1. I’ve been wrong for over a month about young people becoming the driving force to lead us out of this worldwide lockdown. I’d guess that their lifelong behavioral conditioning was too high of a hurdle to overcome.

I’m disappointed when people can’t accurately see what’s in front of them, and expressed that recently with Wake up, young people!! But I also often misperceive, so I understand.

2. Another recent post – It was known to everybody that the lockdown would cause a catastrophe – presented an epidemiologist’s arguments to support that the worldwide lockdowns’ destructive effects were known to everybody beforehand. I agree, and add that when both economic analysis like 1 above and this epidemiologist’s public health analysis show that political actions couldn’t be more wrong, there’s some other agenda going on.

I don’t fully agree with the interviewee, though, as he didn’t adequately present aspects of human behavior. For example, he cited a CDC chart of a drop in hospital reporting of influenza-like symptoms for his arguments without also citing the media frenzy to scare people away from hospitals for fear that they would catch COVID-19. So of course there were fewer instances of influenza-like symptoms reported by hospitals.

The Professor misunderstood the United States form of government. As a general principle, the federal government doesn’t order the states to do such and such.

The state of Florida, for example, did exactly what the Professor suggested, “protect the elderly.” Other states didn’t, like Washington, New Jersey, Virginia, Pennsylvania, and especially New York. Don’t know why those states’ residents don’t demand responsibility and accountability.

He also said “The virus is gone” but that statement had qualifications. Parts of this interview misplaced their relevant contexts.

3. Let me start this third item by acknowledging that I often make a half-dozen mistakes before lunch every workday. Just ask my coworkers. 🙂

I’ll suggest how to prepare for whatever happens next rather then predict what happens next. This suggestion to economically protect yourself is based on cycles, but may not work if aspects of what’s unfolding worldwide are unprecedented.

Harry Browne and Terry Coxon introduced the Permanent Portfolio concept in 1981. The concept is that there’s a best “investment” for each economic cycle. I quote “investment” because I consider positions in both cash and gold as forms of holding – saving – money, which means opting out of investing.

The economic cycle – “investment” matched pairs are:

• Prosperity – Stocks
• Inflation – Gold
• Deflation – Long-term government bonds
• Recession – Cash

The Permanent Portfolio has four equal 25% positions with periodic rebalancing to those percentages. I suggest investigating the concept, as I’ve always seen it as a way to largely remove one’s own emotions from investing and money.

The most recent search result of “harry browne permanent portfolio” is here from April 8, 2020. That post was fairly informative, and funny in that almost all commentaries on the Permanent Portfolio include similar wording:

“I don’t invest in Harry Browne’s portfolio, but my own asset allocation takes cues from this approach.”

Everybody who talks about the concept thinks they can do better. But who actually does better over the long term?