Just some thoughts given our current situation. Disclaimer: You will probably find something to like and dislike based on your political preferences.
- Mother Nature, the Hand of God, or whatever you want to call it can bring billions of people to their knees pretty quickly.
- A few weeks ago I was in the “it’s not that serious” camp. Then I started seeing the hockey stick like charts of how this exploded in other countries. Amazing how South Korea handled it, versus Italy, because South Korea took action and took it quickly.
- There is ample evidence government officials (of both parties) knew this could happen and took no preventative action. Bill Gates repeatedly warned of this and the National Institute of Health ran a model that showed we weren’t prepared.
- The response from government should scare you about what it would be like if the government ran all health care (for some personal insights into the testing fiasco read Peggy Noonan’s WSJ column from March 21 – she describes her experience with the maze of getting tested and then getting results)
- On March 16 we decided that to get away from news we’d watch comedy, starting with some Monty Python videos. It was a week of mostly funny stuff, which sure lightens the mood.
- This could be much worse than the financial crisis of 10-12 years ago, especially for small businesses.
- Will $1,000 or so per person make a meaningful difference?
- Bankers are contacting their loan customers, worried about how this is affecting them (and their ability to repay).
- A trillion-dollar stimulus package on top of trillion-dollar deficits, wow! FYI, I wrote the White House a couple years ago complaining about these huge deficits during an economic boom.
- It would be nice if our president would act like he actually cares.
- On the local (Washington) front, our governor spent all last week lecturing us like a primary school teacher lectures her little kids. And to no avail as the headlines have been about people ignoring his warnings and hanging out all weekend in groups in parks and on beaches.
- There’s going to be pent up demand when this calms down and let’s hope it quickly brings back the jobs being lost, especially the lower wage jobs.
- I think and hope it will spur activity in the buy-sell market. I’m guessing there will be a lot of owners who will say, “I’m done, it’s time to get out.”
- The sports page and sports networks don’t have much going on, do they?
All in all, pretty scary stuff we’re going through. I have no doubt we’ll make it through all of this. From a business perspective, now is the time to be active. Waiting this out in the equivalent of a bunker will delay your (business) recovery.