP will drop far more than 10%.  So this looks like an official depression already.

I've been writing about some of the major issues happening in society, particularly in the economy, for three years, in my old blog, Steve Emig:The White Bear.*   I saw a serious economic downturn coming a couple years ago.  I believe it would ultimately be an economic collapse that will feel like a Great Depression, even if it didn't fit the textbook definition.  For most people, the years 2020 to 2027, or so, will be a major economic struggle to survive.  The reasons for this are that several ultra-long term cycles are merging into a period of incredible change.  A period like none other in the memory of people living today.

One major cycle or trend is "The Third Wave" concept described by futurist Alvin Toffler in his 1980 book by that title, and subsequent books.  Basically, we're living through the time when the Industrial Age is collapsing, and the Information-based Age is emerging.  All of our myriad of new technologies is changing the way human beings live.  This change is as big as the change from hunter-gatherer societies 10,000 years ago, into agricultural based societies.  It's as big as the change from the Agrarian Age into the Industrial Age, starting 300-350 years ago.  But this time it's happening much faster, in a single human lifetime.

In short, every industry, every system, every institution in our society will break down, and be rebuilt to work in the Information Age world.  This is the 'phoenix" aspect of this great depression.  

The factories were largely closed, or moved offshore, in the 1980's, 1990's, and 2000's.  The music industry, the publishing industry, the TV and movie industry, and parts of the transportation have collapsed, and been reborn in a new version, with new technology, like the phoenix, Fawkes, above.  The Retail Apocalypse, is the break down of the Industrial Age shopping system, and we'll see similar collapses and rebuilding in every other aspect of our society, that hasn't changed yet.

Another ultra-long term cycle that is merging in time with The Third Wave, is The Law of Social Cycle, a little known social theory by P.R. Sarkar from India.  In this concept, there are four main mentalities in any society, and one mentality dominates, and shapes all of society, at any given time.  The U.S. is at the tail end of the Acquisitor Age, the era where the businessmen rule society.  It's a time when corruption has become so prevalent, and so ingrained, that the Laborers, the mass of people, find it nearly impossible to make a decent living anymore.  The begin to rise up in a massive populist movement, and topple the corrupt powers at be.  This is called the "Acquisitor cum Laborer" era in this theory, and it's a time of great upheaval and unrest, until either the society collapses (bad option), or the Laborers win (good option).  The Laborers, by nature, are not leaders, so a third mentality, the Warriors, rise up into positions of power, ultimately.  The Warriors are people who prize physical courage, daring, and individuality.  In societies past, this was primarily the soldiers.  But the warrior mentality in modern society includes, soldiers, police, firefighters, martial artists/MMA fighters, professional athletes, action sports athletes, fitness buffs, activist leaders, and others who display true courage on a regular basis.  The fourth mentality is the Intellectuals.

Both of these social concepts predict times of incredible, rapid change, and much turbulence and chaos.  Lucky us, they've now combined.  In addition to those two ultra-long term cycles/trends, we have the end of a traditional business cycle, which generally means a "normal" recession.

We also have the clustering effect of the "Creative Class," explained by economic development expert Richard Florida in his 2002 book, The Rise of the Creative Class, and subsequent books.  The majority of the United States economic output is now largely clustered in several large metro areas, primarily the San Francisco Bay Area, Seattle, the New York City metro, Boston, Los Angeles/SoCal metro, the Washington D.C. metro, and Austin Texas.  You can add Houston, as well, a major energy hub.  The vast majority of our economy is based in these places, a few second tier tech hubs.  Most of the rest of the country is still clinging to life after the Great Recession of 2007-2009.  In addition to all of that, we have more debt than ever before in human history; government debt, business debt, and personal debt.  All of these major factors have combined, merged, into one period of incredible change.

Like a late night infomercial, "But that's not all folks..."  Into this perfect storm of change came a 100 year pandemic, the Covid-19 virus.  I DID NOT see that coming.  The effect the pandemic had on these other trends is to dramatically increase the speed that things have gone, and will continue to go, downhill.

We're only 5 1/2 months into this new decade, 9 months into The Phoenix Great Recession, and we have major corporations going bankrupt weekly, about 43 million people recently laid off (temporarily in many cases, but still unemployed at the moment), tens of millions of Americans suddenly struggling to make their rent and mortgage payments, and over 100 million debt payments, of all kinds, being skipped now.  So we have the highest level of debt in human history, and suddenly much of those payments simply aren't being made.

This mess is going to take a long time, several years, to work through.  I think 2020-2023 will be the worst years economically.  But it will be a tough slog, for most Americans (and much of the world) for at least 5 to 7 years.  Many parts of America, particularly rural areas and small towns and cities, will never recover.  That's the bad news.

The good news is that major economic downturns are the greatest opportunities in any economy.  There will be incredible deals on all kinds of things, from everyday items, to cars and trucks, to businesses, to real estate, all over the place... for the people who can take advantage of those deals.  There will also be tremendous social change, and great opportunities to right long term, structural problems throughout society.  The Black Lives Matter movement is just the beginning on that front, there will be many more social causes gaining steam in the next few years.

In short, like the phoenix of myth, or Fawkes, Dumbledore's phoenix in the clip above, our society will be broken down (not necessarily in literal flames, but metaphorically), and we have the chance to rebuild human society into something more equal, more fair, more environmentally sound, and that works with all of our modern technology that we have now, or that is being developed.

It's going to be a rough ride for just about everybody.  But if we use this incredible, if chaotic, series of opportunities well, most of us should be in a much better place in 10 years.

Hang on.

Steve Emig, June 23, 2020

Here's the January 26th, 2020 blog post where I predicted the 10,000 point, $10 trillion dollar (+/-) stock meltdown.  


*"The White Bear" is my nickname in the BMX world, it has nothing to do with race.  It came from a poem I wrote, after getting dumped by my girlfriend, in 1988.  My roommate a few years later used the term to make fun of me, and it became my nickname.  I hate racism, and prejudice of all kinds.  We all do it, but like most intelligent people, I try to keep it to a minimum.