To Be or Not to Be…Disturbed

It’s been two weeks since the Trump inauguration and I think its fair to objectively say that its already been a wild ride that seems to be getting wilder by the day. This is proving to be a very confusing moment for many of us and I would like to talk that through.

In the past few days I have been contacted by a wider array of old friends and acquaintances than I can ever recall in recent history. A number of them date back to my high school days in Rome, oddly enough. Recall that I graduated high school in 1971, so 54 years ago. Add to that the strange coincidence that my graduating class at Notre Dame International Prep consisted of only 54 members. That school no longer even exists and is now a TV station on the outskirts of Rome on the Via Aurelia (#796). While I have not done any sort of official poll of the alumni of the school from that year, I am in touch with 5 of them and I think it’s fair to suggest that 80% of the class are very liberal. It’s that cadre that have reached out to me this week as well as a number of more recent friends from college and more recent years. Everyone is looking for answers. Everyone is in a state of distress. People are wondering how they should feel about what is happening as much as what they should do about it. It’s not just about political activism any more, it’s about retirement investing and just plain old survival. I wish I had answers for them. Hell, I wish I had answers for me.

I am reminded of my observations about how different people react in a crisis. Thirty five years ago I witnessed a morning on our trading desk in Toronto (I was the CEO of the bank there, doing a two year exile term from NYC). A forty-five year old employee stood up, grasped the trading turret, started having a fit with full foaming at the mouth, and proceeded to keel over, writhing on the floor. It was a normal busy trading day, but the 50-person floor stopped cold and went momentarily silent as everyone in the room noticed what had just happened. Three categories of people suddenly emerged without thinking. These were instinctive brain stem reactions akin to the fight or flight syndrome. One small group sprang into action to help the man, who was an affable and well-liked soul. They literally jumped over chairs and started loosening his clothing and putting something in his teeth to bite down onto as they held him down from his convulsions. These people seemed to need to act physically and decisively in the emergency. A second group ran out of the room to distance themselves as much as they could from the event, clearly exercising their active flight impulse. Those people all had a later excuse and rationalization as to why they did that, trying as best they could to explain their obvious fear-induced reaction. And then there were the rest of us (clearly the majority), who got indirectly busy trying to help from afar. We seemed less driven by instinct than by our cerebellums to either work the problem intellectually by calling someone for help or pretending to be busy sorting out a solution. I, for one, called the man’s wife to ask if he was on any medications, not realizing that I was both advising her of his status and perhaps even panicking her about her husband’s well-being. I saw lots of people just staring dumbfoundedly, not wanting to engage or flee.

I feel like the same delineation is happening in the current crisis we are experiencing, only in a slightly different way. We all realize we are watching a national and perhaps global train wreck and that we are on the train. I would say it’s a slow motion wreck, but it’s actually unfolding very quickly, only adding to the confusion. So, this is not just about helping others in the direct line of fire, but also about protecting ourselves, and our loved ones from whatever fallout is coming from this disaster. The problem with train wrecks is that so many forces influence the outcome that no one really knows what to do, where to go to help, where to run to escape or who to call for help. And all that confusion is going on while the adrenaline is starting to surge and the emotional index is rising by the minute. All beings dislike uncertainty and dangerous and unpredictable uncertainty is frightening.

Nevertheless, the sun rises every morning and people have to go to work or school or to run errands to keep their lives intact, so they try to maintain a semblance of normality. And no one knows whether they should even talk about the train wreck underway around them for fear of making it all even more real and more scary. Some people wave it all off as overreaction. Others go into a funk and start having trouble functioning. They tend to clam up and start down the slippery slope of depression. And then lots of people get on the phone to trusted family and friends to subconsciously try to figure out how to cope while pretending (or perhaps genuinely trying) to want to help others. Mostly what they want is, first, a pinch to tell them this really is happening. Then they want a sympathetic forum in which to vent their fears and frustrations. And finally they want to get or give advice, if for no other reason that to assure themselves that they are competent to get through this and get to a better place.

Going into denial seems like a bad thing to do at these moments, but so does panicking. When is denial a calming influence? When is it cowering in fear? When is panicking a good action-oriented response to crisis? And when is panicking a rout to flee as far and as fast ftom the scene as possible. Who is gathering their go-bag and who is thinking about seizing the initiative for their own best benefit? Like I said, it a very confusing moment.

I saw a post from an L.A. real estate guy yesterday which said:

“Coinciding with Wildfires. First it’s immigration sweeps; now it’s tariffs on Canadian lumber and materials and Mexican assembled appliances and fixtures. Add government uncertainty, forced budget cuts, misinformation, and upcoming elections. $500 per SqFt is so 2010s. I’m hearing $700 to $1,000 all-in to rebuild. The assessor is rumored to support  50% residual lot values. Too high! Will thousands of new spec, uninsurable homes flood the market and change the residential market akin to the 94 earthquake? Not everyone has the stamina or desire to devote years of their lives to recover.  New schools and communities are being chosen. Retirement plans and personal wealth is shifting.  Govern yourselves accordingly and help others in any manner. Jubilant from fear of survival, to facing reality and anger is testing Los Angeles.  Everyone is affected.”

That is just like the dinosaur addressing his peers at a climate change conference saying “….all that and we all have a brain the size of a walnut!” But is it denial or panic? Reasonable or unreasonable? Everyone is wondering the same thing, making the same observations and asking the same rhetorical questions. What do we do now?