Category Archive: 5.) Charles Hugh Smith

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Why Is the Cost of Living so Unaffordable?

2017-03-03

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2017-03-03

US Health care 1960-2010
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.

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Virtue-Signaling the Decline of the Empire

2017-02-28

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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...

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There’s a Difference: Fake News and Junk News

2017-02-25

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2017-02-25

U.S. Unemployment Rate 1950 - 2017
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.

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The Problem with Gold-Backed Currencies

2017-02-23

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2017-02-23

China is debt breakdown
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.

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The Criminalization of Financial Independence

2017-02-22

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2017-02-22

Wage GDP 1950 - 2016
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.

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

2017-02-17

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2017-02-17

Government Pie
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.

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

2017-02-14

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2017-02-14

U.S. Healthcare System
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...

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The Colonization of Local-Business Main Street by Corporate America

2017-02-09

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2017-02-09

Corporate Profits After Tax 1950 - 2016
This is what our mode of production optimizes: ugliness, debt-serfdom, and servitude to politically dominant corporations.

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

2017-02-08

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2017-02-08

Top Spending from 1990 to 2012
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?

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Expropriation and Impoverishment: “Capitalist” Greece and “Socialist” Venezuela

2017-02-07

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2017-02-07

Greek Debt
Yesterday I noted that not all assets will make it through the inevitable financial re-set. ( Which Assets Are Most Likely to Survive the Inevitable "System Re-Set"?) Those that are easy to expropriate will be expropriated, and those assets vulnerable to soaring taxes, inflation and currency devaluation will also be hollowed out.

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Which Assets Are Most Likely to Survive the Inevitable “System Re-Set”?

2017-02-06

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2017-02-06

Share of Gross Domestic Income: Compensation of employees,
Your skills, knowledge and and social capital will emerge unscathed on the other side of the re-set wormhole. Your financial assets held in centrally controlled institutions will not. Longtime correspondent C.A. recently asked a question every American household should be asking: which assets are most likely to survive the "system re-set" that is now inevitable?

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The Central Banks Face Unwelcome Realities: Their Policies Boosted Wealth Inequality, Failed to Generate “Growth”

2017-02-05

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2017-02-05

U.S. Fed Summary
Rather than be seen to be further enriching the rich, I think central banks will start closing the "free money for financiers" spigots. Take a quick glance at these charts of the Federal Reserve balance sheet and bank credit in the U.S.

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GoldSeek Radio – Feb 3, 2017 [CHARLES HUGH SMITH & JIM ROGERS] weekly

2017-02-04

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GoldSeek Radio’s Chris Waltzek talks to Charles Hugh Smith from Of Two Minds http://www.oftwominds.com/blog.html and to Famed investor Jim Rogers http://www.jimrogers.com/ http://www.goldseek.com/ http://radio.goldseek.com/

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What Would a Labor-Centered Economy Look Like?

2017-02-04

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2017-02-04

Wealth Pyramid 2015
How about moving the power to create money from the apex of the pyramid down to its lowest level? Let's spend a moment deconstructing the word "capitalism." Note it contains the word Capital. So far so good. Obviously the key concept here is capital. So what is "capital"? It turns out there are multiple kinds of capital. The most familiar kinds are tangible: cash, orchards, factories, water rights, tools, and so on.

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GSR interviews CHARLES HUGH SMITH – Feb 2, 2017 Nugget

2017-02-03

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GoldSeek Radio’s Chris Waltzek talks to Charles Hugh Smith from Of Two Minds http://www.oftwominds.com/blog.html http://www.goldseek.com/ http://radio.goldseek.com/

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Why Our System Is Broken: Cheap Credit Is King

2017-02-02

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2017-02-02

Global Bond Market
You want to fix the economic system, reduce political bribery and reduce rising income inequality? Shut off the cheap unlimited credit spigot to banks, financiers and corporations. Cheap credit--newly issued money that can be borrowed at low rates of interest--is presented as the savior of our economic system, but in reality, it's why our system is broken.

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The Collapse of the Left

2017-01-23

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2017-01-23

Shares of Gross Domestic Income
The Left is not just in disarray--it is in complete collapse because the working class has awakened to the Left's betrayal and abandonment of the working class in favor of building personal wealth and power. The source of the angry angst rippling through the Democratic Party's progressive camp is not President Trump--it's the complete collapse of the Left globally. To understand this collapse, we turn (once again) to Marx's profound understanding...

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25 Years of Neocon-Neoliberalism: Great for the Top 5 percent, A Disaster for Everyone Else

2017-01-22

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2017-01-22

The global wealth pyramid
It cannot be merely coincidental that the incomes and wealth of the top 5% have pulled away from the stagnating 95% in the 25 years dominated by neocon-neoliberalism. One unexamined narrative I keep hearing is: "OK, so neocon-neoliberalism was less than ideal, but Trump could be much worse." Let's start by asking: would Syrian civilians agree with this assessment?

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The Central Bankers Are Going To Shutoff The Spigot And The Economy Will Rollover:Charles Hugh

2017-01-21

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Today’s Guest: Charles Hugh Smith Websites: Of Two Minds http://www.oftwominds.com http://charleshughsmith.blogspot.com/ Books: All of his books can be found on his website. Why Our Status Quo Failed and Is Beyond Reform Get a Job, Build a Real Career… Why Things Are Falling Apart and What We Can Do About It A Radically Beneficial World Most …

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Will Our Grandchildren Wonder Why We Didn’t Build a Renewable Power Grid When It Was Still Affordable?

2017-01-16

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2017-01-16

Total Primary Energy Consumption
Anyone seeking clarity on the energy picture a decade or two out is to be forgiven for finding a thoroughly confusing divide. On the one hand, we have reassuring projections from the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) that assume current production of fossil fuels will remain steady for decades to come.

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