You got me thinking too about the false panics. I did prep for Y2k, false alarm. I always heard about how the CFR and “The FED” are going to conspire to put me in slavery...still waiting for the chains and whippings.
But I also remember a case where I was in an absolute panic, but everyone (virtually everyone) else said that I was nuts, and that was the 2 years leading up to mortgage meltdown. For that, I had gotten out of the stock market, and actually shorted financial stocks (including Countrywide, which I rode right to the bottom), so I made enough to buy a nice car in 2008, while others went broke and often lost their homes.
The reason for my panic then (but not prior, Y2k was just some elevated concern) was not because of what people saying - as they were saying just the opposite: “nothing to worry about, Bob”. It was because I was pulling mortgage loan paper off the Internet for Naples, Florida, and it was showed Exploding Loan after Exploding Loan (Option ARMs, they called them,...interest rate would nearly triple at the 5-year mark, but people were being qualified at the low, teaser, rate). I saw the data, made my call independently (these could NEVER be paid back per their terms), and I was right (that time). For other things, like the FED/CFR ‘conspiracy’, nothing ever made sense, so I ignored it. At this point, other than Coronavirus, I still believe a day of reckoning will come because of our deficit/debt, but who knows when?
I typed a lot of explanations here on FR telling people that Y2K wasn’t going to be a big deal. Few believed me. Now they’ll say the efforts of experts saved the day. In truth, there never were catastrophic risks, just inconveniences.