Author: Charles Hugh Smith

So ride your bubble of choice up–stocks, bonds, housing, bat guano, take your pick–but it’s best to keep your thumb on the sell button. One person’s bubble is another person’s “fair market value.” What is clearly an outrageously overvalued asset perched at nosebleed levels of central bank fueled speculative euphoria is to the owner an asset at “fair market value.” But beneath the euphoric confidence that valuations can only drift higher forever and ever is the latent fear that something could stick a pin in “my bubble” — that is, whatever bubblicious asset we happen to own and treasure as … Continue reading →

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What’s left unsaid is much of the upper middle class is prospering due to privileged positions that are increasingly at risk of disruption. What does it take to be upper middle class? According to one analyst, the answer is at least $100,000 a year for a family of three. The Growing Size and Incomes of the Upper Middle Class (Urban Institute). The paper claims the upper middle class has grown from 12.9% of the population in 1979 to 29.4% in 2014–in essence, the shrinkage of the “middle class” is not just from households dropping down the ladder but millions of … Continue reading →

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The only solution for the surplus of workers with law degrees is a massive, permanent reduction in the issuance of new law graduates. America is in the opening stages of a massive surplus of over-credentialed workers. The default setting for 50 years has been: if you want a secure upper-middle class salary, get a law degree, MBA, PhD or other graduate-level professional degree. The massive surplus is now apparent in J.D.s (law degrees) and PhDs. The writing is already on the wall: there aren’t enough jobs for law school graduates, and this scarcity of high-paying legal jobs will only increase going forward. … Continue reading →

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Leaders face a no-win dilemma: any change, of course, will crash the system, but maintaining the current course will also crash the system. The end-state of unsustainable systems is a collapse. Though collapse may appear to be sudden and chaotic, we can discern key structures that guide the processes of collapse. Though the subject is complex enough to justify an entire shelf of books, these six dynamics are sufficient to illuminate the inevitable collapse of the status quo. 1. Doing more of what has failed spectacularly. The leaders of the status quo inevitably keep doing more of what worked in … Continue reading →

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The only “growth” we’re experiencing are the financial cancers of systemic risk and financialization’s soaring wealth/income inequality. The Keynesian gods have failed, and as a result, we’re in the eye of a global financial hurricane. The Keynesian god of growth has failed. The Keynesian god of borrowing from the future to fund today’s consumption has failed. The Keynesian god of monetary stimulus / financialization has failed. Every major central bank and state worships these Keynesian idols: 1. Growth. (Never mind the cost or what kind of growth–all growth is good, even the financial equivalent of aggressive cancer). 2. Borrowing from … Continue reading →

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The full consequences of the food/illness/health care system take decades to manifest. That America is in the throes of a systemic health crisis can no longer be denied. According to the U.S. Department of Health And Human Services, more than two-thirds (68.8 percent) of adults are overweight or obese.  (Overweight is typically defined as a body-mass index (BMI) of 25 or higher. A BMI of 24.9 is not exactly featherweight; I would have to add 30 pounds to reach a BMI of 24.9. ) The health risks of being overweight or obese include: type 2 diabetes heart disease high blood … Continue reading →

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Fraud as a way of life caters an extravagant banquet of consequences. This can’t be said politely: the entire status quo in America is a fraud. The financial system is a fraud. The political system is a fraud. National Defense is a fraud. The healthcare system is a fraud. Higher education is a fraud. The mainstream corporate media is a fraud. Culture–from high to pop–is a fraud. Need I go on? We have come to accept fraud as standard operating practice in America, to the detriment of everything that was once worthy. why is this so? One reason, which I … Continue reading →

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Today’s foodie culture is characterized by End of the Empire over-the-top excess. We are constantly hectored to eat well, but what does this mean?Does it mean to eat more like wealthy elites, or to eat healthier food? Actually, these two are equivalent: the Aristocracy eats much healthier than the bottom 95%, most of whom are gaining weight and acquiring the resulting chronic illnesses: The World Is Getting Fatter and No One Knows How to Stop It . It’s not by chance that the Chinese political Elites maintain organic farms to grow the food they consume, nor is it chance that … Continue reading →

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Technologies such as the blockchain are enabling alternative ways of creating and distributing money outside central banks and states. If we don’t change the way money is created and distributed, we will never change anything. This is the core message of my book A Radically Beneficial World: Automation, Technology, and Creating Jobs for All. The Panama Papers offer damning proof of this: increasing concentrations of wealth and power that are free of any constraint (such as taxes) is not just the consequence of centralized money and state power–this inequality is the only possible output of centralized money and state power. … Continue reading →

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The cartels and state organs are frantically trying to co-opt, outlaw, corral or control this disruptive technology. To say that the future of money is blockchain-based crypto-currencies and payment platforms is to state the obvious nowadays. If this wasn’t the case, then why are Goldman Sachs et al. (i.e. the global too big to fail banks) rushing to patent their own proprietary versions of blockchain technologies? Why are banks investing heavily in companies that are trying to establish a global blockchain platform for banks? The reason is that banks understand their core reason to exist is threatened by peer-to-peer, decentralized … Continue reading →

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A system that piles debt on students in exchange for a marginal or even zero-return on their investment is morally and financially bankrupt. Every once in a while you run across an insider’s narrative of a corrupt, morally bankrupt sector that absolutely nails the sector’s terminal rot. Here is that nails-it narrative for higher education: Pass, Fail: An inside look at the retail scam known as the modern university. Here are excerpts of the article, which was published in Canada but is equally applicable to higher education in the U.S.: A university degree, after all, is a credential crucial for … Continue reading →

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In the age of automation, what’s scarce are problem-solving skills. Readers responded positively to my recent essay on the emerging economy and jobs: A Teachable Moment: to the Young Person Who Complained About Her Job/Pay at Yelp and Was Promptly Fired Many young people are stuck in the purgatory of minimum wage and/or part-time jobs: that raises the question: how do you get out of minimum-wage purgatory? As I point out in my book on jobs and careers in the new economy, Get a Job, Build a Real Career and Defy a Bewildering Economy, issuing 500,000 MBAs does not automatically create jobs for … Continue reading →

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The core belief of the Establishment is the central state should run everything. If you’re an Establishment insider, the mainstream media will give you plenty of column inches and airtime to label Donald Trump a “dangerous” fascist: for example, Democratic insider Robert Reich’s fear-mongering frenzy Donald Trump is a 21st century American fascist, in which Reich conveniently overlooks constitutional limits on any president, “fascist” or not. In effect, Reich is announcing the Constitution is dead and powerless to limit the President. Well, if that’s the problem, then why not attack the real problem, which is the Imperial Presidency? Why not? … Continue reading →

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Could it be that America’s ruling classes, its Imperial state and the Federal Reserve, no longer rule their own destiny? America’s smug ruling classes are supremely confident: they feel no fear, no caution, and exhibit no prudence. I outlined the five ruling classes in America’s Nine Classes: The New Class Hierarchy. The Deep State is confident that its Imperial toady Hillary Clinton will win the election, beating the Upstart Crow, paving a smooth path to unhindered Imperial entanglements around the world. Hillary never saw an Imperial entanglement she didn’t like, and her track record of abysmal failure doesn’t faze her. … Continue reading →

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If you cap the volcano, eventually the pressure beneath rises to the point that the cap gets blown off in spectacular fashion. That the dramatic upheavals of war, pestilence and environmental collapse can trigger social disorder and revolution is well-established. Indeed, this dynamic can be viewed as the standard model of social disorder/revolution: a large-scale crisis—often a bolt-from-the-blue externality—upends the status quo. Another model identifies warring elites and imperial meddling as a source of revolution: a new elite forcibly replaces the current elite (known colloquially as meet the new boss, same as the old boss) or a dominant nation-state/empire arranges … Continue reading →

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