In the future, history lessons will refer to the old and new normals as pre-Covid and post-Covid eras. They will be reference point benchmarks as to where we were previously and what happens after the great reset. It is hard to forecast where we will be post-Covid.
Things that happened and functioned normally before 2020 ceased to exist. After 2+ years, we are slowly returning to a brave new world in 2022. History will record events as before or after Covid, pretty much like BC and AD in the biblical calendar years.
This great reset that plunged the world into the deep end probably has no historical equivalence. The world was forced to shut down completely to stop the pandemic from crossing borders even as the virus continues to mutant. Looking back now, it seems like the past 2+ years had passed by so quickly. Yet when we were in the middle of it, there was fear and foreboding about what would happen tomorrow as the lockdown nightmare dragged from days into months.
Human nature is such that we are adaptable creatures of habit. It takes time but after a sudden change in the environment, we will slowly adapt to the new situation as we settle into a repetitive schedule. I remember during lockdown I had to start the day with the same short outdoor run within an allowed area of my home, then settled into my study room for the rest of the day. I needed a schedule to remain sane. All my family members went into a routine, locking themselves into their rooms for work/study and gathering together during meals. We have sort of gotten used to this way of life eventually without any idea of how long this bizarre upside-down world will last.
And now as we face the endemic phase after almost a year into Omicron. Life is starting to feel like the good old days again. But how much will we be returning back to the pre-2020 days? 50 or 100%? The world has evolved so dramatically since then. WFH (Work From Home) was the only option that was forced down our throats then. Everyone hated it at the start as we did not have enough broadband bandwidth at home. Using Zoom video calls was a new scary tech app we had to adapt. But now, thanks to the great resignation, hybrid work is necessary to keep workers from leaving…
Our perception of life has also changed with brushes of death all around us during the pandemic. Life’s too short to bitch about little things. Staying happy and healthy is now more important than having a steady paycheck in an unhappy work environment.
No one event in recorded human history has ever affected every human being in such a big way and at the same time all over the world. Covid has made us mindful of our mortality and vulnerability. Life is so fragile if one is unable to control our destiny as an invisible enemy virus floats around us.
From now on, all timeline references will be benchmarked to pre or post-Covid as the defining measurement of whether the current observation is comparable to the old normal. I think we are about 50 to 70% of pre-Covid levels now. Supply chains are still trying to get back to full production pre-pandemic. The market speculation excesses are still being worked out this year of pain.
Meanwhile, the FTX saga continues… I am getting sick to the stomach reading about CEO SBF but the new revelations continue to amaze me. How can power be held in so few hands as multiple professionals throw money at them without simple fiduciary checks? With its rapid growth, FTX did not even have an independent board of directors to curb the over-enthusiasm of a misguided CEO. Absolute power corrupts absolutely.
When Binance was banned in S’pore, it pushed many more sophisticated crypto investors into the hands of FTX, one of the top 5 exchanges in the world then. FTX has over a million users and it is rumoured that more than 5% are from S’pore ie. greater than 50k. Japan and South Korea are also one of the highest numbers of users in Asia.
This week, we are treated to the mystery of the immediate hack into FTX’s assets the moment it declared bankruptcy. First, the digital ledger indicated that most of the stolen goods were wired to Kraken and it looks like an inside job. There were mistakes indicating that an inexperienced person was responsible, probably doing it in haste. Then the latest bombshell revelation points to SBF being the hacker accused of stealing it as he was pressured into it at the behest of the Bahamas authorities since he was aware of all the backdoors to commit the fraud.
The new CEO that took over SBF this week also dropped another bombshell by stating that this was the worst that he has ever seen. And this says a lot, coming from the same guy that took over as CEO of the Enron clean-up after that blew up. The modus operandi is the same, a house of cards with weak Ponzi foundations pretending and CEOs pretending to be financial superstars. An emperor with no clothes and naked underneath the water as the tide recedes.
Just 6 more weeks left to end the annus horribilis year we call 2022. Nothing but pain for all as the financial bubbles continue to pop non-stop, one after another. Investors are running out of cover to avoid the blood baths. This is surely a year which we all would like to forget.
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