Use whatever analogy or superlative you want in describing the state of human civilization as we enter the new decade, there is a sense of massive change at our doorstep. 2019 wasn’t all bad, but most people on all sides of all the trendy arguments these days will agree there is more social unrest, people are angrier, politics is getting even more inane if that were even possible, and something’s gotta give. We all disagree on what the thing is that has to give, but it’s something. What exactly? Many things probably, but here I’ll try to explain what I think it is, and how the gaming industry is involved in it.

I was reading Dave Barry’s year in review humor column yesterday, which I look forward to every year. I grew up reading him, and I model my own year-in-review columns after his style. While it was funny and biting as usual, I was telling my wife last night that something about it changed this year. In past years, he would take a few weird events that happened throughout the year and exaggerate them funhouse-mirror-style, so you’d come out of reading it with a sense that crazy things did indeed happen here and there, but generally, everything is more or less normal so just laugh it off. This time though, Dave didn’t have to pick out obscure events and blow them up out of proportion. This time all he had to do was review the actual news, almost as if he were a real journalist. I finished the column laughing, but also with a definite sense of unease.

I can boil down what I’m seeing in just one number. 5,245,520,000,000. That’s 5.245 trillion. That’s the amount of dollars that the Federal Reserve has conjured up into existence since September 17, 2019 just three and a half months ago when the overnight loan market suddenly exploded and rates jumped to 10% overnight. $5.245 trillion is the amount of money needed to keep real interest rates (rates minus price inflation) suppressed below zero, a situation the world has been in now for 11 years running. Don’t believe me? Check here. Download the Excel file, use the sum function in the final column. It’s all right there.

What can you really say about that number except that something is totally whacked out? It’s like trying to conceptualize the size of the universe. After trying to think about it for 5 seconds, you just give up. There’s no point.