Tag Archives: 5.) Charles Hugh Smith

Realism must precede optimism or the optimism will collapse as the tsunami of reality comes ashore. It’s time to prepare materially and psychologically for a winter unlike any other in our lifetimes. Here’s the view from 30,000 feet: 1. The stock market and the general zeitgeist of optimism have soared based on expectations that the real-world economy and efforts to suppress Covid would also track a V-shaped recovery. While GDP did make a V-shaped recovery, GDP...

Put another way: the elites have cannibalized the system so thoroughly that there’s nothing left to steal, exploit or cannibalize. The global elites’ techno-fantasy of a completely centralized future, The Great Reset, is addressed as a future project. Too bad it already happened in 2008-09. The lackeys and toadies tasked with spewing the PR are 12 years too late, and so are the critics listening to the PR with foreboding. Simply put, events outran our...

In such a highly polarized, politicized environment, is such a scrupulously objective study even possible? Now that we’ve had the happy-talk about Pfizer’s messenger-RNA (mRNA) vaccine (and noted that Pfizer’s CEO sold the majority of his shares in the company immediately after the happy-talk), let’s dig into messenger-RNA (mRNA) vaccines which are fast approaching regulatory approval. Some people have concluded vaccines are not safe, regardless of their source or...

Asset inflation benefits the super-rich more than anyone else because they own the vast majority of these assets. With the reflation euphoria running full blast, maybe central banks will finally get all that inflation they’ve been pining for. So let’s ask cui bono–who will benefit from inflation? The Super-Rich love inflation and the money-printing that generates it. Longtime correspondent Michael M. explains the dynamic behind billionaires’ adoration of...

So enjoy the GBOAT (greatest bubble of all time) but watch the clock. Sports fans debate who qualifies as GOAT–the greatest of all time: in hoops, Kobe, Jordan, Kareem, Magic; in boxing, Ali, and so forth. What we have today is GBOAT–the greatest bubble of all time That it’s GOAT is beyond doubt, as the charts below reveal. Bubbles have a few unique characteristics which cannot be captured by financial metrics. The most important such characteristic is that...

The core dynamic is ultimately the loss of social cohesion within the ruling elites and in the social order at large. There’s a definite end of days feeling to the euphoria that the world didn’t end on November 3. And what better way to celebrate the victory of what passes for normalcy with a manic stock market rally? It’s as if everyone knows there is no returning to the good old days of a well-oiled Imperial machine chewing through any and all obstacles, and this...

We’re Number One in wealth, income and power inequality, yea for the Fed and the Empire! If we avert our eyes from the electoral battle on the blood-soaked sand of the Coliseum and look behind the screen, we find the powers that matter are not elected: our owned by a few big banks Federal Reserve, run by a handful of technocrats, and the immense National Security State, a.k.a. the Permanent Government. These entities operate the Empire which hosts the electoral...

Regardless of who holds the office, America’s Imperial Project and its Imperial Presidency are due for a grand reckoning. While elections and party politics generate the emotions and headlines, the truly consequential change in American governance has been the ascendancy of the Imperial Presidency over the past 75 years, since the end of World War II. As commander-in-chief of the armed forces, the Constitution grants the President extraordinary but temporary powers...

What the political class and the Financial Nobility don’t yet grasp is that ALICE will never go back to her insecure, low-wage job, ever. Meet ALICE: Asset Limited, Income Constrained, Employed, at least she was employed until the pandemic presented impossible choices between taking care of her children and their education, and her aging parents, and keeping her demanding, low-wage job. Though it doesn’t fit in with the cute mythology of “capitalism” that...

For all these reasons, the risks of systemic collapse are much higher than commonly anticipated. There’s an irony in discussing risk: since we all have an instinctive reaction to visible risk, we think we understand it. But alas, we don’t, especially when the risk is invisible and systemic. We even misjudge extremely visible risk. People routinely die rushing to save someone who foolishly waded into fast-moving water a few yards above a waterfall. The rescue is...