Category Archive: 5.) Charles Hugh Smith

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Dear Self-Proclaimed “Progressives”: as Apologists for the Neocon-Neoliberal Empire, You Are as Evil as the Empire You’ve Enabled

2017-01-15

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2017-01-15

Federal Government Support
Dear Self-Proclaimed "Progressive": I love you, man, but it has become necessary to intervene in your self-destruction. Your ideological blinders and apologies for the Establishment's Neocon-Neoliberal Empire are not just destroying your credibility, they're destroying the nation and everywhere the Empire intervenes.

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What’s Truly Progressive?

2017-01-14

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2017-01-14

The New Normal
What's progressive? Pushing power, agency, skills, capital and solutions down to the individual, household, community, enterprise, town and city levels and focusing on doing more with much less.

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The Eight Forces That Are Pressuring Profits

2017-01-13

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2017-01-13

Spending by the top 5% pulls away from the 95%
If there is any economic assumption that goes unquestioned, it's the notion that profits will remain robust for the foreseeable future. This assumption ignores the tidal forces that are now flowing against profits. Any discussion of corporate profits must start by noting the astonishing rise in U.S. corporate profits since the heyday of the late 1990s dot-com boom. From $800 billion to $2.4 trillion in a few years is not just extraordinary--it's...

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Why Don’t the U.S. Dollar and Bitcoin Drop to Their Tangible Value, i.e. Zero?

2017-01-09

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2017-01-09

Bitcoin January 2016 - January 2017
I have covered the many reasons why the U.S. dollar (USD) has strengthened in dozens of posts over the past 5 years, (Could the U.S. Dollar Rise 50%?, January 12, 2011), and I described the positive dynamics of bitcoin last summer in An Everyman's Guide to Understanding Cryptocurrencies (June 13, 2016), back when bitcoin was under $600.

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Why Profits Are Faltering

2017-01-08

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2017-01-08

National Income: Corporate Profits
Profits are faltering for structural reasons that are not easily resolved. The bedrock assumption of the Bull market is that corporate profits will keep rising indefinitely. Hiccups are allowed, but current stock market valuations are implicitly based on profits expanding.

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We Can Only Afford One, So Choose Wisely: Social Security/Medicare, Cartel Cronyism or Inflation (a.k.a. Central Banking)

2017-01-07

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2017-01-07

U.S. Healthcare System, Health Expenditure, Life Expenctancy
Here's the problem with central banks seeking higher inflation: costs go up but wages don't. It's easy to quantify the annual cost of Social Security/Medicare, and not so easy to calculate the cost of Cartel Cronyism and Central Bank-created inflation.Cartel cronyism is a hidden tax on the entire economy, as is Central Bank-created inflation.

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Prosperity = Abundant Work + Low Cost of Living

2017-01-06

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2017-01-06

Net Annual Change in the Number of Firms
If we seek a coherent context for the new year, we would do well to start with the foundations of widespread prosperity. While the economy is a vast, complex machine, the sources of widespread prosperity are not that complicated: abundant work and a low cost of living.

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Fragmentation and the De-Optimization of Centralization

2017-01-05

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2017-01-05

US Healthcare System
Many observers decry the loss of national coherence and purpose, and the increasing fragmentation of the populace into "tribes" with their own loyalties, value systems and priorities. These observers look back on the national unity of World War II as the ideal social standard: everyone pitching in, with shared purpose and sacrifice. (Never mind the war killed tens of millions of people, including over 400,000 Americans.)

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Why I’m Hopeful

2017-01-02

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2017-01-02

santa2010
Readers often ask me to post something hopeful, and I understand why: doom-and-gloom gets tiresome. Human beings need hope just as they need oxygen, and the destruction of the Status Quo via over-reach and internal contradictions doesn't leave much to be happy about.

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Ungovernable Nation, Ungovernable Economy

2017-01-01

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2017-01-01

Wealth distribution since 1917
Yesterday I described the conditions that render the U.S. ungovernable. Here is a chart of why the U.S. economy will also be ungovernable. Longtime readers are acquainted with the S-curve model of expansion, maturity, stagnation and decline.

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What Triggers Collapse?

2017-01-01

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2017-01-01

A variety of forces will disrupt or obsolete existing modes of production and the social order. Though no one can foretell the future, it is self-evident that the status quo—dependent as it is on cheap oil and fast-expanding debt—is unsustainable. So what will trigger the collapse of the status quo, and what lies beyond when the current arrangements break down?  Can we predict how-when-where with any accuracy? All prediction is based on...

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Will Tax Cuts and More Federal Borrowing/Spending Fix What’s Broken?

2016-12-31

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2016-12-31

Wages & Salaries as perfent of GDP, energy crisis, financialization boom, internet boom, housing boom
Charles Hugh Smith combines the best graphs on the declining wage share of GDP in this post. He answers the question if the tax cuts and more federal borrowing and spending can solve what is broken in the U.S. economy.

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When Did Our Elites Become Self-Serving Parasites?

2016-12-31

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2016-12-31

When did our financial and political elites become self-serving parasites? Some will answer that elites have always been self-serving parasites; as tempting as it may be to offer a blanket denunciation of elites, this overlooks the eras in which elites rose to meet existential crises.

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Fake News, Mass Hysteria and Induced Insanity

2016-12-30

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2016-12-30

Obesity Among US Adults Ages 20-74
We've heard a lot about "fake news" from those whose master narratives are threatened by alternative sources and analyses. We've heard less about the master narratives being threatened.

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A Tale of Two Housing Markets: Hot and Not So Hot

2016-12-29

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2016-12-29

GDP Count
If we had to guess which areas will likely experience the smallest declines in prices and recover the soonest, which markets would you bet on?

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Grab-Bag of Resolutions for 2017

2016-12-28

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2016-12-28

Bitcoin One-Year Chart
Here's a grab-bag of resolutions with something for just about every persuasion. I resolve to never utter or write the word "Trump" in 2017. (Good luck with that...)

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Crisis of Meaning = Crisis of Work

2016-12-27

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2016-12-27

Real Average Hourly Wages
Allow me to connect two apparently unconnected dots. Dot #1: The last sugar plantation in Hawaii is closing down, ending more than a century of plantation life in the 50th state.

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When Assets (Such as Real Estate) Become Liabilities

2016-12-27

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2016-12-27

Equity in Real Estate
It will be the middle class that accepted the notion that "real estate is the foundation of family wealth" that will be stripmined by higher taxes on immobile assets such as real estate.

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The Washington Post: Useful-Idiot Shills for a Failed, Frantic Status Quo That Has Lost Control of the Narrative

2016-12-25

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2016-12-25

US Federal Reserve System
Don't you think it fair and reasonable that anyone accusing me of being a shill for Russian propaganda ought to read my ten books in their entirety and identify the sections that support their slanderous accusation?

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The Burrito Index: Consumer Prices Have Soared 160 percent Since 2001

2016-12-25

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2016-12-25

Personal Consumption Expenditures
In our household, we measure inflation with the Burrito Index: How much has the cost of a regular burrito at our favorite taco truck gone up? Since we keep detailed records of expenses (a necessity if you’re a self-employed free-lance writer).

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