Given everything that’s going on in the world, it’s hard not to talk about historical turning points. Only time will clarify this for historians, but it does look like the world is at a significant turning point right now. If there are such things as physical manifestations of historical crossroads, then one of them is in Macau.

Let’s first go back in time exactly 102 years to the Spring of 1918. The first relatively mild wave of what turned out to be the deadliest pandemic in world history, the so-called Spanish Flu, was just starting. Within a month, Russian Czar Nicholas II would be assassinated, which would lead to the rise of communism throughout Asia and to the deaths of about 100 million or so people.  The Great War was on the verge of ending, but before it did, the second and much more severe wave of the Spanish Flu swept through the planet, killing up to 50 million people by some estimates. That was more than the entire death toll of 40 million for what was at that point the worst war ever fought.

World War I led to heavily inflationary monetary policy throughout the world in order to fight it. That led to a hyperinflationary collapse in Germany, a depression in the United States, and eventually World War II. The only reason, by the way, that there was hyperinflation in one country and depression in the other was that the dollar was backed by gold while the German mark was not. In terms of gold though, both countries experienced severe deflation. This time though, everything is paper. Good luck with that, world.

We are again in a pandemic and approaching the peak of inflationary monetary policy. We’ve seen this movie before. The next act is typically punctuated by xenophobia and scapegoating by political leaders looking to pass on the blame to anyone but themselves.