Winter is Coming: Recovery or Storm Surge?
These days it’s hard not to spend time wondering what the future will hold. Predictions are all over the board, but one thing is clear: the future is decidedly unclear, even as near as a few weeks away it is impossible to forecast with any certainty.
If you are an optimist, better days are just around the corner. Your lesser-of-two-evils will win the Presidential election in a landslide, thus providing certainty and stability to the nation’s government and economy. A safe and effective vaccine will be fast-tracked into widespread availability soon. The ongoing climate change reckoning of 2020 (unprecedented fires, hurricanes, etc.) will prove to be a spike on an otherwise steady chart. Stocks, jobs, and GDP will soar as the globe enters into recovery mode.
If you are a pessimist (as I tend to be, especially lately), this will be a rough winter, so get ready. You will want to stock up on rice, dry beans, batteries, warm clothes, MREs, and other survival staples as we head into a perfect storm of civil unrest, economic panic, unprecedented natural disasters, and the second/third major wave of the coronavirus pandemic. The election will be too close to call for weeks, and in the interim there will be extreme protests and demonstrations on both sides, each accusing the other of rigging the election. Violence will be met with violence, and it will escalate quickly nationwide. The unrest and uncertainty will send stock prices plummeting and the economy will largely grind to a halt as it did in late March. Meanwhile, COVID-19 will rage on unabated as 40% of Americans continue to scoff at science and believe it’s “all a lib hoax”. COVID-19 deaths in the US will surpass one-half million over the winter, driven upward by extreme weather events forcing people into shared warm-and-safe spaces, often with poor ventilation. Vaccine? Approvals and therefore production will be repeatedly postponed. The jobless majority will spend the winter starving, freezing, and scared, since the gridlocked and leaderless government will be powerless to help in any meaningful way. Winter 2020-Spring 2021 will make the past seven months look like pre 9/11 America, carefree and clueless.
What will actually happen this coming fall, winter and spring? Time will tell. If I had to bet on it (and in a way I do, and in a way I don’t) I would put my money on something halfway in between the optimist and the pessimist.
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