Category Archive: 5.) Charles Hugh Smith

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

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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Charles Hugh Smith on the Terminally Ill Economy

Http://financialrepressionauthority.com/2021/04/22/the-roundtable-insight-charles-hugh-smith-on-the-terminally-ill-economy/

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

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

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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What’s Taboo? Everything Except Greed

OK, now I get it. Take a couple tabs of Euphorestra and Hopium, and stick to talking about making money in the market. Greed won't offend anyone. So I started to tell my buddy about my new screenplay idea: "There's a global pandemic, and when they rush a bunch of vaccines to market, then...."

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The Middle Class Has Finally Been Suckered into the Casino

The Fed's casino isn't just rigged; it's criminally unstable. The decay of America's middle class has been well documented and many commentators have explored the causal factors. The bottom line is that this decay isn't random; the income of the middle class isn't going to suddenly increase at 15 times the growth rate of the income of the top 0.1%. (see chart below) The income of the top 0.1% grew 15 times faster than the incomes of the bottom 90%...

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The “Helicopter Parent” Fed and the Fatal Crash of Risk

All the risks generated by gambling with trillions of borrowed and leveraged dollars didn't actually vanish; they were transferred by the Fed to the entire system. The Federal Reserve is the nation's Helicopter Parent, saving everyone from the consequences of their actions.

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Is a Cultural Revolution Brewing in America?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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?

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

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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