Author: Charles Hugh Smith

A vibrant social ecosystem is as essential as the Mediterranean Diet to health and longevity. You might have seen this article The Island Where People Forget to Die a few years ago. I recently re-read this exploration of “blue zones” where people habitually live long, productive lives, and read a companion piece on the “blue zone” author’s discoveries about food and diet: My Dinner With Longevity Expert Dan Buettner. What really struck me in this re-reading was the centrality of purposeful work and a robust social ecosystem in the lives of the productive/active elderly. This is in stark contrast to … Continue reading →

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Memo to the D.C. Beltway/mainstream media apologists and propagandists: the 25 million Invisible Americans are no longer buying your shuck-and-jive con job. For the bottom, 90% of American households, the “prosperity” of the “recovery” since 2009 is a bright shining lie. The phrase is from a history of the Vietnam War, A Bright Shining Lie: John Paul Vann and America in Vietnam. Just as the Vietnam War was built on lies, propaganda, PR and rigged statistics(the infamous body counts–civilians killed as “collateral damage” counted as “enemy combatants”), so too is the “recovery” nothing but a pathetic tissue of PR, propaganda, … Continue reading →

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The best way to restart investment (and thus employment opportunities) is to make the U.S. a magnet for productive capital rather than a graveyard of tax-avoidance strategies. Donald Trump has made trade agreements a central issue in this presidential election, declaring trade treaties such as the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) as unfair and subject to cancellation or renegotiation. Setting aside the issue of whether presidents can cancel trade treaties via executive orders, let’s look at the underlying issue: the erosion of manufacturing and entry-level job opportunities that lead to middle-class security and pay. The question then becomes: what … Continue reading →

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I consider it self-evident that we are in the third and final stage of self-serving Imperial decay. Though Edward Luttwak’s The Grand Strategy of the Roman Empire: From the First Century CE to the Third is not specifically on the rise and fall of empires, it does sketch out the three stages of Empire. Here is the current context of the discussion of Imperial life cycles: the U.S. defense budget is roughly the same size as the rest of the world’s defense spending combined: Luttwak describes the first stage of expansion thusly: “With brutal simplicity, it might be said that with the … Continue reading →

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The MSM has forsaken its duty in a democracy and is a disgrace to investigative, unbiased journalism. The mainstream media bet the farm on Hillary Clinton, confident that their dismissal of every sceptical inquiry as a “conspiracy” would guarantee her victory. It now appears they have lost their bet. Let’s do something radical and be honest for a moment: the mainstream media has smoothed the path to Hillary’s coronation in countless often subtle ways. MSM “Opinion” hacks have unleashed unrelenting attacks on legitimate inquiries with accusations of “conspiracy” and obsequious kowtowing headlines such as “Can we please stop talking about … Continue reading →

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The truth is we have more in common with people of different ethnicities and religions than we can possibly know in a totalitarian system drenched in the divisive propaganda of identity politics. Identity politics are the core of every totalitarian state. Identity politics were the beating heart of Nazism, and the core strategy of the USSR’s liquidation of kulaks and other groups identified as enemies of the state. Identity politics eliminate the potential for class consciousness that crosses ethnic and religious boundaries. As noted yesterday in Our Impoverished, Pathological Society, “race is not a significant determinant of social polarization in … Continue reading →

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How did Byzantium endure for 1,000 years after the fall of Rome? One of my reading projects over the past year is to learn more about empires:how they are established, why they endure and why they crumble. To this end, I’ve recently read seven books on a wide variety of empires. The literature on empires is vast, so this is only a tiny slice of the available books. Nonetheless, I think these 7 titles offer a fairly comprehensive spectrum: How Rome Fell: Death of a Superpower (Adrian Goldsworthy) War and Peace and War: The Rise and Fall of Empires (Peter … Continue reading →

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Those without value-creating human/social capital will be mired in a low/minimum wage environment that will make it difficult to escape debt-serfdom. Let’s start with the sobering reality that the Millennial generation faces economic challenges that are unique to this era: sky-high student loan debt, soaring costs for basics such as rent and healthcare, a stagnant neo feudal crony-cartel economy and an intellectually bankrupt status quo in thrall to failed ideologies: Keynesian Cargo Cult central banking, outdated models of capital and labor and an unthinking worship of debt-funded centralization as the “solution” to all social and economic ills. The potential solutions … Continue reading →

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Trump is attractive precisely because the Establishment fears and loathes him because 1) they didn’t pick him and 2) he might upset the neoconservative Empire that the Establishment elites view as their global entitlement. The Establishment is freaking out about Donald Trump for one reason: they didn’t pick him. The Establishment is freaking out because the natural order of things is that we pick the presidential candidates and we run the country to serve ourselves, i.e. the financial-political elites. Donald Trump’s candidacy upsets this neo-feudal natural order, and thus he (and everyone who supports him) is anathema to the Establishment, heretics who must be … Continue reading →

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Maybe Hillary is the Deep State’s shoo-in for president. But I suspect doubts in the Deep State have advanced to active sabotage for the reasons noted below. Few would dispute that Hillary Clinton is the Establishment’s candidate. It’s widely accepted that the Establishment hews to a neoconservative (neo-con) foreign policy that is fully supported by America’s Deep State, i.e. the centers of state power that don’t change as a result of elections. As a result, it’s widely accepted that the Deep State fully supports Hillary Clinton’s bid for the presidency and will move heaven and earth to get her elected. While this is … Continue reading →

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Political resistance to the oligarchy’s financialization skimming operations will eventually cripple central bank giveaways to the financial sector and corporate oligarchs. That inflation and interest rates will remain near zero for a generation is accepted as “obvious” by virtually the entire mainstream media. The reasons for this are equally “obvious”: central banks have the power to suppress interest rates indefinitely by creating money out of thin air and using this new cash to buy bonds in unlimited quantities; and the commoditization/ globalization of labor, capital and production have generated a global backdrop of over-capacity and near-zero pricing power. But suppose … Continue reading →

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The collapse of asset inflation will implode all the fiscal and financial promises based on ever-inflating assets. Yesterday I explained why Revealing the Real Rate of Inflation Would Crash the System. If asset inflation ceases, the net result would be the same: systemic collapse. Why is this so? In effect, central banks and states have masked the devastating stagnation of real income by encouraging households to take on debt to augment declining income and by inflating assets via quantitative easing and lowering interest rates and bond yields to near-zero (or more recently, less than zero). The “wealth” created by asset … Continue reading →

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The grim reality is that real inflation is 7+% per year. This week, I’ve noted that Consumer Prices Have Soared 160% Since 2001while under-the-radar declines in value, quantity and quality are forms of Inflation Hidden in Plain Sight. What would happen if the real rate of inflation was revealed? The entire status quo would immediately implode. Consider the immediate consequences to Social Security, interest rates and the cost of refinancing government debt. Unbiased private-sector efforts to calculate the real rate of inflation have yielded a rate of around 7% to 13% per year, depending on the locale–many multiples of the official … Continue reading →

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The grim reality is that real inflation is 7+% per year. This week, I’ve noted that Consumer Prices Have Soared 160% Since 2001while under-the-radar declines in value, quantity and quality are forms of Inflation Hidden in Plain Sight. What would happen if the real rate of inflation was revealed? The entire status quo would immediately implode. Consider the immediate consequences to Social Security, interest rates and the cost of refinancing government debt. Unbiased private-sector efforts to calculate the real rate of inflation have yielded a rate of around 7% to 13% per year, depending on the locale–many multiples of the official … Continue reading →

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Our real-world experience tells us the official inflation rate doesn’t reflect the actual cost increases of everything from burritos to healthcare. In our household, we measure inflation with the Burrito Index: How much has the cost of a regular burrito at our favorite taco truck gone up? Since we keep detailed records of expenses (a necessity if you’re a self-employed free-lance writer), I can track the real-world inflation of the Burrito Index with great accuracy: the cost of a regular burrito from our local taco truck has gone up from $2.50 in 2001 to $5 in 2010 to $6.50 in … Continue reading →

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