Category Archive: 5.) Charles Hugh Smith

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We Need a Social Revolution

2017-08-25

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2017-08-25

Corporate Profits After Tax
In the conventional view, there are two kinds of revolutions: political and technological. Political revolutions may be peaceful or violent, and technological revolutions may transform civilizations gradually or rather abruptly—for example, revolutionary advances in the technology of warfare.

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Why We’re Doomed: Our Economy’s Toxic Inequality

2017-08-20

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2017-08-20

Fruit of Financialization
Why are we doomed? Those consuming over-amped "news" feeds may be tempted to answer the culture wars, nuclear war with North Korea or the Trump Presidency. The one guaranteed source of doom is our broken financial system, which is visible in this chart of income inequality from the New York Times: Our Broken Economy, in One Simple Chart.

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Are We Already in Recession?

2017-08-16

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2017-08-16

U.S. Employment Change, 1970 - 2016
How shocked would you be if it was announced that the U.S. had just entered a recession, that is, a period in which gross domestic product (GDP) declines (when adjusted for inflation) for two or more quarters? Would you really be surprised to discover that the eight-year long "recovery," the weakest on record, had finally rolled over into recession?

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What the Mainstream Doesn’t Get about Bitcoin

2017-08-13

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2017-08-13

One-year chart of Bitcoin
The real demand for bitcoin will not be known until a global financial crisis guts confidence in central banks and politicized capital controls. I've been writing about cryptocurrencies and bitcoin for many years. For example: Could Bitcoin Become a Global Reserve Currency? (November 7, 2013) I am an interested observer, not an expert. As an observer, it seems to me that the mainstream--media, financial punditry, etc.--as a generality don't really...

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Is Another Oil Head-Fake Brewing?

2017-08-09

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2017-08-09

Crude Oil, Apr 2016 - Jul 2017
Over the past decade I've addressed what I call Head-Fakes in the cost of oil/fossil fuel: even though we know the cost of extracting and processing oil will rise over time as the easy-to-get oil is depleted, oil occasionally plummets to such low prices that we're fooled into thinking it will remain cheap for a long time to come.

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Why We’re So Risk-Averse: “We Can’t Take That Chance”

2017-08-05

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2017-08-05

Debt Cost Of Living, 1959 - 2016
If our faith in the future and our resilience is near-zero, then we can't take any chances. You've probably noticed how risk-averse Hollywood has become: the big summer movies are all extensions of existing franchises--mixing up the superheroes in new combinations, or remaking hit films from the past--all safe bets.

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The Two Charts That Dictate the Future of the Economy

2017-07-27

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2017-07-27

US Average Household Income, 1965 - 2017
The stock market, bond yields and statistical measures of the economy can be gamed, manipulated and massaged by authorities, but the real economy cannot. This is espcially true for the core drivers of the economy, real (adjusted for inflation) household income and real disposable household income, i.e. the real income remaining after debt service (interest and principal), rent, healthcare co-payments and insurance and other essential living expenses.

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There Is Only One Empire: Finance

2017-07-25

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2017-07-25

China Debt - Breakdown, 2002 - 2016
There's an entire sub-industry in journalism devoted to the idea that China is poised to replace the U.S. as the "global empire" / hegemon. This notion of global empire being something like a baton that gets passed from nation-state to nation-state is seriously misleading, in my view, for this reason:

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The Inevitability Of DeGrowth

2017-07-14

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2017-07-14

Wages and Salaries as Percent of GDP
Debt-dependent consumption in a world in which wages stagnate for the bottom 90% and energy costs increase as demand outstrips supply is a system with only one possible end-point: collapse. Even though we don't know precisely how the future will unfold, we know a few things: Of the 7.5 billion humans on the planet, virtually every individual wants to enjoy a high-energy consumption “middle-class” lifestyle.

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We Need a New American (Social) Revolution

2017-07-12

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2017-07-12

GDP Energy
The solution is a new decentralized way of living that bypasses the chokepoints of centralized political and financial power. I'm going to tell a story here using charts--a story that leads to one conclusion: we need a New American Social Revolution.

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The Real Cause of the Opioid Epidemic: Scarcity of Jobs and Positive Social Roles

2017-07-08

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2017-07-08

Opioid Deaths
The employment rate for males ages 25-54 has been stairstepping down for 30 years, but it literally fell off a cliff in 2009. We all know there is a scourge of addiction and premature death plaguing the nation, a scourge that is killing thousands and ruining millions of lives: the deaths resulting from the opioid epidemic (largely the result of "legal" synthetic narcotics) are mounting at an alarming rate: We also know that the proximate cause of...

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If We Don’t Change the Way Money Is Created, Rising Inequality and Social Disorder Are Inevitable

2017-07-02

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2017-07-02

Wealth Pyramid
Centrally issued money optimizes inequality, monopoly, cronyism, stagnation and systemic instability. Everyone who wants to reduce wealth and income inequality with more regulations and taxes is missing the key dynamic: central banks' monopoly on creating and issuing money widens wealth inequality, as those with access to newly issued money can always outbid the rest of us to buy the engines of wealth creation.

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Automation’s Destruction of Jobs: You Ain’t Seen Nothing Yet

2017-06-30

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2017-06-30

Labor Force Participation Rate
Automation--networked robotics, software and processes--has already had a major impact on jobs. As this chart from my colleague Gordon T. Long illustrates, the rise of Internet technologies is reflected in the steady, long-term decline of the labor force participation rate-- the percentage of the populace that is actively in the labor market.

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Can We See a Bubble If We’re Inside the Bubble?

2017-06-25

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2017-06-25

Mental Map
If you visit San Francisco, you will find it difficult to walk more than a few blocks in central S.F. without encountering a major construction project. It seems that every decrepit low-rise building in the city has been razed and is being replaced with a gleaming new residential tower.

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The Path to Inflation: “Helicopter Money”

2017-06-06

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2017-06-06

Price Changes, 1996 - 2016
Yet conventional economists are virtually unanimous that deflation is the danger and inflation is a "good thing" we need to spur so servicing existing debt becomes easier for debtors. Due to the deflationary pressures of technology and stagnant wages for the bottom 90%, the consensus sees low inflation as far as the eye can see.

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How Debt-Asset Bubbles Implode: The Supernova Model of Financial Collapse

2017-06-04

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2017-06-04

Venezuelan Bolivar, January 2013 - May 2017
Gravity eventually overpowers financial fakery. When debt-asset bubbles expand at rates far above the expansion of earnings and real-world productive wealth, their collapse is inevitable. The Supernova model of financial collapse is one way to understand this. As I noted yesterday in Will the Crazy Global Debt Bubble Ever End?, I've used the Supernova analogy for years, but didn't properly explain why it illuminates the dynamics of financial...

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Will the Crazy Global Debt Bubble Ever End?

2017-06-03

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2017-06-03

Inflation
We've been playing two games to mask insolvency: one is to pay the costs of rampant debt today by borrowing even more from future earnings, and the second is to create wealth out of thin air via asset bubbles. The two games are connected: asset bubbles require leverage and credit.

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Inflation Isn’t Evenly Distributed: The Protected Are Fine, the Unprotected Are Impoverished Debt-Serfs

2017-06-01

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2017-06-01

US Health Care, 1960 - 2010
The Consumer Price Index (CPI) measure of inflation is bogus on a number of fronts, a reality I've covered a number of times: though the heavily gamed official CPI is under 2% for the past four years, the real rate is 7% to 12%, depending on whether you happen to live in locales with soaring rents/housing and healthcare costs.

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The Keynesian Cult Has Failed: “Emergency” Stimulus Is Now Permanent

2017-05-31

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2017-05-31

Total Public Debt, 1970 - 2017
Can we finally admit that eight years of following the Keynesian coloring-book have not just failed, but failed spectacularly? What do we call a status quo in which & emergency measures" have become permanent props? A failure. The "emergency" responses to the Global Financial Meltdown of 2008-09 are, eight years on, permanent fixtures.

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State of Denial: The Economy No Longer Works As It Did in the Past

2017-05-26

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2017-05-26

U.S. Productivity Growth, 1980 - 2017
If there is one reality that is denied or obscured by the Status Quo, it is that the economy no longer works as it did in the past. This is the fundamental economic context of our current slide into political-social disintegration.

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