As the world works through the global pandemic, the word “unprecedented” has been used to describe the current environment by a majority of companies in their first quarter earnings report. Very few would argue that the synchronized global economic slowdown / shutdown is indeed unprecedented. There is little doubt that some things will never go back to the way they were before COVID-19 entered our life. We are just not sure what those changes are just yet.
Over the past 30 years, we have seen 3 other events that, at the time, had a similar feel about a “new normal,” or a realization that some things will never go back to the way they used to be. The first event was Y2K, the second was in the aftermath of the September 11 terrorist attack, and lastly the 2008 financial collapse. Both times, we were left to speculate how the world would change, and how those changes would alter how we live our lives. With the hindsight of time, we can now look back and see what predictions turned out to be true changes, the ones that were more short term, and predictions that were just plain wrong. This may give us the ability to view current events in a bit of a different light.