World War II was such a cataclysmic event that it shaped global thinking through every generation since it ended. Everything was on such a vast level and intensity—from the firebombing of Dresden to atomic weapons used on Japan.
Germany conducted near daily bombings on England for the eight months of “The Blitz.” The Battle of Stalingrad lasted five months, with 2 million dead and wounded. Over 300,000 soldiers were evacuated from Dunkirk and two years later 350,000 troops took part in the Normandy invasion.
Perhaps in order to psychologically face this scale of calamity, films reflected similar scenarios for decades.
The 1959 movie On The Beach depicted the aftermath of a nuclear war and the end of humanity. The Cuban Missile Crisis brought the world to the brink of nuclear disaster. We imagined and tried to survive every imaginable catastrophe from comets causing a mass extinction (Deep Impact) to a global infestation of zombies in World War Z. Alien invasions have always been popular since H.G. Wells wrote War of the Worlds in 1897 and Will Smith and Randy Quaid saved the human race in Independence Day a hundred years later.
We even supposed a global pandemic with 26 million dying worldwide from a disease caused by a combination of genetic material from pig and bat-borne viruses in Contagion.
But what happens next in the movie when humans might be eating tree bark and dirt isn’t often talked about, except maybe for Woody Harrelson and his “Twinkies” in Zombieland.
This time in real life, our travel through the pandemic will not end with humanity being wiped out or reduced to a few people-pockets here and there. But there is a day after and it is not pretty.
Of course, as with the predictions that millions and millions would be dead from Covid-19 by now, forecasts are generally doomsday oriented. You don’t make the front page saying, “It will be tough but will eventfully be OK.”
However, there is a grim if not Grim Reaper reality coming. The Philippines will experience some of this but with a much lighter impact.
The National Bureau of Economic Research says more than 100,000 US businesses have already permanently shut down, representing millions of jobs. Forty-two percent of workers experiencing recent layoffs will suffer permanent job losses. The Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago reports the real rate of US unemployment is now 30.7 percent. The Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta is now projecting that the US economy will shrink by 42.8 percent in the second quarter.
The reason the US, in particular, and the Western economies, in general, are in critical trouble is because of debt. Borrowing money is wonderful on two occasions. The first is to expand and enhance in the good times. The other is to survive and recover in the bad times. But too much of the first means any of the second can be fatal.
Government, business, and consumer debt in the Philippines is so contained and manageable that a necessary expansion at this time is not going to be a problem. Certainly, there will be many businesses that will not recover, just as in the aftermath of the 1997 Asian Financial Crisis. Rest in peace knowing that you screwed up badly.
For most though, this is just another big bump in the road added to the many others in the past 40 years. Stay safe and be responsible.
E-mail me at mangun@gmail.com. Visit my web site at www.mangunonmarkets.com. Follow me on Twitter @mangunonmarkets. PSE stock-market information and technical analysis tools provided by the COL Financial Group Inc.