Category Archive: 5.) The United States

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

The Japanification of the World

2019-04-06

by

2019-04-06

Japan Government interest payments % of revenue, 1972-2014
Zombification / Japanification is not success; it is only the last desperate defense of a failing, brittle status quo by doing more of what's failed. A recent theme in the financial media is the Japanification of Europe. Japanification refers to a set of economic and financial conditions that have come to characterize Japan's economy over the past 28 years: persistent stagnation and deflation, a low-growth and low-inflation economy, very loose...

Read More »

Are the Rise of Social Media and the Decline of Social Mobility Related?

2019-04-05

by

2019-04-05

Time Spent with Digital Media, 2008-2015
Social media offers hope of achieving higher online social status without having to succeed financially in a winner-take-most economy. I've often addressed the decline of social mobility and the addictive nature of social media, and recently I've entertained the crazy notion that the two dynamics are related. Why Is Social Media So Toxic?

Read More »

Retail Sales In Bad Company, Decouple from Decoupling

2019-04-04

by

2019-04-04

Retail Sales, NSA 2011-2018
In a way, the government shutdown couldn’t have come at a more opportune moment. As workers all throughout the sprawling bureaucracy were furloughed, markets had run into chaos. Even the seemingly invincible stock market was pummeled, a technical bear market emerged on Wall Street as people began to really consider increasingly loud economic risks.

Read More »

The Hidden Cost of Losing Local Mom and Pop Businesses

2019-04-03

by

2019-04-03

American Dynamism in Retreat 1979-2014
What cannot be replaced by corporate chains is neighborhood character and variety. There is much more to this article than first meets the eye: In a Tokyo neighborhood's last sushi restaurant, a sense of loss "Eiraku is the last surviving sushi bar in this cluttered neighborhood of steep cobblestoned hills and cherry trees unseen on most tourist maps of Tokyo.

Read More »

The Fed Guarantees No Recession for 10 Years, Permanent Uptrend for Stocks and Housing

2019-04-01

by

2019-04-01

SPX, future 2003 - 2029
A classified Federal Reserve memo sheds new light on the Fed's confidence in its control of the economy and the stock and housing markets. In effect, the Fed is guaranteeing that there will be no recession for another 10 years, and that stocks and housing will remain in a permanent uptrend.

Read More »

Monthly Macro Monitor – March 2019 (VIDEO)

2019-03-31

by

2019-03-31

Alhambra CEO discusses all the talk about the recent yield curve inversion and how he views it.

Read More »

Apple’s Rotten Core

2019-03-30

by

2019-03-30

Entering commoditized, fiercely competitive low-margin services cannot substitute for the high-margin profits that will be lost as global recession and saturation erode iPhone sales. Apple has always been equally an enterprise and a secular religion. The Apple Faithful do not tolerate heretics or critics, and non-believers "just don't get it."

Read More »

Is the World Becoming Wealthier or Poorer?

2019-03-29

by

2019-03-29

There is nothing intrinsically profitable about either robotics or AI. At the request of colleague/author Douglas Rushkoff (his latest book is Team Human), I'm publishing last week's Musings Report, which was distributed only to subscribers and patrons of the site.) The core assumption of Universal Basic Income (UBI) and other plans to redistribute wealth and income more broadly is that the world is becoming wealthier, and so the pool of income and...

Read More »

When Are We Going to Tackle the For-Profit Monopolies Which Censored RussiaGate Skeptics?

2019-03-27

by

2019-03-27

The Dominance of Google and Facebook
We either take down Facebook and Google and turn them into tightly regulated transparent public utilities available to all or they will destroy what little is left of American democracy. The RussiaGate Narrative has been revealed as a Big Con (a.k.a. Nothing-Burger), but what's dangerously real is the censorship that's being carried out by the for-profit monopolies Facebook and Google on behalf of the status quo's Big Con.

Read More »

The Media, Mueller, the Big Con and the Democratization of Narrative

2019-03-26

by

2019-03-26

Falling for a con is painful. The first reaction is to deny being conned, of course. The second is to blame skeptics for being correct in their skepticism. Here's the fundamental "story" of the Mueller Investigation: elites don't like "the little people" democratizing public narratives. 

Read More »

Politics Has Failed, Now Central Banks Are Failing

2019-03-25

by

2019-03-25

Federal Reserve Banks: Total Assets 2004-2018
With each passing day, we get closer to the shift in the tide that will sweep away this self-serving delusion of the ruling elites like a crumbling sand castle. Those living in revolutionary times are rarely aware of the tumult ahead: in 1766, a mere decade before the Declaration of Independence, virtually no one was calling for American independence.

Read More »

February 2019 PBOC/RMB Update

2019-03-24

by

2019-03-24

China Internal/External 2017-2019
This will serve mostly as an update to what is going on inside the Chinese monetary system. The PBOC’s balance sheet numbers for February 2019 are exactly what we’ve come to expect, ironically confirmed today on the domestic end by the FOMC’s dreaded dovishness. Therefore, rather than rewrite the same commentary for why this continues to happen I’ll just link to prior discussions.

Read More »

Which Nations Will Crumble and Which Few Will Prosper in the Next 25 Years?

2019-03-23

by

2019-03-23

S-Curve of Centralization
Adaptability and flexibility will be the core survival traits going forward. What will separate the many nations that will crumble in the next 25 years and those few that will survive and even prosper while the status quo dissolves around them? As I explain in my recent book Pathfinding our Destiny: Preventing the Final Fall of Our Democratic Republic, the factors that will matter are not necessarily cultural or financial; being hard-working and...

Read More »

Slump, Downturn, Recession; All Add Up To Sideways

2019-03-22

by

2019-03-22

Germany ZEW Financial Market Survey 2007-2019
According to Germany’s Zentrum für Europäische Wirtschaftsforschung, or ZEW, the slump in the country’s economy has now reached its fourteenth month. The institute’s sentiment index has improved in the last two, but only slightly. As of the latest calculation released today, it stands at -3.6.

Read More »

While the Nation Fragments Socially, the Financial Aristocracy Rules Unimpeded

2019-03-21

by

2019-03-21

Soaring Income Inequality
If there is one central irony in American history, it is this: the citizenry that broke free of the chains of British Monarchy, the citizenry that reckoned everyone was equal before the law, the citizenry that vowed never to be ruled by an aristocracy that controlled the government and finance as a means of self-enrichment, is now so distracted by social fragmentation that the citizenry is blind to their servitude to a new and formidably informal...

Read More »

The World Economy’s Industrial Downswing

2019-03-20

by

2019-03-20

Europe Industrial Production, 2013-2019
As economic data for 2019 comes in, the numbers continue to suggest more slowing especially in the goods economy. Perhaps what happened during that October-December window was a soft patch. Even if that was the case, we should still expect second and third order effects to follow along from it.

Read More »

Chart(s) of the Week: Reviewing Curve Warnings

2019-03-19

by

2019-03-19

Eurodollar Futures Curve 2018
Quick review: stocks hit a bit of a rough patch right during the height of inflation hysteria. At the end of January 2018, just as the US unemployment rate had finally achieved the very center of attention, global markets were rocked by instability. Unexpectedly, of course.

Read More »

The Coming Crisis the Fed Can’t Fix: Credit Exhaustion

2019-03-18

by

2019-03-18

All Sectors, Debt Securities and Loans, Liability Level 1960 - 2018
Having fixed the liquidity crisis of 2008-09 and kept a perversely unequal "recovery" staggering forward for a decade, central banks now believe there is no crisis they can't defeat: Liquidity crisis? Flood the global financial system with liquidity. Interest rates above zero? Create trillions out of thin air and use the "free money" to buy bonds. Mortgage and housing markets shaky?

Read More »

Monthly Macro Chart Review – March (VIDEO)

2019-03-17

by

2019-03-17

Alhambra CEO discusses the most important economic reports from the past month.

Read More »

What Sort of “Democracy” Do We Have If Everyone’s Goal Is Maximizing Their Government Swag?

2019-03-15

by

2019-03-15

S-Curve of Centralization
A democratic republic is a government in which power flows from citizens to their elected representatives. The American revolutionaries did not make a big distinction between republic and democracy, for in the context of the late 1700s, the dominant political structure was monarchy, and democracy meant the people have the final say via elections.

Read More »