Category Archive: 5.) Charles Hugh Smith

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America’s Social Order is Unraveling

2021-06-28

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2021-06-28

Inequality Income, 1980 - 2020
What kind of nation boasts a record-high stock market and an unraveling social order? Answer: a failed nation, a nation that has substituted artifice for realism for far too long, a nation that now depends on illusory phantoms of capital, prosperity and democracy to prop up a crumbling facade of "wealth" that the populace now understands is largely in the hands of a few families and corporations, most of which pay little to support the citizenry...

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It Always Ends The Same Way: Crisis, Crash, Collapse

2021-06-24

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2021-06-24

Dysfunctional Markets
One of the most under-appreciated investment insights is courtesy of Mike Tyson: "Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the mouth." At this moment in history, the plan of most market participants is to place their full faith and trust in the status quo's ability to keep asset prices lofting ever higher, essentially forever.

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Front-Running the Crash

2021-06-21

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2021-06-21

We have a fine-sounding word for running with the herd: momentum. When the herd is running, those who buy what the herd is buying and sell what the herd is selling are trading momentum, which sounds so much more professional and high-brow than the noisy, dusty image of large mammals (and their trading machines) mindlessly running with the herd.

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Seven Things Nobody Talks About that Will Eventually Matter–A Lot

2021-06-14

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2021-06-14

Diminishing Returns
Perhaps it shouldn't surprise us that everything that will eventually matter is ignored until it does matter--but by then it's too late. Here's a short list to start the discussion: 1. The Federal Reserve has transformed the American populace into a nation of dismayingly over-confident gamblers.

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The Sources of Rip-Your-Face-Off Inflation Few Dare Discuss

2021-06-09

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2021-06-09

Job Openings, 2006 - 2021
Inflation will be transitory, blah-blah-blah--I beg to differ, for these reasons. There are numerous structural sources of inflation, which I define as prices rise while the quality and quantity of goods and services remain the same or diminish.

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Post-Pandemic Metamorphosis: Never Going Back

2021-06-07

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2021-06-07

People caught on that the returns on the frenzied hamster wheel of "normal" have been diminishing for decades, but everyone was too busy to notice. The superficial "return to normal" narrative focuses solely on first order effects: now that people can dispense with masks and social distancing, they are resuming their pre-pandemic spending orgy with a vengeance, which augurs great profits for Corporate America and higher tax revenues.

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(Not) Living Large on Social Security

2021-06-03

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2021-06-03

Social Security, 1960 - 2020
How many retired workers are getting less than $1,000 per month in Social Security benefits? The question came up and I was curious enough to find the answer, and download the data into an Excel spreadsheet which I saved as a

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Increasingly Chaotic Volatility Ahead–The New Normal Few Think Possible

2021-05-31

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2021-05-31

The standard debate about the future of the economy is: which will we get, high inflation or a deflationary collapse of defaults and asset bubbles popping? The debate goes round and round in widening circles of complexity as analysts delve into every nuance of the debate.

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Systemic Risks Abound

2021-05-27

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2021-05-27

Summary of Recent Warning Re Intermediate Trend In Equities
For the past 22 years, every time the stock market whimpered, wheezed or whined, the Federal Reserve rushed to soothe the spoiled crybaby. There are two consequential results of the Fed as savior: The Fed has perfected moral hazard. Organic (i.e. non-manipulated) market forces have been extinguished.

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FOMO Is Loco

2021-05-26

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2021-05-26

We can also posit a general rule that those who inherit wealth and succumb to FOMO are eventually less wealthy while those who are wealthy and take a pass on FOMO / hoarding at the top of the manic frenzy increase their wealth.

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Fed to Treasury Dealers and Congress: We Can’t Count On You, We’re Taking Charge

2021-05-25

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2021-05-25

Total Assets: Wednesday Level, 2005-2021
The Fed sees itself as trapped by the incompetence and greed of the other players and by its own policy extremes that were little more than expedient "saves" of a system that is unraveling due to its fragility and brittleness.

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Sickcare is the Knife in the Heart of Employment–and the Economy

2021-05-18

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2021-05-18

Health Expenditures per Capita, 2005-2021
We need to change the incentives of the entire system, not just healthcare, but if we don't start with healthcare, that financial cancer will drag us into national insolvency all by itself. American Healthcare is a growth industry in the same way cancer is a growth industry: both keep growing until they kill the host, which in the case of healthcare is the U.S. economy. While a great many individuals in the system care about improving the...

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Why Wage Inflation Will Accelerate

2021-05-15

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2021-05-15

Wages Share Income, 1960 - 2020
The Fed has created trillions out of thin air to boost the speculative wealth of Wall Street, but it can't print experienced workers willing to work for low wages. The Federal Reserve is reassuring us daily that inflation is temporary, but allow me to assure you that wage inflation is just getting started and will accelerate rapidly.

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The ‘Take This Job and Shove It’ Recession

2021-05-13

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2021-05-13

Wages Share Income, 1960 - 2020
So hey there Corporate America, the Fed and your neofeudal cronies: take this job and shove it. This time it really is different, but not in the way the Wall Street shucksters are claiming.

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Here’s How ‘Everything Bubbles’ Pop

2021-05-10

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2021-05-10

Dot-Com Bubble and Pop, 1994 - 2006
At long last, the moment you've been hoping for has arrived: you're pitching your screenplay to a producer. Your agent is cautious but you're confident nobody else has concocted a story as outlandish as yours. Your agent gives you the nod and you're off and running:

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Hey Fed, Explain Again How Making Billionaires Richer Creates Jobs

2021-05-08

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2021-05-08

Despite their hollow bleatings about 'doing all we can to achieve full employment', the Fed's policies has been Kryptonite to employment, labor and the bottom 90%--and most especially to the bottom 50%, the working poor that one might imagine most deserve a leg up. As wealth and income inequality soar to new heights thanks to the Federal Reserve's policies of zero interest rates, money-printing and financial stimulus, the Fed says its goal...

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What’s Yours Is Now Mine: America’s Era of Accelerating Expropriation

2021-04-28

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2021-04-28

The takeaway here is obvious: earn as little money as possible and invest your surplus labor in assets that can't be expropriated. Expropriation: dispossessing the populace of property and property rights, via the legal and financial over-reach of monetary and political authorities.

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The Only Way to Get Ahead Now Is Crazy-Risky Speculation

2021-04-23

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2021-04-23

Security Brokers and Dealers, 1960-2020
It's all so pathetic, isn't it? The only way left to get ahead in America is to leverage up the riskiest gambles. It's painfully obvious that the only way left to get ahead in America is crazy-risky speculation, but nobody seems to even notice this stark and stunning reality. Why are people piling into crazy-risky bets on speculative vehicles like Gamestop and Dogecoin?

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If You Don’t See Any Risk, Ask Who Will “Buy the Dip” in a Freefall?

2021-04-20

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2021-04-20

Nobody thinks a euphoric rally could ever go bidless, but as Greenspan belatedly admitted, liquidity is not guaranteed. The current market melt-up is taken as nearly risk-free because the Fed has our back, i.e. the Federal Reserve will intervene long before any market decline does any damage.

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America’s Fatal Synergies

2021-04-19

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2021-04-19

America's financial system and state are themselves the problems, yet neither system is capable of recognizing this or unwinding their fatal synergies. why do some systems/states emerge from crises stronger while similar systems/states collapse?

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