Category Archive: 5.) Charles Hugh Smith

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Our Financial System Is Optimized for Sociopaths and Exploitation

2022-02-25

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2022-02-25

Let's call this financial system what it really is: the MetaPerverse, a conjured world of self-serving cons. We live in a peculiar juncture of history in which truth has been banished as a threat to the maximization of private gain, i.e. the hyper-pursuit of self-interest. Evidence that supports a causal chain has been replaced by cherry-picked data that supports a self-serving narrative: both the evidence and narrative are manufactured to serve...

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Our Leaders Made a Pact with the Devil, and Now the Devil Wants His Due

2022-02-22

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2022-02-22

The unprecedented credit-fueled bubbles in stocks, bonds and real estate are popping, and America's corrupt leaders can only stammer and spew excuses and empty promises. Unbeknownst to most people, America's leadership made a pact with the Devil: rather than face the constraints and injustices of our economic-financial system directly, a reckoning that would require difficult choices and some sacrifice by the ruling financial-political elites,...

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How Empires Die

2022-02-08

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2022-02-08

When the state / empire loses the ability to recognize and solve core problems of security and fairness, it will be replaced by another arrangement that is more adaptable and adept at solving problems. From a systems perspective, nation-states and empires arise when they are superior solutions to security compared to whatever arrangement they replace: feudalism, warlords, tribal confederations, etc.

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Inflation Winners and Losers

2022-01-27

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2022-01-27

The clear winners in inflation are those who require little from global supply chains, the frugal, and those who own their own labor, skills and enterprises. As the case for systemic inflation builds, the question arises: who wins and who loses in an up-cycle of inflation? The general view is that inflation is bad for almost everyone, but this ignores the big winners in an inflationary cycle.

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The Cult of Speculation Is a Cult of Doom

2022-01-25

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2022-01-25

Surely the Fed gods will affirm the cult's most revered articles of faith. But false gods eventually fail, even the Fed. Every once in awhile the zeitgeist sets up an either / or: either the zeitgeist is crazy or I'm crazy. (OK, let's agree I'm crazy; see, it's not that hard to find something to agree on, is it?)

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Politics Is Dead, Here’s What Killed It

2022-01-18

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2022-01-18

Here's "politics" in America now: come with mega-millions or don't even bother to show up. Representational democracy--a.k.a. politics as a solution to social and economic problems--has passed away. It did not die a natural death. Politics developed a cancer very early in life (circa the early 1800s), caused by wealth outweighing public opinion.

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The Real Revolution Is Underway But Nobody Recognizes It

2022-01-15

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2022-01-15

Revolutions have a funny characteristic: they're unpredictable. The general assumption is that revolutions are political. The revolution some foresee in the U.S. is the classic armed insurrection, or a coup or the fragmentation of the nation as states or regions declare their independence from the federal government.

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The Real Threat to Democracy is Corrupting Wealth Inequality

2022-01-11

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2022-01-11

Try to find a developing-world kleptocracy in which the top few collect more than 97% of the income from capital. There aren't any that top the USA, the world's most extreme kleptocracy. We're Number 1. Imagine a town of 1,000 adults and their dependents in which one person holds the vast majority of wealth and political influence. Would that qualify as a democracy?

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Why Don’t We Cut Out the Middleman and Just Elect Pfizer and Merck?

2022-01-10

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2022-01-10

If we no longer have the capacity to distinguish between moral legitimacy and self-serving corruption, then we might as well eliminate the Middleman and vote directly for Pfizer or Merck. There's a fancy word for cutting out the Middleman: disintermediation. Removing intermediaries who take a cut but neither produce nor add value makes perfect sense, reducing costs and increasing efficiency.

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The Economy / Market Look “Healthy” Until They Have a Seizure and Collapse

2022-01-06

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2022-01-06

So one index or asset or another hits a new high, wow, more proof everything is so robust and healthy, we never had it so good--right up to the seizure and collapse.

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What Will Surprise Us in 2022

2022-01-04

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2022-01-04

What seemed so permanent for 13 long years will be revealed as shifting sand and what seemed so real for 13 long years will be revealed as illusion. Magical thinking isn't optimism, it is folly. Predictions are hard, especially about the future, but let's look at what we already know about 2022.

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Watch the Top 5percent – They’re the Key to the Whole Economy

2021-12-26

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2021-12-26

Go ahead and become dependent on asset bubbles and the free spending of the top 5%, and optimize your economy to serve this "growth," but be prepared for the consequences when the costs of this optimization and dependency come due.

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Obsession

2021-12-24

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Obsession composition and first lead guitar by charles hugh smith, rhythm and second lead guitar by Jimi Juju.

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You Owe Me

2021-12-24

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You Owe Me composition, vocals and lead guitar by charles hugh smith, rhythm guitar, bass, drums and recording engineering by Jimi Juju. You tell me that you can't afford the rent the student loan or your truck I don't care about your problems pal just do what it takes to get me the bucks You owe me You owe me and I'm gonna tell you how it's gonna be You say that you did everything you were told Got your degree and a gig Now you lost your job...

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One Chart Traders Might Want to Ponder

2021-12-21

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2021-12-21

But when the Fed's fundamental powerlessness is revealed and the buy-the-dippers have been forced to liquidate, the true meaning of "mild" contagion will become apparent. Since I'd rather not be renditioned to a rat-infested, freezing cell in an unnamed 'stan, I'm circumspect about viruses in general.

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How Vulnerable Is Your Personal Supply Chain?

2021-12-20

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2021-12-20

How vulnerable is your personal supply chain? For the average American, the answer is: very. Americans consider abundance and ready availability as birthrights so basic they're like the air we breathe. The idea that shelves could become bare and stay bare is incomprehensible. yet that is the world we're entering, for a number of complex reasons.

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Smart Enough to Get Rich, Not Smart Enough to Keep It

2021-12-19

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2021-12-19

Are we smart enough to keep our oh-so-easily conjured riches? If we continue to believe that doing more of what's failed spectacularly will deliver permanently expanding riches, then the answer is no.

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Get in Crash Positions

2021-12-13

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2021-12-13

When the market goes bidless, it's too late to preserve capital, never mind all those life-changing gains. Everyone with some gray in their ponytails knows the stock market has ticked every box for a bubble top, so everybody get in crash positions: Let's run through the requirements for a bubble top: 1. Retail investors (i.e. dumb money) are all in and buying the dip with absolute confidence.

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Xi’s Gambit: China at the Crossroads

2021-12-10

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2021-12-10

If Xi's gambit succeeds, China could become a magnet for global capital. If success is only partial or temporary, China may well struggle with the structural excesses that are piling up not just in China but in the entire global economy.

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The Long Cycles Have All Turned: Look Out Below

2021-12-03

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2021-12-03

But alas, humans do not possess god-like powers, they only possess hubris, and so all bubbles pop: the more extreme the bubble, the more devastating the pop. Long cycles operate at such a glacial pace they're easily dismissed as either figments of fevered imagination or this time it's different.

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