CHARLES HUGH SMITH – Whole Political Severe Is Highly Polarized Now

2020-08-03

Few appear willing to follow the probabilities of a future in which a vaccine cannot possibly be the "magic cure" everyone wants. Let’s attempt the impossible and set aside all preconceptions we might have about a vaccine for Covid-19, and think it through somewhat dispassionately.

2020-08-10

A fully financialized, totally debt and speculation-dependent economy is terminal once leverage and debt stop expanding exponentially. We all know the movie scene in which the character is wounded but dismisses it as no big deal, and then lurches into the closing sequence where we discover the wound was not inconsequential, it was mortal, and the character expires.

2020-08-29

Class wars are the inevitable result of an economic system in which ‘anything goes if you’re rich enough and winners take most’. The traditional class war has been waged between wage-earners (who sell their labor) and their employers (owners of capital and the means of production).

2020-09-23

After a bout of inflation and “socialism-light”, we could end up with even more extreme inequality when the whole rotten structure collapses.

2020-09-24

The “take this job and shove it” exodus is silently gathering momentum. The exodus out of cities is getting a lot of attention, but the exodus that will unravel our economic and social orders is getting zero attention: the exodus from work. Like the exodus from troubled urban cores, the exodus from work has long-term, complex causes that the pandemic has accelerated.

2020-10-16

Better not to risk any radical evolution that might fail, and so failure is thus assured. When times are good, modest reforms are all that’s needed to maintain the ship’s course. By "good times," I mean eras of rising prosperity which generate bigger budgets, profits, tax revenues, paychecks, etc., eras characterized by high levels of stability and predictability.

2020-11-24

What we need is not a return to the corrupt, tottering kleptocracy of 2019, but a re-democratization of capital, agency and money. I’m hopeful about 2021, and no, it’s not because of the vaccines or the end of lockdowns or anything related to Covid. The status quo is cheering the fantasy that we’ll soon return to the debt-soaked glory days of 2019 when everything was peachy.

2021-01-06

Here’s looking at you, Federal Reserve–thanks for perfecting ‘legalized looting’ and neofeudalism in America.