The sugar high economy he fostered was going to have issues, covid or not. We should’ve raised interest rates when times were excellent but we kept trucking along as if 2.5% home mortgage rates and such were going to be standard forever. Companies got spoiled on more than a decade of essentially “free money,” and now that things have an interest rate they can feel they are flipping the fuck out.

Also 2019 was pre-pandemic. The economic effects weren’t being felt at all yet.