Shutting down for a month, 6 weeks, 3 months...I recall working with a business coach who believed this would have been just a 2nd quarter blip in the year 2020. And then it has lingered with all the ferocity of fear mongering that could be thrown at a nation.
This level of bankruptcies, which is climbing and the subsequent job losses is what is triggering the greatest economic crash our country will even witness. People are already experiencing it, one just isn’t reading about it yet in the media.
But, ...but if one is paying attention to the food charities there’s been a dramatic increase in need. In my area we have the major big city food bank, churches distribute Farmers to Families food boxes, my own little city has set up 3 food pantry boxes for a neighbor to neighbor support network, there isn’t a week one cannot find a box of food. Hot meals at least 3 times a week can be found around the area. People are getting food bank support so the little money they have can be used to buy meat or medications, or gas for the car. And one needs a car to even collect a food box due to covid restrictions.
Employers are still hiring, but they are getting 300-500 people applying for part-time positions paying less than $12 per hour. It’s not the pay to look at...it is the number of applicants. Apply for a job through Indeed or LinkedIn and look at the number of applicants, not that it appears there’s job available to be had, one comes to realize that telling someone to go get a job isn’t the easy task it was a year and half ago.
There are two stories happening here right now. If you worked in the wrong service sector you are not going to make it another 6 months.
Now add in the Fed already talking about raising interest rates? It is too soon to raise interest rates. There is an undercurrent of economic disaster unfolding that very few realize is happening. We say that small business is the backbone of the economy, well...just one more straw...and many more will file bankruptcy losing everything.
I think about President Trump and all the times he filed bankruptcy and came back better. I think about Rush Limbaugh and him being fired 7 times and down to his last dollar. They lived in a nation of hope, optimism, and opportunity. They knew and know the American people are a people of many talents.
Hind sight being 2020 (pun might be intended), it brings to mind the scene from Atlas Shrugged where all economic activity is frozen so the market can recover. Except in our world it is being used to reset the global economy and there will be millions left to die/starve. Because what is happening here, unseen, untold, and unspoken as of yet bankruptcy is happening globally. By the end of the second quarter of 2020, we had entered Taggert Tunnel in a coal fired engine.
Needless to say if you’ve read this far Biden’s policies are not helping. $1400 stimulus check isn’t going to solve the nations woes. It is funny to read about how one side of the population has money to spend on vacations and planning to travel this year (53%), while the other half might just be happy to have a job that barely pays the bills. By the end of the second quarter of 2021...watch out. Even with government loans/bailouts not every business qualifies under the Biden plan and recovery is quickly fading from possibility for many businesses.
1. If I was in your shoes I would have stopped working with that “business coach” long ago. If you’re a business coach and you get a prediction about the most disruptive and impactful business situation wrong, you ain’t worth crap. I’m NOT a business coach, and I was warning people in my own business circle — which includes a couple of business coaches, by the way — that if they shut down under government orders last April they were never going to get back to normal. They thought I was nuts then, and yet they still think I’m nuts because I never stopped doing business the way I always did. I wouldn’t give any of the business coaches in my professional circle the time of day, either. If you’ve been sitting there in your home for the last 11 months and you tell me you’d like to have a “Zoom coaching session” with me, I have absolutely ZERO confidence in you — both personally and professionally.
2. I lost a lot of confidence in this country when I saw how many FREEPERS (of all people) were willing to not only meekly acquiesce to government orders when this fiasco began, but had the ‘effing nerve to get here on this website and scold the rest of us for refusing to shut down our own lives and businesses.