Category Archive: 5.) Charles Hugh Smith

Filter archive by: Show All Show only Articles Show only Videos

Do the Roots of Rising Inequality Go All the Way Back to the 1980s?

2017-04-02

Unless we change the fundamental structure of the economy so that actually producing goods and services and hiring people is more profitable than playing financial games with phantom assets, the end-game of financialization is financial collapse. I presented this chart of rising wealth inequality a number of times over the past year. Do you notice something peculiar about the inflection points in the 1980s?

Read More »

Forget ObamaCare, RyanCare, and any Future ReformCare-the Healthcare System Is Completely Broken

2017-03-27

by Charles Hugh Smith

2017-03-27

It's time to start planning for what we'll do when the current healthcare system implodes. As with many other complex, opaque systems in the U.S., only those toiling in the murky depths of the healthcare system know just how broken the entire system is.

Read More »

The Deep State’s Dominant Narratives and Authority Are Crumbling

2017-03-26

by Charles Hugh Smith

2017-03-26

This is why the Deep State is fracturing: its narratives no longer align with the evidence. As this chart from Google Trends illustrates, interest in the Deep State has increased dramatically in 2017. The term/topic has clearly moved from the specialist realm to the mainstream. I've been writing about the Deep State, and specifically, the fractures in the Deep State, for years.

Read More »

Central Bankers Are Creating A World Where We Are All Serfs: Charles Hugh Smith

2017-03-25

by Charles Hugh Smith

Today’s Guest: Charles Hugh Smith Websites: Of Two Minds http://www.oftwominds.com Books: Get a Job, Build a Real Career… Why Things Are Falling Apart and What We Can Do About It A Radically Beneficial World http://amzn.com/1517160960 Most of artwork that are included with these videos have been created by X22 Report and they are used as …

Read More »

Solutions Abound–on the Local Level

2017-03-20

by Charles Hugh Smith

2017-03-20

Rather than bemoan the inevitable failure of centralized "fixes," let's turn our attention and efforts to the real solutions: decentralized, networked, localized.Those looking for centralized solutions to healthcare, jobs and other "macro-problems" will suffer inevitable disappointment. The era in which further centralization provided the "solution" has passed: additional centralization (Medicare for All, No Child Left Behind, federal job training,...

Read More »

Now That Everyone’s Been Pushed into Risky Assets…

2017-03-16

by Charles Hugh Smith

2017-03-16

If we had to summarize what's happened in eight years of "recovery," we could start with this: everyone's been pushed into risky assets while being told risk has been transformed from something to avoid (by buying risk-off assets) to something you chase to score essentially guaranteed gains (by buying risk-on assets).

Read More »

Charles Hugh Smith On Inequalities And The Distortions Caused By Central Bank Policies

2017-03-13

by Charles Hugh Smith

FRA is joined by Charles Hugh Smith in discussing income inequality as a result of central bank policies Charles Hugh Smith is a contributing editor to PeakProsperity.com and the proprietor of the popular blog OfTwoMinds.com. He is the author of numerous books, including Why Everything Is Falling Apart: An Unconventional Guide To Investing In Troubled …

Read More »

The Next Domino to Fall: Commercial Real Estate

2017-03-12

by Charles Hugh Smith

2017-03-12

Just as generals prepare to fight the last war, central banks prepare to battle the last financial crisis--which in the present context means a big-bank liquidity meltdown like the one that nearly toppled thr global financial system in 2008-09.

Read More »

Are Central Banks Losing Control?

2017-03-11

by Charles Hugh Smith

2017-03-11

If you want a central banker to choke on his croissant, read him this quote from socio-historian Immanuel Wallerstein: "Countries (have lost the ability) to control what happens to them in the ongoing life of the modern world-system."

Read More »

Interview Questions For Charles Hugh Smith Exclusive March 2017

2017-03-10

by Charles Hugh Smith

Interview Questions For Charles Hugh Smith Exclusive March 2017, Interview Questions For Charles Hugh Smith Exclusive March 2017

Read More »

MACRO ANALYTICS – 03 03 17 – Is Retail CRE The Next Financial Implosion? – w/Charles Hugh Smith

2017-03-05

by Charles Hugh Smith

ABSTRACT: https://matasii.com/is-retail-commercial-real-estate-the-next-financial-implosion/

Read More »

Why Is the Cost of Living so Unaffordable?

2017-03-03

by Charles Hugh Smith

2017-03-03

Strip away the centralized power that protects and funds cartels, and prices would plummet. The mainstream narrative is "the problem is low wages." Actually, the problem is the soaring cost of living. If essentials such as healthcare, housing, higher education and government services were as cheap as they once were, a wage of $10 or $12 an hour would be more than enough to maintain a decent everyday life.

Read More »

Virtue-Signaling the Decline of the Empire

2017-02-28

by Charles Hugh Smith

2017-02-28

Top 1% US Pre-Tax Income Share, 1913-2012

Virtue-signaling doesn't signal virtue--it signals decline and collapse. There are many reasons why Imperial Rome declined, but two primary causes that get relatively little attention are moral decay and soaring wealth inequality. The two are of course intimately connected: once the morals of the ruling Elites degrade, the status quo seeks to mask its self-serving rot behind high-minded "virtue-signaling" appeals to past glories and cost-free...

Read More »

There’s a Difference: Fake News and Junk News

2017-02-25

by Charles Hugh Smith

2017-02-25

The mainstream media continues peddling its "fake news" narrative like a desperate pusher whose junkies are dying from his toxic dope. It's slowly dawning on the media-consuming public that the MSM is the primary purveyor of "fake news"-- self-referential narratives that support a blatantly slanted agenda with unsupported accusations and suitably anonymous sources.

Read More »

The Problem with Gold-Backed Currencies

2017-02-23

by Charles Hugh Smith

2017-02-23

Any currency is only truly "backed by gold" if it is convertible to gold. There is something intuitively appealing about the idea of a gold-backed currency --money backed by the tangible value of gold, i.e. "the gold standard." Instead of intrinsically worthless paper money (fiat currency), gold-backed money would have real, enduring value-it would be "hard currency", i.e. sound money, because it would be convertible to gold itself.

Read More »

The Criminalization of Financial Independence

2017-02-22

by Charles Hugh Smith

2017-02-22

Just as the "war on drugs" criminalized and destroyed large swaths of African-American and Latino communities, the "war on cash" will further criminalize the few remaining avenues to financial independence and freedom. The introduction of "entitlement" welfare in the 1960s generated a toxic dependency on the state that institutionalized worklessness, a one-two punch that undermined marriage and family in America's working class of all ethnicities.

Read More »

This Is How the Status Quo Unravels: As the Pie Shrinks, Everybody Demands Their Piece Should Get Bigger

2017-02-17

by Charles Hugh Smith

2017-02-17

The politics of the past 70 years was all about horsetrading who got what share of the growing pie: the "pie" being cheap energy, government revenues and consumption, sales and profits. Horsetrading over a growing pie is basically fun. There's always a little increase left for the losers, so there is a reason for everyone to cooperate in a broad political consensus.

Read More »

Want to Bring Back Jobs? It’s Impossible Unless We Fix these Four Things

2017-02-14

by Charles Hugh Smith

2017-02-14

It's your choice, America--you can keep your cartels and the captured government that enables and protects them, or you can fix what's broken and unaffordable. If there is any goal that might attract support from across the political spectrum, it's creating more fulltime jobs in the U.S. But this laudable goal is dead-on-arrival (DOA) unless we first fix these four things. Why is job growth stagnating? Many point to automation, and yes, that is a...

Read More »

The Colonization of Local-Business Main Street by Corporate America

2017-02-09

by Charles Hugh Smith

2017-02-09

This is what our mode of production optimizes: ugliness, debt-serfdom, and servitude to politically dominant corporations.

Read More »

The Central Banks Pull Back: Now It’s Up to Fiscal Policy to “Save the World”

2017-02-08

by Charles Hugh Smith

2017-02-08

Another problem is the rise of social discord, for reasons that extend beyond the reach of tax reductions and increased infrastructure spending. Have you noticed that the breathless anticipation of the next central bank "save" has diminished? Remember when the financial media was in a tizzy of excitement, speculating on what new central bank expansion would send the global markets higher in paroxysms of risk-on joy?

Read More »