Category Archive: 5.) Charles Hugh Smith

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Whistleblowers Torpedo Facebook and Pfizer: Who’s Next?

2021-11-07

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2021-11-07

If America's total dependence on corporate profits and stock market/housing bubbles is just fine because the bubbles just keep inflating, there's nothing left but rot.

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Revenge of the Real World

2021-11-04

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2021-11-04

The status quo response would be amusing if the consequences weren't so dire. Rather than stare at empty shelves, you have two options for distraction: you can don a virtual-reality headset and cavort with dolphins in the metaverse, or you can trade various forms of phantom wealth that always go up (happy happy!) because the Fed.

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Will China Pop the Global Everything Bubble? Yes

2021-11-02

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2021-11-02

The line of dominoes that is already toppling extends around the entire global economy and financial system. Plan accordingly. That China faces structural problems is well-recognized.

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Santa’s Revenge: Everyone Front-Running My Rally, You Get Nothing

2021-10-30

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2021-10-30

Santa is generally a jolly fellow, but that doesn't mean he doesn't take pleasure in meting our well-deserved punishment to the greedy.

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Doing 90 MPH on Deadman’s Curve: A Few Thoughts on Risk

2021-10-26

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2021-10-26

When the wreck is recovered, witnesses will wonder why they took such heedless, foolish risks. You're in the back seat wedged between tipsy revelers, the driver is drunk and heading into Deadman's Curve at 90 miles per hour. Nobody's worried because the driver has never crashed.

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America Is Now a Kleptocrapocracy

2021-10-23

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2021-10-23

I hope everyone here is hungry because the banquet of consequences is being served. I've coined a new portmanteau word to describe America's descent: kleptocrapocracy, a union of kleptocracy (a nation ruled by kleptocrats) and crapocracy, a nation drowning in a moral sewer of rampant self-interest in which the focus is cloaking all the skims, scams, rackets and bezzles in some virtuous-sounding garb, a nation choking on low-quality junk ceaselessly...

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Software Ate the World and Now Has Indigestion

2021-10-19

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2021-10-19

As for all those automated systems we have to navigate--do any of them work so well that those profiting from them actually use them? Of course not.

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Everything Solid Melts into Air

2021-10-16

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2021-10-16

That the neofeudal lords and their lackeys offer the debt-serfs "choices" of forced labor would be comic if the results weren't so tragic. We know we're close to the moment when Everything Solid Melts into Air when extraordinary breakdowns are treated as ordinary and the "news" quickly reverts to gossip.

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America’s Bottom 50 percent Have Nowhere To Go But Down

2021-10-14

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2021-10-14

One might anticipate that the bottom 50%'s meager share of the nation's exploding wealth would have increased as smartly as the wealth of the billionaires, but alas, no.

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Why Shortages Are Permanent: Global Supply Shortages Make Fantastic Financial Sense

2021-10-08

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2021-10-08

The era of abundance was only a short-lived artifact of the initial boost phase of globalization and financialization. Global corporations didn't go to all the effort to establish quasi-monopolies and cartels for our convenience--they did it to ensure reliably large profits from control and scarcity.

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Risk Was Never Low, It Was Only Hidden

2021-10-05

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2021-10-05

The vast majority of market participants are about as ready for a semi-random "volatility event" as the dinosaurs were for the meteor strike that doomed them to oblivion.

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The Market Crash Nobody Thinks Is Possible Is Coming

2021-10-01

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2021-10-01

The banquet of consequences is being served, and risk-off crashes are, like revenge, best served cold. The ideal setup for a crash is a consensus that a crash is impossible--in other words, just like the present: sure, there are carefully measured murmurings about a "correction" but nobody with anything to lose in the way of public credibility is calling for an honest-to-goodness crash, a real crash, not a wimpy, limp-wristed dip that will...

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Are We Really So “Rich”? A New Way of Defining Wealth

2021-09-27

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2021-09-27

What if our commoditized, financialized definition of wealth reflects a staggering poverty of culture, spirit, wisdom, practicality and common sense? The conventional definition of wealth is solely financial: ownership of money and assets. The assumption is that money can buy anything the owner desires: power, access, land, shelter, energy, transport and if not love, then a facsimile of caring.

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What’s Really Going On in China

2021-09-24

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2021-09-24

Losses will be taken and sacrifices enforced on those who don't understand the Chinese state will no longer absorb the losses of speculative excess. Let's start by stipulating that no one outside President Xi's inner circle really knows what's going on in China, and so my comments here are systemic observations, not claims of insider knowledge.

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America 2021: Inequality is Now Baked In

2021-09-23

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2021-09-23

This complete capture of all avenues of regulation and governance can only end one way, a kind of hyper-stagflation. Zeus Y. and I go way back, and he has always had a knack for summarizing just how insane, disconnected from reality, manipulative and exploitive the status quo narrative has become.

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Now That the American Dream Is Reserved for the Wealthy, The Smart Crowd Is Opting Out

2021-09-22

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2021-09-22

The already-wealthy and their minions are unprepared for the Smart Crowd opting out. Clueless economists are wringing their hands about the labor shortage without looking at the underlying causes, one of which is painfully obvious: the American economy now only works for the top 10%; the American Dream of turning labor into capital is now reserved for the already-wealthy.

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Ministry of Manipulation: No Wonder Trust and Credibility Have Been Lost

2021-09-20

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2021-09-20

Now that every financial game in America has been rigged to benefit the few at the expense of the many, trust and credibility has evaporated like an ice cube on a summer day in Death Valley.

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The Illusion of Getting Rich While Producing Nothing

2021-09-16

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2021-09-16

By incentivizing speculation and corruption, reducing the rewards for productive work and sucking wages dry with inflation, America has greased the skids to collapse.

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The U.S. Economy In a Nutshell: When Critical Parts Are On “Indefinite Back Order,” the Machine Grinds to a Halt

2021-09-15

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2021-09-15

A great many essential components in America are on 'indefinite back order', including the lifestyle of endless globally sourced goodies at low, low prices. Setting aside the "transitory inflation" parlor game for a moment, let's look at what happens when critical parts are unavailable for whatever reason, for example, they're on back order or indefinite back order, i.e. the supplier has no visibility on when the parts will be available.

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The Banality of (Financial) Evil

2021-09-13

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2021-09-13

The financialized American economy and State are now totally dependent on a steady flow of lies and propaganda for their very survival. Were the truth told, the status quo would collapse in a putrid heap.

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