Category Archive: 5.) Charles Hugh Smith

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Is a Cultural Revolution Brewing in America?

2021-04-13

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2021-04-13

The lesson of China's Cultural Revolution in my view is that once the lid blows off, everything that was linear (predictable) goes non-linear (unpredictable). There is a whiff of unease in the air as beneath the cheery veneer of free money for almost everyone, inequality and polarization are rapidly consuming what's left of common ground in America.

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What’s Changed and What Hasn’t in a Tumultuous Year

2021-04-05

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2021-04-05

Inequality is America's Monster Id, and we're continuing to fuel its future rampage daily. What's changed and what hasn't in the past year? What hasn't changed is easy: 1. Wealth / income inequality is still increasing. (see chart #1 below) 2. Wages / labor's share of the economy is still plummeting as financial speculation's share has soared. (see chart #2 below)

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Our “Wealth”: Cloud Castles in the Sky

2021-04-04

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2021-04-04

Buyers know there will always be a greater fool willing to pay more for an over-valued asset because the Fed has promised us it will always be the greater fool. I realize nobody wants to hear that most of their "wealth" is nothing more than wispy Cloud Castles in the Sky that will dissipate in the faintest zephyr, but there it is: that which was conjured out of thin air will return to thin air.

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The UFO/Fed Connection

2021-04-02

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2021-04-02

M2 Money Stock, 1960-2020
Perhaps the aliens' keen interest in Earth's central bank magic and its potential for destruction results from a wager. You've probably noticed the recent uptick in UFO sightings and video recordings from aircraft of the extraordinary flight paths of these unidentified objects.

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Health, Wealth and What Kills Most of Us

2021-03-29

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2021-03-29

If health is wealth, and it most certainly is the highest form of wealth, then we would be well-served to take charge of our health-wealth in terms of what behaviors we can sustainably modify.

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Stimulus Addiction Disorder: The Debt-Disposable Earnings Pyramid

2021-03-16

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2021-03-16

The Debt - Disposable Earnings Pyramid
One glance at this chart explains why the status quo is locked on "run to fail" and will implode in a spectacular collapse of the unsustainable debt super-nova.. For those who suspect the status quo is unsustainable but aren't quite sure why, I've prepared a simple chart that explains the financial precariousness many sense.

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The Cannibalization Is Complete: Only Inedible Zombies Remain

2021-03-13

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2021-03-13

Poor powerless Fed, poor starving cannibals, poor zombies turning to dust. That's the American economy once the curtains are ripped away. Setting aside the fictional flood of zombie movies for a moment, we find the real-world horror is the cannibalization of our economy, a cannibalization that is now complete.

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Too Busy Frontrunning Inflation, Nobody Sees the Deflationary Tsunami

2021-03-08

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2021-03-08

Those looking up from their "free fish!" frolicking will see the tsunami too late to save themselves. It's an amazing sight to see the water recede from the bay, and watch the crowd frolic in the shallows, scooping up the flopping fish. In this case, the crowd doing the "so easy to catch, why not grab as much as we can?" scooping is frontrunning inflation, the universally expected result of the Great Reflation Trade.

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About That +6.8 percent GDP Forecast: Remember That GDP = Waste

2021-03-02

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2021-03-02

Any economy stupid enough to rely on the insane distortions of GDP "growth" as its primary measure will richly deserve a Darwin Award when it inevitably collapses in a putrid heap of squandered resources and capital.

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What “Normal” Are We Returning To? The Depression Nobody Dares Acknowledge

2021-03-01

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2021-03-01

Perhaps we need an honest national dialog about declining expectations, rising inequality, social depression and the failure of the status quo. Even as the chirpy happy-talk of a return to normal floods the airwaves, what nobody dares acknowledge is that "normal" for a rising number of Americans is the social depression of downward mobility and social defeat.

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Oil and Debt: Why Our Financial System Is Unsustainable

2021-02-25

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2021-02-25

Primary energy consumption by source, 1965-2018
How much energy, water and food will the "money" created out of thin air in the future buy? Finance is often cloaked in arcane terminology and math, but the one dynamic that governs the future is actually very simple.

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What Poisoned America?

2021-02-20

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2021-02-20

America's financial system is nothing more than a toxic waste dump of speculation, fraud, collusion, corruption and rampant profiteering. What Poisoned America?

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The Green Market – Episode 1: Charles Hugh Smith, Julian Morris and Martí Jiménez-Mausbach

2021-02-16

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This weeks host, Richard Bonugli, CEO of Cedargold, talks with Charles Hugh Smith (OfTwoMinds.com), Julian Morris (Senior Fellow at Reason Foundation), and Martí Jiménez-Mausbach (Head of Research at the Ostrom Institute) on the works of Hayek, Elinor Ostrom and whether local and decentralised economies can promote Market Environmentalism to the masses, who are looking to find a sustainable solution to the problems of climate change, without...

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Gains Are Unreal, Losses Are Real

2021-02-12

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2021-02-12

Why would anyone sell when further gains are guaranteed? Because the gains are unreal but the losses are real. When markets are soaring and your portfolio is rocketing higher, the gains seem unreal.

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What Collapsed the Middle Class?

2021-02-11

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2021-02-11

The middle class has already collapsed, but thanks to debt and bubbles, this reality has been temporarily cloaked. What collapsed the middle class? In many ways the answer echoes an Agatha Christie mystery: rather than there being one guilty party, a number of suspects participated in the collapse of the middle class.

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The Top 10percent Is Doing Just Fine, The Middle Class Is Dying on the Vine

2021-02-06

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2021-02-06

Please study these charts as a means of understanding the inevitability of economic stagnation and a revolt of the decapitalized middle class.

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Our Fragile, Brittle Stock Market

2021-02-03

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2021-02-03

This heavily managed 'market structure' is far from equilibrium and extremely prone to instability.

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Silver Swans, Maginot Lines and the Unforeseen Risks of Collapse

2021-02-01

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2021-02-01

Our Nobility's assessment of risk and their war-gaming of vulnerabilities are fatally deficient. Many people have heard of Nassim Taleb's black swan but fewer understand how few events qualify as black swans. Per Wikipedia, a black swan is an unpredictable or unforeseen event, typically one with extreme consequences, an event that is beyond what is normally expected of a situation and has potentially severe consequences.

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The Coming Revolt of the Middle Class

2021-01-28

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2021-01-28

That's how Neofeudal systems collapse: the tax donkeys and debt-serfs finally rebel and start demanding the $50 trillion river of capital take a new course. The Great American Middle Class has stood meekly by while the New Nobility stripmined $50 trillion from the middle and working classes. As this RAND report documents, $50 trillion has been siphoned from labor and the lower 90% of the workforce to the New Nobility and their technocrat...

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The Dangerously Diminishing Returns on Monetary and Fiscal Stimulus

2021-01-21

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2021-01-21

Allow me to translate the risible claims of Jay Powell and Janet Yellen that their stimulus policies haven't boosted wealth inequality to the moon: "Let them eat cake."

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