2021 In 21 Numbers
Peter C. Earle
– January 20, 2022
AIER >> Daily Economy >> Government >> Free Markets >> Financial Markets >> Crisis



In 2021, we saw the unwinding of a number of policies and practices put in place in 2020, as well as the reversal of certain trends. Even as some states cast off lockdowns, compulsory masking, and other pandemic policies, others lifted and reapplied stringent measures time and time again. Even in the last weeks of the year there remained some policymakers acting as if it were February 2020. Political rifts in American society seem as deep and divisive as they’ve been in the living memory.

Inflation is back, the current administration is being pilloried in polls, transportation snarls are everywhere, Russian troops are poised to invade a neighboring country, and in retrospect 2021 looks more and more like 1979.

Here, in my sole estimation, are 21 noteworthy data points–prices, percentages, dates and other forms of quantitative information–that highlight or exemplify certain developments in 2021, the second year of the pandemic.

1.4%
The year began with the Bureau of Labor Statistics January 2021 US CPI (Urban Consumers Index, YoY) reading coming in at 1.4 percent (below consensus estimates of 1.5 percent) on February 10, 2021.


(Source: Bloomberg Finance, LP)

680 Percent
The publicly traded stock of GameStop, the video game retailer, increased by this amount in January of 2021. Despite questionable financials, groups of retail traders coordinated a short squeeze which caught many hedge funds in the low-liquidity stock by surprise. While the media played up egalitarian angles, on both the long and short side the event exemplified the distortion of sound risk management following policy-induced market volatility and effectively zero interest rates.


(Source: Bloomberg Finance, LP)
27, 40, 78, or 100
By various accounts the Shiba Inu coin increased by one of these amounts–in millions of percent–in 2021 before collapsing in price. At one point an $8,000 investment became worth several billion dollars…if a counterparty could be found to sell to.

160.72 Percent-- excerpt, rest at link above --