I know some of the most dangerous words in investing are, “It’s different this time.”
I know the 1979 Business Week cover story on “the death of equities” has been mocked for most of the past 40 years. I know 2008 was primarily a financial and real estate crisis, and that home prices and stock prices made new highs after six years.
But I will say it anyway: What if it’s different this time? What if this is the death of real estate? What if American, and perhaps global, consumers change their ways of thinking to more closely match the Great Depression. Yes, that Great Depression of the 1930s.
Mark this date, March 26, 2020, when the number of unemployed Americans rose by more than 3.2 million in just one week, increasing the unemployment rate from a very low 3.5 percent in February. The previous weekly record wa
