Introducing “Car Condos” – Baby Boomers Embark on One Last Misallocation of Capital Binge by Purchasing $600,000 Garages

The most significant challenge of our times relates to the ongoing theft of society’s wealth across the board by a very small group of people known as “oligarchs,” the “super rich,” the “overclass,” etc. Whatever you want to call them, this group is hellbent on using political cronyism in faux democracies across the global to aggregate all the world’s wealth and power, while concurrently implementing an Orwellian surveillance state spy-grid in order to protect their fiefdoms once the plebs finally become restless. This much we know.

While the above-mentioned clash between oligarchs and the demoralized and confused citizenry (a significant percentage of this class doesn’t even know the clash is happening) will be the defining battle of my lifetime, it is extremely important to understand another conflict that is almost equally important. This is the widening division between generations, which I believe will get quite ugly in the next severe economic downturn beginning sometime next year.

The reason this conflict is much more nuanced, is because millennials don’t dislike their parents, and baby boomers aren’t actively trying to harm their children’s future. Rather, both generations are going to experience a gigantic clash in the years ahead as these distinct generations’ collectively look to secure their own futures. For the boomers, this will quite singularly mean securing a comfortable retirement. For the millennials, it will mean a professional and family life that feels rewarding, higher standards of living, and political, cultural and economic self-determination. Notably, millennials have realized none of these things, due in large part to baby boomers holding firmly onto the reigns of political power and bailing-out their financial portfolios whenever they are threatened, and at any cost.

As millennials come into their own and realize how fucked they are, they are becoming more and more vocal. Thus, we see increased youth movements all over the world demanding self-determination, such as the massive gathering in Hong Kong known as #OccupyCentral. We also saw clear signs of generational fracturing in the recent Scottish independence referendum, which I discussed in the post, Fear and Loathing in Scotland – Why the NO’s Won and Lessons Learned from the Vote, in which I noted:

The NO vote was entirely secured by overwhelming support from those aged above 55. In fact, the “better together” camp failed to win any of the age groups below 55 years of age. For the 65+ crowd it was simply a blowout. 73% of them voted NO. So in a nutshell, old people filled with fear blocked independence. Similarly, fearful old people bailed out the banks in the U.S. several years ago, putting a nail in the coffin of the middle class and the youth generally. See what I am getting at here?

The youth in Scotland are well aware of why they lost the right to self-rule. They know it was their parents and grandparents that put the nail in the coffin. They will not forget this, and resentment over issues such as this, which will increasingly spilt along generational lines, will be a key feature of the decades to come.

While many investors and corporations are focused on what rich baby boomers want, I think this will ultimately be a misplaced strategy. Once the millennials take over politically, it won’t matter so much what the boomers want. It is much more important to understand the drivers of millennial wants. To understand that, we need to focus squarely on the bail-out period and everything that has happened since, because this is the period in which millennials started coming into their own and noticed the heaping pile of societal and economic shit that has been handed down to them by their predecessors.

Of course, none of this has to do with individual relationships between children and their parents. I have the most loving, supportive and wonderful parents imaginable and they would both be categorized as “baby boomers.” Rather, it has to do with how entire generations collectively act upon their own self-interests, and how I see that becoming an enormous clash between retiring boomers and millennials going forward. Just as the average citizen had no idea of the economic warfare being waged against them for years by the oligarchs until recently, so too have millennials been blind to how screwed they are until recently.

While many people have accurately described the financial crisis bailouts as the rich and powerful saving themselves from their own financial destruction, there was another very important undercurrent at play. This consists of the baby boomers as a generation making the decision to pile on an incredible amount of public debt in order to protect their portfolios as retirement loomed in the not too distant future. Millennials still hold minuscule political power and it’s 2014. Six years ago the group had essentially no voice. So their economic future was sacrificed with little protest.

We know that baby boomers love their stocks and bonds. So with the “non-violent extremist” policy of the Federal Reserve to transfer the nation’s wealth from the middle class to the already very wealthy, the super rich have transformed themselves into oligarchs, and many the baby boomers are now embarking on one last misallocation of capital spree before retirement. Enter “car condos.”

Bloomberg reported on the latest phenomenon earlier this week. Essentially, baby boomers with a love of cars and some extra cash burning a hole in their pockets, are joining an “accelerating trend” that consists of spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on luxury garages for their cars. We learn that: