I’m on vacation this week and next, so look for more articles in early April. This article is the product of a few ideas that have been floating through my head lately. So far, we’ve been away for five days, and the dog sitter hasn’t lost our dog. That’s much better than the one we had last December.
I haven’t been following the news in too much detail, but I have seen enough. I have been writing about recession for a while, but finally America’s leaders are conceding that difficult times are coming. I suppose that’s solid first step.
The thing that I have difficulty with is that it didn’t have to be this way. Inflation was mostly under control at the end of the last recession. America does have too much national debt, but since we have the world’s greatest economy, I feel we could have created a plan and worked with it. Instead, leaders fired everyone they could, even if they were in necessary positions and then tried to patch things up.
I’ve been a part of technology start-ups in and out of Silicon Valley, so I understand the value of move fast and break things. In that world, it’s fine if you break a start-up that wasn’t worth anything – you just create another one. It’s expected that more than 90% of them will fail.
You don’t see Apple moving fast and breaking things with its newest iPhone. You don’t see Microsoft doing that with a release of new Windows software. With big, critical infrastructure, you have to protect the goose that lays the golden egg.
The same is true of the American government. If you move fast and break things, people die. There’s a reason why the US dollar is so valuable to foreign investors. That reason is that the US government is dependable and reliable. It is less reliable now than it was two months ago.
For the most part, Canada has been able to rely on the United States to act like, well, the United States. They didn’t have to be concerned if we were going to attack them. Now, they don’t know what to think, and I don’t blame them. Most of our politicians don’t know which surprise is coming next. There are so many things wrong with thinking about making Canada the 51st state that no one starts with the obvious – Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico are first in line to be the 51st, and 52nd states.
Finally, I’m seeing a lot of articles talking about a “constitutional crisis.” I suppose these are the things that happen when the President of the United States is the guy who suggested that we terminate parts of the Constitution back in 2022. Sometimes, a reader will mention that I shouldn’t be political when writing about personal finance. However, the US economy has changed significantly very quickly, and this is clearly due to the new economic policy. There isn’t an outside force like COVID, the Russia/Ukraine War, or oil prices in the Middle East causing havoc with the US economy.
Despite all this chaos, I think everything will be mostly fine. The US economy is still stronger than any other country. The stock market has been going down, but my retirement investments are doing about as well as they were last year. The chaos even seems to have a silver lining – mortgage rates are starting to come down. There a lot of people who bought in the last few years who might be in position to refinance soon.
And that brings me to my main thought. Now is the time to be smart and flexible with your thinking and your money. When it’s a great economy, it is easy to make money. When things go south, that’s when the real opportunities present themselves. It would have been great to buy in the stock market in any of the quick recessions we’ve had in the last 20 years. It’s always great to diversify your income sources. In a truly bad economy, they could all go down, but at least the odds are high that something will help you though.
When you can’t depend on the country’s economic situation, you may have to depend on your own ingenuity. I have confidence that if you’re a Lazy Man and Money reader, you’re more than ready for whatever is coming.
