Economic Jenga Tower
On weeks like this, as stocks plummet 20% because of a senseless trade war, you see clearly that currency and stocks are just fiction. Intangible entries in a ledger, and only of value because of our fragile shared imaginations and agreements.
This isn’t the first time. In 2022, the market crashed because of inflation and interest rate hikes — an after-effect of the COVID shutdowns and stimulus. In 2009, it was the banks — over-leveraged, peddling toxic financial products dressed up as safe bets.
Every time, the cause is different. But the outcome feels familiar. You wake up one morning, and the number in your brokerage or savings account — the one that’s supposed to map to something real, like a countdown to retirement or savings for a college fund, just doesn’t anymore.
You realize that you're perched atop an economic Jenga tower. It's swaying, and your control is an illusion.
Higher up, there are corporations. Publicly traded giants trying to forecast earnings while juggling global supply chains, labor demands, and the cost of capital. They’re responding to everything below them — interest rates, demand, energy prices — adjusting their models, laying off workers, shifting factories across borders. Your investments depend on their decisions.
Then come the platforms. The apps and brokerages. Robinhood, Fidelity, Reddit threads, YouTube channels promising the next 10x stock. It feels like access. But this is also where sentiment gets distorted. Where FOMO spreads faster than facts.
And then finally, there’s you. Sitting on the very top of this tower, checking your phone, watching numbers move. You make decisions based on the sliver of the picture you can see. You react to headlines. You rebalance your 401(k). You dollar-cost average into ETFs and hope that the long-term still means something.
The tower holds — until it doesn’t. A single pulled block somewhere deep below, and the collapse starts. Not always all at once, but enough to rattle your belief. Enough to remind you that this whole structure, this whole game, only works if everyone keeps playing.
This isn’t the first time. In 2022, the market crashed because of inflation and interest rate hikes — an after-effect of the COVID shutdowns and stimulus. In 2009, it was the banks — over-leveraged, peddling toxic financial products dressed up as safe bets.
Every time, the cause is different. But the outcome feels familiar. You wake up one morning, and the number in your brokerage or savings account — the one that’s supposed to map to something real, like a countdown to retirement or savings for a college fund, just doesn’t anymore.
You realize that you're perched atop an economic Jenga tower. It's swaying, and your control is an illusion.
At the very base, there’s geopolitics — the invisible tectonic plates. Oil supply shocks. Wars. Sanctions. Trade alliances. A drought on the other side of the world can ripple up to affect the cost of groceries in your city.
Next comes macroeconomics — inflation, unemployment, growth. Abstract, but with teeth. Central banks try to steer these forces with interest rates and liquidity injections, hoping to engineer soft landings that rarely arrive.
Above that, you’ve got the financial sector — commercial banks, investment firms, credit markets. The plumbing. It’s here that money flows or dries up. Where lending tightens. Where things can break in complicated ways, like in 2008, when subprime debt quietly infected the whole system.Higher up, there are corporations. Publicly traded giants trying to forecast earnings while juggling global supply chains, labor demands, and the cost of capital. They’re responding to everything below them — interest rates, demand, energy prices — adjusting their models, laying off workers, shifting factories across borders. Your investments depend on their decisions.
Then come the platforms. The apps and brokerages. Robinhood, Fidelity, Reddit threads, YouTube channels promising the next 10x stock. It feels like access. But this is also where sentiment gets distorted. Where FOMO spreads faster than facts.
And then finally, there’s you. Sitting on the very top of this tower, checking your phone, watching numbers move. You make decisions based on the sliver of the picture you can see. You react to headlines. You rebalance your 401(k). You dollar-cost average into ETFs and hope that the long-term still means something.
The tower holds — until it doesn’t. A single pulled block somewhere deep below, and the collapse starts. Not always all at once, but enough to rattle your belief. Enough to remind you that this whole structure, this whole game, only works if everyone keeps playing.