Boom and Bust Cycles
Somewhere, right now, an asset class is booming and another is busting. The question is who's just watching — and who's steering.
There's a recurring idea in books about generational wealth: "Old Money" understands something most people never stop to notice — there is always a boom or bust cycle running in one or more asset classes at any given moment.
The cycle never really stops — it just changes which asset class is riding it.
Pro-Cycle Efforts
Most people experience booms and busts as weather — something that just happens to them. But not everyone waits for the cycle to arrive. Procyclical strategies actively lean into the cycle already underway — piling on leverage during the boom, pulling out fast as the bust begins — which has the side effect of making both the boom and the bust more extreme than they would have been on their own.
That's the difference between watching a cycle and amplifying one. The first is investing. The second starts to look like engineering the outcome.
Disaster Capitalism
There's an old saying that gets at the same idea from a different angle:
Taken to its extreme, this becomes disaster capitalism — the practice of treating crises not as tragedies to respond to, but as opportunities to buy low, restructure fast, and profit from the disorientation before anyone can organize a response.