Tag Archives: The United States

If the world’s economies still need central bank life support to survive, they aren’t healthy–they’re barely clinging to life. The “recovery”/Bull Market is in its 10th year, and yet central banks are still tiptoeing around as if the tiniest misstep will cause the whole shebang to shatter: what are they so afraid of? The cognitive dissonance / crazy-making is off the charts: On the one hand, central banks are still...

Currencies don’t melt down randomly. This is only the first stage of a complete re-ordering of the global financial system. Take a look at the Shanghai Stock Market (China) and tell me what you see: Shanghai Stock Exchange Composite Index - Click to enlarge A complete meltdown, right? More specifically, a four-month battle to cling to the key technical support of the 200-week moving average (the red line). Once...

The only possible output of this system is extortion as a way of life. As the accompanying chart shows, productivity in the U.S. has been declining since the early 2000s. This trend mystifies economists, as the tremendous investments in software, robotics, networks and mobile computing would be expected to boost productivity, as these tools enable every individual who knows how to use them to produce more value. One...

Combine financialization, neoliberalism and moral bankruptcy, and you end up with predatory, parasitic elites. How did our financial and political elites become predatory parasites? Some will answer that elites have always been predatory parasites; as tempting as it may be to offer a blanket denunciation of elites, this overlooks the eras in which elites rose to meet existential crises.Following in Ancient Rome’s...

Here is the result of America’s neofeudalism: soaring wealth and income inequality. Let’s spin the time machine back to the late Middle Ages, at the height of feudalism, and imagine we’re trying to get a boatload of goods to the nearest city to sell. As we drift down the river, we’re constantly being stopped and charged a fee for transiting one small fiefdom after another. When we finally reach the city, there’s an...

At this particular juncture eight months into 2018, the only thing that will help is abrupt and serious acceleration. On this side of May 29, it is way past time for it to get real. The global economy either synchronizes in a major, unambiguous breakout or markets retrench even more. That’s been the basis of this thing from Day 1; or, more accurately, Day 3.01. Reflation #3 wasn’t really any different in type from...

These charts reflect a linear system that is wobbling into the first stages of non-linear destabilization. The widespread presumption is the U.S. is wealthy beyond words, and will remain so as far as the eye can see: wealthy enough to fund trillion-dollar weapons systems, trillion-dollar endless wars, multi-trillion dollar Medicare for all, multi-trillion dollar Universal Basic Income, and so on, in an endless profusion...

[embedded content] Economic thoughts and analysis from Alhambra Investments CEO Joe Calhoun. Related posts: In Next Crisis, Gold Won’t Drop Like 2008, Report 19 August 2018 FX Daily, August 17: Dollar Limps into the Weekend Monthly Macro Monitor – August 2018 FX Daily, August 14: Brief Respite but Little Relief Global Asset Allocation Update –...

If you want to preserve your sanity and avoid unhappy derangement, turn off all corporate and social media from now to Thanksgiving. Since elections are extremely profitable for traditional media / social media corporations, your sanity will gleefully be sacrificed in the upcoming election–if you are gullible enough to watch the “news” and tune into social media.Elections are extremely profitable because candidates...

Americans are spending more on filling up. A lot more. According the Census Bureau, retail sales at gasoline stations had increased by nearly 20% year-over-year (unadjusted) in both May and June 2018. In the latest figures for July, released today, gasoline station sales were up by more than 21%. The last time they surged this much was September 2011, also the last time oil prices were having this big of an effect on...