Sometimes after tooking a flight I’ve said that I had the feeling of being time traveling. That feeling doesn’t usually last long, it stays with me for some time after landing and then it fades away.
But this time was different.
Monday February 24th I woke up in Berlin, after spending some incredible days with friends it was time to go home, we ordered a taxi and I sat in front to practice mein kaputt Deutsch with the taxi driver: “Guten Tag. TXL bitte. Wie geht’s?”.
We passed the control and arrived at the boarding gate, until there nothing remarkable, just the naughty tips from the taxi driver for the next time we visit. I remember we were sitting waiting to board and it was at that moment that I took out my phone to see how the markets had opened.
No newspapers, I went straight to the stock quotes app.
-Fuck. It’s all red.
-What?
-Everything falls flat. I mean everything, big time.
-The stock market?
-Yes, double digits, shit.
I looked up and I saw her, then I quickly understood everything. In the middle of the crowd an asian lady with a mask.
But why that day? This was nothing new, according to the governments it was just a flu.
When I landed in Palma everything was different, I mean, everything had changed.
Well no, everything was changing.
But, everything is always changing right? So what was happening?
I spent several days trying to find the answer.
On a large scale, removing the particularities of this pandemic, the covid was not “changing” anything, it was only ACCELERATING the changes that were already taking place.
Wasn’t teleworking already booming?
Weren’t tech companies already dominating?
Weren’t we going to keep increasing the debt?
Were interest rates going to go somewhere other than zero?
Wasn’t the population of many developed countries aging because of low birth rates?
Wasn’t the secular stagnation to continue?
Wasn’t inequality in terms of income and wealth growing?
Weren’t we already losing freedoms?
The zombie company that was going to close sooner or later was now going to close sooner rather than later.
This frame of reference helped me to foresee certain changes both around me and in the prices. It served me well.
If the world changes faster it means that you have to adapt faster.