Financial markets have crashed around the world. Stock markets from Britain to Japan to Australia fell as much as 7% in a matter of hours, and are off 20% over the past few weeks. Oil prices crashed as low as $27 earlier and are down by nearly 50% from just 2 weeks ago.

And bond yields have crashed to lows that have never been seen before in the history of the world.

You can now loan money to the US government for THIRTY YEARS and earn just 0.85% per year. Or you could loan money to the German government for five years and earn NEGATIVE 1% per year.

Most of this is obviously due to the Corona Virus.

First thing’s first: DON’T PANIC.

If you’re like most people, you probably spent a good part of the weekend watching Corona Porn.

There’s so much of it right now… people making scary videos with grand predictions that you’ll be dead in a week unless you buy a HAZMAT suit or load up on their special supplement.

And in a weird way that stuff is strangely entertaining for us. Deep down, fear stimulates our brain chemicals and body chemistry so profoundly that the effects can be somewhat addictive. It’s why so many people enjoy horror movies.

But seriously– the world is NOT coming to an end.

I believe a large part of my role in the world is to call bullshit wherever I see ridiculous complacency in spite of obvious risks.

This is why I write so much about unsustainable sovereign debt, overvalued financial markets, unfunded pensions, etc. Nobody ever worries about that stuff. They think it’s all going to be fine even though the facts clearly demonstrate otherwise.

It’s complacency at its worst, and part of my job is to hoist a giant red flag.

Frankly I’m compelled to do the same thing when there’s excessive panic. And that’s what I’m seeing right now.

So let’s rationally examine a few facts:

According to the CDC, roughly 50 MILLION people worldwide contracted the FLU over the past five months.

That’s right. The flu. 50 million people. That works out to over 300,000 people PER DAY, which is pretty typical for a flu season.

Moreover, the CDC estimates that more than 50,000 people DIED of the flu during this past season.

But where was the mass panic? Where was the stock market crash? Where was the hysteria?

Now, I’m not specifically comparing Corona/Covid-19 to the flu. Or to SARS, Ebola, Bird Flu, Swine Flu, or even HPV (which infected 14 million people last year in the US alone).

These are all different things– apples and oranges. For instance, Corona is relatively benign in the vast majority of patients, but it spreads more rapidly than the flu.

The point is not to hash out which virus is the nastiest, but to determine whether the panic matches the facts.