Tag Archives: The United States

Can the current iteration of global capitalism be reformed, or is it poised to be replaced by some other mode of production? Judging by the mainstream media, the most pressing problems facing capitalism are 1) income inequality, the basis of Thomas Piketty’s bestseller Capital in the Twenty First Century, and 2) the failure of laissez-faire markets to regulate their excesses, a common critique encapsulated by Paul...

Perhaps the masses have (finally!) reached the point where the pain of maintaining the status quo now exceeds that of breaking it. A remarkably diverse array of “explanations” of Donald Trump’s presidential election victory have been aired, representing both the conventional political spectrum and well beyond. Let’s start with the conventional mainstream media “explanations”: #1: Trump was elected by intolerant...

So where will mobile capital flow in an environment of rising socio-political risk, a multi-year USD uptrend and a dearth of safe, liquid markets? On October 3rd I asked Is the U.S. Dollar Set to Soar? It seems the answer was yes. Here’s the weekly chart of the USD I posted on October 3rd: US Dollar Index - Cash SettleUS Dollar Index - Cash Settle - Click to enlarge And here’s the current weekly chart of the...

Combine identity politics with political correctness, and the New Nobility/Oligarchy can laugh their way to the bank while their pawn-serfs fight over how many politically correct angels can dance on the head of a pin. I have long held that our economy is, stripped of propaganda, nothing but an updated version of feudalism, i.e. neofeudal: a vast class of precarious laborers (i.e. precariats–precarious proletariats)...

Credentials are increasingly in over-supply; problem-solving skills are scarce. How do we create value in an economy that is increasingly dependent on knowledge? The answer is complicated by the reality that knowledge is increasingly digital and “unownable” and therefore almost free. Financialization as a substitute for creating value has run its course. The crony-capitalist answer is always the same, of...

Can we be honest and say that many of the reductions in value, quantity and quality are actually instances of fraud? Yesterday, I showed how Consumer Prices Have Soared 160% Since 2001 for everything from burritos to healthcare. This enormous loss of purchasing power is not reflected in the official measure of inflation, which claims inflation is subdued (1% or so annually). But price inflation doesn’t necessarily...

Reshoring the entire supply chain so it can be trusted is the low-cost solution once you add up the total lifecycle cost of a hopelessly counterfeit global supply chain. There are two basic arguments against bringing manufacturing that was transferred overseas (offshored) back to America (reshoring): 1. It’s too costly 2. The supply chain is now in China/Asia and it’s not possible to source the parts needed to bring...

In this war of the rising and fading elites, there is no common ground or incentive to compromise. Historian Michael Grant identified profound political disunity in the ruling elite as a key cause of the dissolution of the Roman Empire. Grant described this dynamic in his excellent account The Fall of the Roman Empire. The chapter titles of the book illuminate the complex causes of profound political disunity in the...

So when the protected class of well-paid institutional “progressives” speak darkly of “reversing 40 years of social progress,” what they’re really saying is we’re terrified that the bottom 95% might be waking up to our Great Con of identity politics and political correctness. To understand the Great Con of political correctness, we must first grasp the decline of the working class (self-described as “the middle...

Perceptions may well change when the global illusions of solvency and “growth” collapse in a heap. The list of pundits jostling for air time to add their two cents to discussions of hot-button issues such as immigration is endless. The airwaves and social media are overflowing with people wanting to comment on hot-button social issues, but when it comes to the the one truly critical dynamic that will shape the...