Comments by "Kevin Street" (@Kevin_Street) on "2021 The Year in Finance" video.

(This is version 3 of this comment. Sorry about the weird structure, but it's the only way I can think of to get it by the censor-bots.) Thank you for making this video! Boy, it feels like we lived through an entire decade in twelve months. When you opened the video by talking about meme stocks I thought that was the year before - but nope, it was 2021. One thing I learned from your video is the energy crisis in Europe is worse than it's been reported here in North America. Your energy prices are really high, due at least in part to effects of the transition to renewable energy. On paper the European power grid seems like the best place in the world to make the switch to renewables, thanks to friendly government policies, an educated public that wants the change, and numerous national grids that function as a fairly compact but still enormous connected system. But you're running into problems due to lack of alternate capacity, and maybe not enough storage? Unfortunately it's the pioneers who get into trouble first, but we should all be paying close attention to how Europe solves this crisis because we'll eventually have the same problems ourselves.
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For me 2021 felt like the year when it became obvious the big systems we depend upon are starting to break down, or at least aren't working as well as they used to. In finance all the years of stimulus have created an overheated market that's keen to chase any opportunity to make a quick profit, with the emphasis on "quick." You can see it in high finance with the overpriced trendy stocks and SPACs, and in the grubby digital casino of the Internet with the meme coins and NFTs. The people still holding on to meme stocks after all this time seem more like an exception to the rule, since they're investing in companies they actually believe in. Meanwhile inflation has suddenly pounced on us like a hungry tiger and suddenly food costs 25% more than it did the year before. Inflation and the effects of all that stimulus... I think these are problems that are going to become much bigger this year, and our governments will have to address them soon.
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