The Economic Collapse of 2020 | What You MUST Know

What's up you guys? It's Graham here. So if you watch my videos for a while, you'll know that every now and then I love to scour through the headlines and pick the ones that really stand out the most and lead to some really interesting discoveries.

Today is one of those days because we potentially got the worst financial storm brewing since 2008, and that is worth talking about. Like it's no surprise, our entire financial markets have been quite the unpredictable wild ride over the last few months. We've had some of our single worst point drops in history, followed by some of the largest point gains in history. Between that and betting whether or not Tesla is going to achieve profitability this quarter and be included in the S&P 500—which, by the way, they are profitable, and that means they might now be included in the S&P 500, which we'll talk about towards the end of the video.

But anyway, there's a lot to keep track of if you want to invest and grow your money, and, most importantly, not invest the wrong way right before the perfect financial storm that’s worse than 2008. So let's cover exactly what's going on, how serious this could become, what this means for you, and how you could use this information to potentially invest. Because I promise, for most people watching, this is going to impact you in one way or another.

So sit back, relax, and the YouTube algorithm, by the way, is standing right behind the camera just waving its hands for me to say this. It wants me to ask you to smash the like button for the YouTube algorithm. It's noticed that too many people leave the like button unliked, and that makes it and me very sad. But once that's out of the way and the like button is blue, we could begin with a video.

Okay, so let's get into this and talk about this headline that just came up. It says, "A perfect financial storm is brewing, and it's worse than 2008." Now, usually I'll read articles like this and just immediately dismiss them as some random prediction of nonsense. After all, a broken clock is right twice a day. But this one is a bit different because it points to some very serious and legitimate concerns that everyone should be made aware of.

Like I mentioned, this one will impact you. Now, this article mentions a whole bunch of things that are all happening at the exact same time, so let's just start right here. We're going to be starting with the eviction protections that are ending the week of July 24th, meaning that landlords are now able to pursue evictions on tenants who have not paid the rent. The concern is that when this happens, it could potentially lead to mass homelessness as 28 million people lose their place to live, and that'll cause a real estate collapse as all of these empty units begin flooding the market.

See, prior to this, there was a temporary eviction freeze that would prevent landlords from evicting tenants who stopped paying their rent due to the illness. But that freeze was only meant to be temporary until the economy begins reopening again and people begin going back to work. And now, with the economy still closed down, the worry is that evictions are fair game for landlords who want to kick out their tenants and start getting rent.

So how much of a concern is this really? Well, it really depends on where you live and what measures are put in place for tenants. Some states, like New York, passed a tenant safe harbor act which prevents tenants from being evicted who have been impacted by the illness. Other states, like California, are potentially allowing their tenants to defer their missed rental payments for up to 12 months. Many other states are using the stimulus money to set up tenant relief funds.

I think the most likely truth behind all of this, coming from the perspective of a landlord, is that realistically we're not going to see a mass wave of evictions like this article is mentioning. I would venture to say that most states would have protections and resources in place to prevent all tenants from being evicted at the exact same time. I would bet most landlords would be more than happy to work out some sort of payment plan with their tenants to make up on missed rent.

Also, legally, the eviction process is time-consuming. It's not like the landlord could just file for eviction on Monday and then all of a sudden you're kicked out on Friday. Realistically, in most scenarios, it takes at least a month to go through the eviction process. If there's a big backlog of tenants that are all being evicted at the exact same time, then I have a feeling it's probably gonna be more like a two to four month eviction process.

Oh, and also, I have no idea where they're getting this 28 million people figure from. That's almost 10% of the entire U.S. population, and that assumes that one out of every ten people is renting and they're behind on their payments. Which, how is that possible? Like, a Harvard study found that there were 43 million renters in the United States, so saying 28 million people would imply that more than half of renters out there are going to be evicted. The National Multifamily Housing Council also found that 91.3 percent of tenants paid the rent in full for the month of July, which, by the way, is only two percent lower than the previous year.

So needless to say, even though it is a concern for landlords and tenants and it's a horrible situation to be in for everybody involved, I don't think it's anywhere as severe as these articles are talking about—especially this one that says 28 million people.

Now, we have another issue that I've been talking about here for the last few months, and a lot of our economy hinges on what happens with this, and that's the unemployment benefit of $600 a week that's set to expire in the next few days. As it is now, the CARES Act gives an extra $600 per week unemployment boost on top of the normal unemployment benefit until July 31st. However, this was not meant to last indefinitely, and it was supposed to be an amount that would incentivize people to stay home and then not worry about making less money.

The concern right now is that obviously our economy has not fully reopened yet, a lot of people are out of work, and discontinuing this unemployment benefit would cut off the lifeline for so many people who really rely on that money. This was also warned by the credit card CEO, or in other words, the CEO of Synchrony Financial, and she said dark times are ahead if the unemployment benefit is not extended. She cautions that so many credit cards, auto loans, and mortgages are temporarily in forbearance, and those payments being made really rely on the unemployment coming in for people who are out of work.

However, the bright side, at least, is that it does not look likely that the unemployment benefit is going to be cut out entirely down to zero dollars after July 31st. Even though nothing has been decided yet and nothing is concrete, I'll be sure to do another stimulus update video at some point in the future to go over all the details. Although, as it stands right now, the president did say that the unemployment benefits will be extended, although it looks like it's going to be a smaller amount. He said that we're doing it again; they're thinking about doing 70% of the amount.

So if I were to guess what's gonna happen, it's most likely going to be reduced from $600, maybe down to $400 to $450, and then reduced even further after that. This is something that's probably going to need to be weaned off of over time as the economy begins reopening and people get back to work, and then maybe within 6 to 12 months, the whole thing is done with altogether. But as of now, it does look like this will be continued to some degree at least for a little bit longer.

So it's not exactly the perfect storm like 2008, but it could be if the unemployment benefits just suddenly stopped out of nowhere and went down to zero. After that, we also have the foreclosure crisis, meaning that homeowners are behind in their payments because they've asked for mortgage forbearance. Once that period is up, if they're not able to negotiate with the lender, the lender is able to foreclose on them and take back the property.

I guess this is something of concern, but the actual numbers behind it are just a little bit less alarming. See, federally backed mortgages have given homeowners the option to temporarily pause their payments for 180 days if they've been impacted by the illness, with the option to extend that an additional 180 days. So a year should really be more than enough time for a homeowner to renegotiate the payments with a lender and then make up for those payments at a later date.

Also, according to research, the number of loans in forbearance has actually been decreasing lately down to 7.8% according to the Mortgage Bankers Association. It's still significant, but given how easy it is for anybody to self-certify that they've been impacted by the illness and temporarily pause their payments for up to an entire year, I wouldn't be surprised if some of those homeowners just did that out of caution because they didn't know what was going to happen versus out of necessity because they couldn't make the payments.

I have a feeling once that time frame is up, a lot of those people are just going to resume their normal housing payments and get back on track and essentially get a no cost place to live for a year and then tack on those payments to the end of the loan. But all of that combined is what's going to lead us into a perfect storm worse than 2008 according to CNBC.

And I have to say, as a total investing amateur who makes videos like this in a spare bedroom of his house and asks way too much for people to smash the like button, I would say the real elephant in the room is not something that was mentioned here, but instead it's how long our economy takes to reopen, how many people end up going back to work, and how people spend money after all of this begins to subside.

In the worst case scenario, what ends up happening is that the economy does not reopen, unemployment benefits expire, people begin defaulting on their loans, businesses begin losing their customers. That causes the stock market to crash, and everything just goes to… However, to mitigate that, even if the economy doesn't reopen as we plan, more money could be printed, benefits could be extended, and at least in the short term it's not going to cause inflation because people are not spending any money right now.

At least that would keep things propped up long enough to begin reopening, and then at that point people would begin getting back to work, and maybe they'll have more discretionary income to spend, and that'll get things running along again as it was somewhat normally. Then at that point we might start seeing inflation, but I think a lot of this depends on continuing the unemployment benefits to some degree and then finding a safe way for people to be able to return back to work.

I have a feeling this next stimulus package is going to be addressing and taking care of at least some of our short-term concerns, but getting anything passed right now is proving to be quite the dramatic event to say the least. As far as what you could do about all of this, Suze Orman says that you should be saving your money and not spending it. Or in other words, pretty much every single video I have made on this channel over the last three and a half years, telling you that exact same thing.

She also recommends saving up an emergency fund of eight months to hold you over, not taking out any money from your 401ks because those are protected from bankruptcy, and to look for new opportunities to make money because you should not be counting on your job coming back. I gotta say that's pretty good advice, and I agree with it. Those are things you should be doing regardless of where we are in the economy.

It's just always a good idea to cut back on your spending, save as much money as you can, invest consistently, and look for new ways to make money. Those are always good financial habits to practice at any time. And of course, the moment you've all been waiting for, as promised, we got to talk about Tesla because they just recently posted a profit. That's right! This is a really big deal because on paper they've now met the entire criteria for inclusion within the S&P 500, which means all of those index funds that I love and talk about so much would now hold a small piece of Tesla.

For every $100 you invest in one of these index funds, one of those dollars would be invested in our majesty, Elon Musk. Now, obviously, right after this news was released, the price of Tesla stock went to about $1,700 after hours, and I'm posting this video a few days after this happens, so who knows what the stock price is going to be in the future. But for all you future people out there, hopefully Tesla's gone up, and if not, then maybe I'm buying more.

And just a reminder to everyone in the future, just hit the like button if you haven't done that in the future. Anyway, here are the highlights that you need to know for Tesla: they've reported revenue of just over $6 billion and a net income of just over $100 million. This was heavily influenced, of course, by their $428 million of regulatory tax credits. Hmm, we got to talk about that.

See, here's how that works: the state and federal government will offer tax credits for producing zero-emission vehicles, and automakers must abide by a certain criteria to meet regulatory requirements. So there's a minimum that every company must comply with if they want to be within the rules.

Well anyway, once an automaker has met their minimum requirement, they get to keep the excess credits per car sold, and then they have the option to sell those tax credits to other auto manufacturers to meet their minimum requirements. It's like saying you'll get one dollar for every single trash you pick up off the ground, and you have to pick up at least five pieces of trash.

So Elon Musk goes and picks up a thousand pieces; he keeps five for himself and then he sells the other 995 pieces of trash to other people who just don't feel like picking up any trash. That way, Elon Musk gets to make a lot of money; the other car companies don't need to do anything; they could just buy their way out of it. The net result, at the end of the day, is that more trash gets picked up.

This, in essence, has given Tesla profitability during a time where otherwise they might be losing some money. But the good news with Tesla is that they're not losing as much money as other car companies are right now. Their business only declined 4% year-over-year, which is really impressive for an automaker during this entire crisis. It sells a pretty high-end car. They also don't know exactly how much money he made selling Tesla short shorts, and maybe that's why they were profitable this year.

I ordered a few pairs, by the way, so I'll let you know as soon as I receive them. Anyway, it does look very promising that they will be included in the S&P 500, but that decision won't be final until a committee of nine people meet and then agree on it to be included. So until then, it's not guaranteed, but it's looking very good.

So overall, we have a lot going on right now. But the headlines that are saying this is the perfect financial storm are a little bit exaggerated. Yes, there are some very serious concerns out there, but the chances of them all happening in their worst case scenario at the exact same time is probably not going to happen. And I also have a feeling by the end of next week we're going to have a stimulus package to review that should hopefully address a lot of these concerns.

Oh, and by the way, really important for anyone interested, I'm going to be going live on the streaming website Caffeine. The link is down below in the description from 5 to 6 p.m. right after this video posts the same day with Bunny Fufu, who's another YouTuber, and we're going to be talking about personal finance topics, investing, and all that good stuff.

So if you guys are interested in joining that, the link is down below in the description with all the details. So with that said, you guys, thank you so much for watching. I really appreciate it. As always, make sure to destroy the subscribe button, the like button, the notification bell. Feel free to also add me on Instagram; I post it pretty much daily, so if you want to be a part of it there, feel free to add me there.

As on my second channel, The Graham Stephan Show, I post there every single day I'm not posting here. So if you want to see a brand new video from me every single day, make sure to add yourself to that. And lastly, if you guys want two free stocks, use the link down below in the description, and Weeble is going to be giving you two free stocks when you deposit $100 on the platform, with one of the stocks potentially worth all the way up to $1,400. So if you want these two free stocks, use the link down below. Let me know which two free stocks you get. Thank you so much for watching, and until next time!