Category Archive: 5.) Charles Hugh Smith

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How States/Empires Collapse in Four Easy Steps

2019-03-14

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2019-03-14

S-Curve of Expansion, Maturation, Stagnation and Collapse
There is a grand, majestic tragedy in the inevitable collapse of once-thriving states and empires: it all seemed so permanent at its peak, so godlike in its power, and then slowly but surely, too many grandiose, unrealistic promises were made to too many elites and constituencies, and then as growth decays to stagnation, the only way to maintain the status quo is to appear to meet all the promises by creating money out of thin air, i.e. debauching...

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Here’s The Problem: The Pie Is Shrinking

2019-03-12

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2019-03-12

S-curve of Rapid Expansion, Stagnation and Decline
Scrape away the churn and distraction and the problem is simple: the pie of prosperity is shrinking, and the "fixes" are failing. The status quo arrangement is based on the endless expansion of "growth" and debt, which is the monetary fuel of more, more, more of everything: money, energy, resources, goods, services, jobs, wealth and income, all of which make up the elixir of prosperity.

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The Source of Killer Inflation: Services

2019-03-11

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2019-03-11

The soaring cost of services is driven by a number of factors. What will the future bring: fire (inflation) or ice (deflation)? The short answer: both, but in very different doses. Goods that are tradeable and exposed to technologically driven commodification will decline in price (deflation) while untradeable services that are difficult to commoditize will increase in price (inflation), generating a self-reinforcing feedback loop of wage-price...

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What If Politics Can’t Fix What’s Broken?

2019-03-09

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2019-03-09

Political Polarization Has Exploded Since 2000
This is the politics of decline and collapse. The unspoken assumption of the modern era is that politics can fix whatever is broken: whatever is broken in society or the economy can be fixed by some political policy or political process-- becoming more inclusionary, seeking non-partisan middle ground, etc.

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The Fed’s “Wealth Effect” Has Enriched the Haves at the Expense of the Young

2019-03-05

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2019-03-05

Households and Nonprofit Organizations 1960-2018
The Fed is the mortal enemy of the young generations, and thus of the nation itself. The wealth effect" generated by rising stock and housing prices has long been a core goal of the Federal Reserve and other central banks. As Lance Roberts noted in his recent commentary So, The Fed Doesn't Target The Market, Eh?

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What Killed the Middle Class?

2019-03-04

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2019-03-04

Wages aren't keeping up
Rounding up the usual suspects won't restore a vibrant middle class. What killed the middle class? The answer may well echo an Agatha Christie mystery: rather than there being one guilty party, it may be that each of the suspects participated in the demise of the middle class.

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The Doomsday Scenario for the Stock and Housing Bubbles

2019-03-01

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2019-03-01

SPX, weekly 1994 - 2019
It was always folly to believe that inflating asset bubbles could solve the structural problems of a post-industrial economy. The Doomsday Scenario for the stock and housing bubbles is simple: the Fed's magic fails. When dropping interest rates to zero and flooding the financial sector with loose money fail to ignite the economy and reflate the deflating bubbles, punters will realize the Fed's magic only worked the first three times: three bubbles...

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Now that Housing Bubble #2 Is Bursting…How Low Will It Go?

2019-02-26

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2019-02-26

Case-Shiller US National Home Price Index, 1990 - 2019
There are two generalities that can be applied to all asset bubbles: 1. Bubbles inflate for longer and reach higher levels than most pre-bubble analysts expected. 2. All bubbles burst, despite mantra-like claims that "this time it's different".

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Homeless Encampments and Luxury Apartments: Our Long Strange Boom

2019-02-23

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2019-02-23

US Median Household Income
It's been a long, strange economic boom since the nadir of the Global Financial Meltdown in 2009. A 10-year long boom that saw the S&P 500 rise from 666 in early 2009 to 2,780 and GDP rise by 43% has been slightly more uneven for most participants.

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Credit Exhaustion Is Global

2019-02-20

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2019-02-20

China and US Assets
Europe is awash in credit exhaustion, and so is China. The signs are everywhere: credit exhaustion is global, and that means the global growth story is over: revenues and profits are all sliding as lending dries up and defaults pile up.

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What Happens When More QE Fails to Reverse the Recession?

2019-02-17

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2019-02-17

All Sectors; Debt Securities and Loans; Liability, Level 1960-2018
The smart money is liquidating assets, paying off debt and moving capital into collateral that isn't impaired by debt or speculative valuations. The Federal Reserve's sudden return to "accommodative" dovishness in response to the stock market's swoon telegraphs its intent to fire up QE once the recession kicks into gear.

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What Caused the Recession of 2019-2021?

2019-02-15

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2019-02-15

Federal Debt Total Public Debt, 1970 - 2018
As I discussed in We're Overdue for a Sell-Everything/No-Fed-Rescue Recession, recessions have a proximate cause and a structural cause. The proximate cause is often a spike in energy costs (1973, 1990) or a financial crisis triggered by excesses of speculation and debt (2000 and 2008) or inflation (1980).

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The Corporate Lemmings Who Rushed into Mobile/Social Media Ads Are Running off the Cliff

2019-02-14

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2019-02-14

Smartphone Addiction
Given that corporations are run by people, and people are social animals that run in herds, it shouldn't surprise us that corporations follow the herd, too. Take the herd move to forming conglomerates in the go-go late 1960s: corporations suddenly started buying companies in completely different sectors in businesses they knew nothing about, because the herd was forming conglomerates--not because it made any business sense but because it was the...

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We’re Overdue for a Sell-Everything/No-Fed-Rescue Recession

2019-02-12

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2019-02-12

Federal government 2005-2015
We're way overdue for a sell-everything recession, one that the Fed will only make worse by pursuing its usual policies of lowering interest rates and goosing easy money. As I noted last week, central banks, like generals, always fight the last war--until the war is lost. 

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2019: The Three Trends That Matter

2019-02-11

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2019-02-11

Look no further than Brexit in Britain, the yellow vests in France and the Deplorables in the U.S. for manifestations of a broken social contract and decaying social order. Among the many trends currently in play, Gordon Long and I discuss three that will matter as 2019 progresses: 2019 Themes (56 minutes).

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Brace for Impact

2019-02-10

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2019-02-10

Spending by the top 5% pulls away from the 95%
As credit-asset bubbles pop, the dominoes start falling. The economy is far more precarious than the surface boom/bubble suggests. A great many households, enterprises and municipalities are in overloaded boats whose gunwales are just a few inches above the water; the slightest wave will swamp and sink them.

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China’s S-Curve of Expansion, Stagnation and Decline

2019-02-07

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2019-02-07

China's S-curve, February 2019
All the policies that worked in the Boost Phase no longer work. Natural and human systems tend to go through stages of expansion, stagnation and decline that follow what's known as the S-Curve. The dynamic isn't difficult to understand: an unfilled ecological niche is suddenly open due to a new adaptation; a bacteria evolves to exploit a new host, etc.

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The Coming Global Financial Crisis: Debt Exhaustion

2019-02-05

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2019-02-05

Debt Securities and Loans 1960-2018
The global economy is way past the point of maximum debt saturation, and so the next stop is debt exhaustion. Just as generals fight the last war, central banks always fight the last financial crisis. The Global Financial Crisis (GFC) of 2008-09 was primarily one of liquidity as markets froze up as a result of the collapse of the highly leveraged subprime mortgage sector that had commoditized fraud (hat tip to Manoj S.) via liar loans and...

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So If Half of Facebook Accounts Are Fake… What Is Facebook Worth?

2019-01-31

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2019-01-31

Smartphone Addiction Tightens Its Global Grip
The social media space is absolutely ripe for a new entrant who demands arduous verification and constantly monitors its user base to eliminate cloned and fake accounts. How many accounts on Facebook are fake? Recent estimates of half could be low. Here's an experiment: open a Facebook account with a name that cannot possibly be anyone else's real name, for example, Johns XQR Citizenry.

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So You Want to Get Rich: Focus on Human Capital

2019-01-30

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2019-01-30

The rich hold assets, the poor have debt
Wealth is flowing to those who earn money from their human capital and enterprise. So you want to get rich: OK, what's the plan? If you ask youngsters how to get rich, many will respond by listing the professions the media focuses on: entertainment, actors/actresses, pro athletes, and maybe a few lionized inventors or CEOs.

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