
Pre-existing Economic Conditions
(before Covid-19)
What has the economy got to do with our health system? Well, both are highly interdependent. Without a sound economy, we wouldn’t have an effective global health infrastructure.We see this today with the things we urgently need but don’t have. We don’t have enough coronavirus tests, or test materials — including, amazingly, cotton swabs and common reagents. We don’t have enough ventilators, negative pressure rooms, and ICU beds. And we don’t have enough surgical masks, eye shields, and medical gowns.It’s unfathomable to see countries spending billions and billions on high tech weaponry year after year for every possible war scenario yet having spent virtually nothing on disaster preparedness for a potential new communicable virus.
— Sven Henrich (@NorthmanTrader) March 22, 2020
On a planet with over 7.5b people no less.

- The largest equity bubble of all time (Pension Crisis and Buyback Bubble).
- The largest wave of retirees of all time (The Pension Crisis, where retirees own all the stocks and credit)
- The largest corporate credit bubble of all time (The Doom Loop).
- The student loan bubble.
- The Indexation bubble.
- The ETF/market structure bubble.
- The Foreign Borrowings Bubble (The Dollar Standard Bubble).
- The bubble on monetary policy (The Central Bank Bubble)
- An EU banking crisis.
Not even the “strongest economy ever” can survive a 2-week shutdown. New York City, the world’s major financial center had to put out a desperate call for rain ponchos to be used as medical gowns. Rain ponchos! In 2020! In America! Many of us would like to pin the cause on one political party or another, on one government or another. But the harsh reality is that it all failed — no country, state, or city was prepared — and despite hard work and often extraordinary sacrifice by many people within these institutions. So the problem runs much deeper than you think.The problem for the economy is the debt, not the #Coronavirus. If businesses and their employees had savings, they could afford to take time off to help fight the Coronavirus. Being leveraged to the hilt and living paycheck to paycheck is the problem. Blame the Fed, not nature!
— Peter Schiff (@PeterSchiff) March 18, 2020

That might be the end of the story. But it’s not. Economists insist that the feds can follow a Pharaonic policy even with their bins empty. How? By borrowing money…and in the extreme…printing it. You are probably getting ahead of me here, dear reader. You are wondering whether that would have worked in Ancient Egypt. Could Pharaoh have saved the expense of stocking up grain, and simply borrowed it when he needed it? Well, there’s only so much grain available. Borrowing from those who still have some doesn’t help. At best, it just moves it around. At worst, it takes the ‘seed’ grain needed for the next year’s planting. Without it, the next year’s harvest will be smaller, leaving even more people hungry. You know how it ends…Forget the mattress! Keeping large sums of cash at home is risky. The best place to protect your money is in an FDIC-insured bank where it’s safe and sound. Learn how the FDIC safeguards your #money at https://t.co/O2cb1bTUJs pic.twitter.com/R8pFVxBPrM
— FDIC Gov (@FDICgov) March 24, 2020
The Economic Impact

A. Unemployment

The virus has disrupted:
— Balaji S. Srinivasan (@balajis) April 27, 2020
– K-12
– bars
– cities
– retail
– sports
– hotels
– airlines
– offices
– colleges
– subways
– concerts
– medicine
– Hollywood
– immigration
– conferences
– supply chains
– meat packing
– movie theaters
– aircraft carriers
Do you think it all snaps back?
B. Market Crash
Global shares took a hit in the middle of March 2020. It was the sharpest decline in history even steeper than the Great Depression of 1929. It took just 15 days for the US index to fall 20% from its all-time high compared to 30 days in October 1929.
This time is different. The velocity of the market decline in unlike anything before.
C. Oil Price Crash
Worldwide lockdowns have kept people inside homes causing demand for oil to dry up completely. Before this happened, an oil war was already brewing between Saudi Arabia and Russia which directly impacts the United States through the Petrodollar system.
D. Supply Chain Disruption

Understanding the Covid-19 Recessions @NathanBaschez


E. Global Food Supply Chain At Risk
The UN warns that the abrupt shutdown of countries could threaten the global food supply. The issue, however, is not food scarcity — at least, not yet. Rather, it’s the world’s drastic measures in response to the virus.Border closures, movement restrictions, and disruptions in the shipping and aviation industries have made it harder to continue food production and transport goods internationally — placing countries with few alternative food sources at high risk. This has forced large-scale farms that supply institutions to dump produce they can’t sell. All due to the fact that the system was built for global distribution not local. This supply and demand misalignment is wrecking havoc at every intersection. Airlines have grounded thousands of planes and ports have closed — stranding containers of food, medicine, and other products on tarmacs and holding areas. Heightened instability in global food supply will affect the poorest citizens most, warned the UN’s Committee on World Food Security (CFS) in a paper last month.Thread: On Sunday, John H. Tyson, chairman of Tyson Foods, published a front-page newspaper ad with an ominous message: “The food supply chain is breaking.”
— The Counter (@TheCounter) April 27, 2020
It was a frightening dispatch from a major meatpacker. But there's more to the story. 1/https://t.co/AKkfOXcP43 pic.twitter.com/1mPtgWYxbX
F. Travel Industry: Hardest-Hit
It took politicians months of bickering before coming to a decision to impose strict travel restrictions. Being reactive rather than proactive had grave consequences. As dealing with an invisible enemy with multiplicative abilities, it’s very costly to have lapses in judgement.
The biggest U.S. airlines spent 96% of free cash flow over the last decade to buy back shares of their own stock in order to boost executive bonuses and please wealthy investors. Now, they expect taxpayers to bail them out to the tune of $50 billion. Like the banks, it’s the same old story.I'm not an economist, but I don't buy the framing that (say) airline bailouts are required because airlines are important to the economy. No planes or airports were destroyed. Pilots still know how to fly. We'll still have airlines. This is entirely about protecting shareholders.
— matt blaze (@mattblaze) April 15, 2020
It took 10 years to recover from the 2008 – 2009 financial crisis, to get from 10% back to 4% unemployment. But now we’re at more than 20% unemployment. And much supply & demand has been permanently destroyed, even without a lockdown due to the uncertainty. Would it take a decade or more to rebuild this time?No industry — not airlines, not hotels, not cruise ships — should be bailed out. They can stay in business by borrowing at rock-bottom rates, using their assets as collateral.
— Robert Reich (@RBReich) March 17, 2020
Taxpayer money should be used to bail out people, not corporations.
G. Important to Mention
- Most hospitals are reportedly empty in spite of an outbreak of seismic proportions. The underlying economics of healthcare wasn’t good either before Covid-19. Hospitals are in the business of treating patients, but what happens when they receive zero patients? They go bankrupt. 216 hospitals are furloughing workers now.
- Colleges are facing an uphill task of staying relevant with the times. With many turning to online classrooms, the tuition fees of tens of thousands of dollars seem ridiculous now. Many will have to shut down for good as student-loan delinquencies mount to unprecedented levels. Oh, and don’t forget the $1.6 Trillion student loan bubble.
- Housing market is facing yet another episode after the subprime mortgage crisis plunged the economy into chaos in 2007. Before Coronavirus, people in countries like Hong Kong were already protesting about the rising cost of rental and home ownership. Now its wiping out thousands of Airbnb super-hosts who bought 10, 20, 30 properties with mortgages that go default. Not to mention the contraction in Chinese demand for housing overseas.
- People are also beginning to notice a notable increase in the price of everyday goods. A debt deflation is pushing the dollar parabolic wrecking every other currency in its way. An initial liquidity crisis crashed Bitcoin to $3800 on 12 March momentarily before stabilizing around $5k – $6k with Edward Snowden calling it “too much panic, too little reason“. By the end of April, it shot up to $9k due to aggressive central bank stimulus to stop the economy from collapsing; Robert Kiyosaki calls Bitcoin, “People’s Money“.
If you have a phone, a computer and free time, now is the perfect time to start working towards a new stream of income and protecting your money against greed and incompetence of corporate criminals and politicians. We are in the age where defensive technologies and capabilities are rising. And it’s for YOU to benefit! That’s why I put together this step–by–step strategy showing you how. The reality is that times are uncertain, and we can’t clearly see when or how this will all play out… But you can do something about how YOU come out of it… This is the story of your life, and you want to make sure you are the hero of your story.Panicked individuals will crush the virus.
— Naval (@naval) April 24, 2020
Panicked governments will crush the individual.
The Future of Work & Money
The Coronavirus pandemic is changing the way we work, study, digest news, and entertain ourselves. Large physical gatherings of strangers are now seen as a national threat.
Covid-19 simply accelerated these trends by ten-fold. Here’s a quick breakdown of the biggest changes from SimilarWeb, Apptopia and App Annie:The 20th century is ending.
— Balaji S. Srinivasan (@balajis) April 7, 2020
– Offices ⭢ remote work
– NFL, NBA ⭢ esports
– Movie theaters ⭢ streaming
– TV news ⭢ YouTube stars
– College ⭢ ISAs, MOOCs
– K-12 ⭢ internet homeschooling
– Corporate journalism ⭢ citizen journalism
– EU/EEC ⭢ 27 sovereign states
A. We are giving up our phones for our computers
Facebook, Netflix and YouTube have all seen user numbers on their phone apps stagnate or fall off as their websites have grown.
B. We are seeking new ways to connect via video chat
Social app usage is exploding: Daily downloads of Houseparty have risen 25x. The video chat app was downloaded over 650,000 times on March 25.
As people want to see one another – its has given a big boost to apps like Google’s video chatting application, Duo, and Houseparty; and led to a renewed interest in Nextdoor, the social media site focused on connecting local neighborhoods.
C. We are now relying on services that allow us to work and learn from home
Collaboration apps are now household names: Worldwide daily downloads of Zoom’s mobile app have increased by 14x since February 15. Video conferencing apps saw a record 62 million downloads during a single week in March.
The offices and schools have all moved into our basements and living rooms. Nothing is having a more profound impact on online activity than this change. School assignments are being handed out on Google Classroom. Meetings are happening on Zoom, Google Hangouts and Microsoft Teams.
D. We are now reading more online news
People are hungry for news: Web traffic to major news outlets has grown more than 50 percent over the last month. Amid the uncertainty about how bad the outbreak could get, people appear to want few things more than the latest news; and the biggest beneficiaries from the situation are local news sites, with huge jumps in traffic as people try to learn how the pandemic is affecting their hometowns.E. Video games are hot while sports is dying
Esports are thriving: Watch hours on Twitch have increased by 23%. Watch hours on YouTube Gaming Live increased by 10.7% and on Facebook Gaming by 3.8%. Twitch surpassed 3 billion hours watched on the platform in Q1 2020. With all major-league games called off, the use of ESPN’s website has fallen sharply since late January; at the same time, several video game sites have had surges in traffic, as have sites that let you watch other people play. Covid-19 has been a double edged sword for many of these companies and brands. While companies like Shopify are reporting that they’re handling Black Friday level traffic every single day, many others that sell physical “stuff” are hurt bad.They make that stuff in factories, and those factories are usually in China. And COVID-19 has shut down factories and shipping routes, causing all sorts of production delays. Amazon, which relies on a business model centered around making a box appear at your home in less than 2 days, has wait times that are as long as a month. So, for now, unfortunately, you’ll have to wait a month for your bespoke bed linens. Today creators have so many ways to make money on the internet, but it’s still very hard. Artists have been shape-shifting to adjust to new platforms and scale up their audiences to monetize their content. Those who are set to benefit from this surge of traffic are:As we help thousands of businesses to move online, our platform is now handling Black Friday level traffic every day!
— Jean-Michel Lemieux (@jmwind) April 16, 2020
It won't be long before traffic has doubled or more.
Our merchants aren't stopping, neither are we. We need 🧠to scale our platform.https://t.co/e2JeyjcEeC pic.twitter.com/6lqSrNUCte
- Digital Publishers
- Esport athletes
- YouTube Stars & Personalities
- Citizen Journalists
This pandemic is ushering in the information age at full force. Move online to stay relevant or fade away into the background. Today a blog is a must-have. It’s your namecard. Well, how would you best introduce yourself to thousands of strangers in the realm of cyberspace? Building a following on social media or someone elses’ backyard is like building a castle out of sand, as the implacable tide shifts in and out. Invest in the universal themes of the free and open web such as blogs, podcasts, newsletters. It brings asymmetry, you now have a lot more to gain than to lose venturing into cyberspace. Start a news site, break news on Twitter , provide insights into the latest trends. Twitter is a microphone. Fire people up with controversial ideas. You might even get hired on Twitter.Selling information is an arbitrage equation:
— Jack Butcher (@jackbutcher) March 30, 2020
You've spent massive amounts of time, energy, and effort accruing experience.
You record it once, and offer it for sale at a miniscule fraction of what you "paid" to learn it.
Bargain for customers.
Then you sell it 10,000 times.
Start a newsletter. Build your community. Make money being who you are. From ideas in your head. No one can compete with you on being you. You get rewarded for thinking differently. (While in school you get punished for being a maverick) You see, I was brought up with boundaries, curfews and rules. While a career in engineering would have brought me some form of illusory comfort & social conformity, building on the internet made it possible for me to choose where to work. It is where the meek and the mighty meet on equal terms. It grants the individual supreme sovereignty. I write about this with the entirety of my soul and a decade-long experience as a solo-preneur taking on the world; I write with my scars, hence my thought is inseparable from autobiography. This has become a personal growth engine for me, disguised as a worldly business pursuit. “In the middle of the journey of our life I found myself within a dark woods where the straight way was lost.” Dante Alighieri Everyone can now start a blog, launch a news outlet, publish a bestselling book without needing to come from a privileged background.Congratulation @nikcantmine for getting the job and @Trezor for hiring Nik. What a perfect match🙌🏻 https://t.co/a7Qa1FnYL3
— Katie Ananina (@KatieAnanina) April 25, 2020
You can even build websites like Facebook, Amazon, YouTube, Netflix and Slack without writing a single line of code. Imitation is flattery. You can recreate the internet’s biggest hits using a simple point-and-click visual web editor. Bubble and Zeroqode is leading the way in the no-code future. Better still, if you’re interested in UI and UX, it’s an opportunity to look under the hood to see how these popular sites were built piece by piece. Although you likely won’t want to build a carbon copy, you can easily adopt some frameworks to fit your product vision. What’s to say you can’t build the next Google or Facebook?There’s never been a better time to launch a digital product.
— Naval (@naval) April 10, 2020

This crisis is also changing the future of Banking Money. More accurately, there will be no more need for banks or middle men. This is something that would eventually take place with great certainty. Why?
Imagine an ATM in your pocket. Better still, imagine you have the whole U.S. Navy guarding your precious gold. Now that’s the technology given to us by Satoshi Nakamoto.

What we have come to know as fiat money all these decades is nothing more than a system of control by the elites. A plaything for the rich. While the poor and middle class subsisted on handouts and slave away their time for inferior money. Like an indentured servant. This is the kind of environment that Bitcoin thrives in. Massive handouts & crazy stimulus as a stopgap measure for the governments lack of preparedness and incompetence. We do not need to predict specific adverse events to know that a buffer is a must. Mother nature gave us two kidneys when we only need about a portion of a single one. Why? Because of contingency.Lesson 5. SAVE MONEY: RU NUTS? Why save money when QE FED counterfeiting is printing trillions of fake dollars-$82 billion a month to $125 billion a day? Why save when ZIRP, zero interest policy pays losers zero? Save gold-god’s money or Bitcoin-people’s money.
— therealkiyosaki (@theRealKiyosaki) April 1, 2020

How Stalin starved four million Ukrainians to death, in 1929. (Sovfoto/UIG/Getty Images)
Lost Your Job To Coronavirus?
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Great article