Also my third downturn. The thing is, during the second downturn, I thought "We'll probably make it through this one okay, but it'll fatally weaken the system

Also my third downturn. The thing is, during the second downturn, I thought "We'll probably make it through this one okay, but it'll fatally weaken the system such that the next one may be the final one." We're at the next one now. Most of the issues I identified in 2009-2011 haven't really been addressed, and if anything have gotten worse. My thesis was that by bailing out the financial system, the government couple trust in the government with trust in the banks. The banking system was saved, but the price of this was that a large section of America gave up trust in America. Nothing has been done to restore that. If anything, it's gotten worse, with the Snowden disclosures, increasing media polarization, the election of Donald Trump, the impeachment procedures, and handling of coronavirus. Then add rising income inequality, inflation in critical need-to-live goods (health care, housing, and food), political polarization and tribalism, increasing publicity around the misdeeds of certain sectors (tech) that were considered the few bright lights in the American economy, skyrocketing national debt (which will increasingly tempt the federal government to monetize it), and decreasing economic and physical mobility, and you have a powder keg. My sense is that this is the start of something bigger, and that we're going to get a series of cascading failures until eventually we get a collapse of critical monetary or government infrastructure.