All by design. Kill all small businesses by shutting them down, and get purchased by giant megacorps when they're worth nothing.

Don't be silly. There is no such thing as a conspiracy. After all it's not like a bunch of assasins trained by a state's decret service started World War I.

Clearly a conspiracy, which is why all the assassins were objectively incompetent, only succeeded by sheer stupid luck, and both Germany and Austro-Hungary were itching and planning to start a war regardless.

Ferdinand's death didn't cause WW1, it just started it.

And yet they were still more competent than the Austrian secret services because they, you know, managed to kill their target.

Don't forget the money printing machine at maximum speed.

Although small businesses didn't really shut down, at least that I could see. Pubs sold delivery beer, restaurants went full-on collection and delivery, coffee shops turned into walk-throughs.

Tougher time absolutely, but almost all the visible small businesses in my area survived lockdown.

"By design" seems like a bit much, but the upper class sure didn't let the crisis go to waste.

Spend $800B so the poors can eat? Hand-wringing and pearl clutching up and down the air waves. Just think of the inflation!

Spend $3000B to pump real estate values? Complete silence, relatively speaking.

This experience made it very clear who was in charge and who wasn't. These are US numbers, but I tend to suspect the same story repeated itself all around the world.

I was so angry about all of this.

I had been waiting to time the market, I ended up only buying 30% down rather than the 50-80% down I was hoping.

What happened in 2020 changed my understanding of markets. Politics>Economics for politicians.

Read the room, friend.

Politics = economics

No gov wants a recession on their watch. So we will have a biggest and baddest recession at some point in the future

The money spent during COVID ($13tn of various money printing and government intervention) was largely spent into the economy owned by rich people - who do you think owns your mortgage and the banks and your debts and the super markets etc.

The poor still spent most of their money, the rich did not buy more yachts and expensive meals and attending "charity" galas etc. so what would usually be a circular flow became a direct increase in the wealth of the rich and direct decrease in the wealth of the poor. The inflation we see now is going to remain for a while but in the end prices over the next 3-5 years will nearly double and wages will remain the same.

The rich just increased their wealth and the working person got dramatically poorer. Poor people in the UK can't even afford food and Internet but at least the rich have never had it so good. Tax the rich.