Tag Archives: 5.) Charles Hugh Smith

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...

Don’t expect healthcare or any other hollowed-out, heavily optimized system to function as it once did. A great many Americans will be shocked when our healthcare systems start failing because they believed the PR that “we have the finest healthcare system in the world.” The ability to deliver the finest care to a few does not translate into an ability to deliver the finest care to the many, nor does it mean the system is robust enough to withstand a tsunami. As I...

The belief that central banks printing currency can “buy/fix” everything that’s broken, lost or scarce is the ultimate in denial, fantasy and magical thinking. Let’s revisit the pandemic projection chart I prepared on February 2, 2020, nine days after authorities publicly acknowledged the Covid virus outbreak in China. Wave 2 shown on the chart is now underway with a vengeance and next up is Global Depression. . This projection was based on two well-known...

All the staging is a means to an end, and everyone in America is nothing more than a means to an end: close the sale so the few can continue exploiting the many. You know how realtors stage a house to increase its marketability: first, they remove all evidence that people actually live there. (Of course a vacant house is ideal for staging because there’s none of the messy real-life stuff to deal with.) All the clutter of everyday life must be moved elsewhere so the...