Globalization and Imperial Pretensions have been decaying for years; now the tide has turned definitively against them. The Covid-19 pandemic didn’t cause the demise of globalization and Imperial Pretensions; it merely pushed the rickety structur…
The global economy and financial system are both running on the last toxic fumes of financialization and globalization. For two generations, globalization and financialization have been the two engines of global growth and soaring assets. Globalization…
According to the conventional economic forecast, interest rates will stay near-zero essentially forever due to slow growth. And since growth is slow, inflation will also remain neutral. This forecast is little more than an extension of the trends of the past…
One chart defines the 21st century economy and thus its socio-political system: the chart of soaring wealth/income inequality. This chart doesn’t show a modest widening in the gap between the super-wealthy (top 1/10th of 1%) and everyone else: there is…
The Achilles Heel of our socio-economic system is the secular stagnation of earned income, i.e. wages and salaries. Stagnating wages undermine every aspect of our economy: consumption, credit, taxation and perhaps most importantly, the unspoken social contract that the benefits of productivity and…
OK, so our collective eyes start glazing over when we see Marx and Orwell in the subject line, but refill your beverage and stay with me on this. We’re going to explore the premise that what’s called “socialism”–yes, Scandinavian-style socialism…
I presented this chart of rising wealth inequality a number of times over the past year. Do you notice something peculiar about the inflection points in the 1980s? Correspondent W.S. noted that the inflection point for the top .1% (late…
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: And here’s the current weekly chart of the USD: Note…
When did our financial and political elites become self-serving parasites? Some will answer that elites have always been self-serving parasites; as tempting as it may be to offer a blanket denunciation of elites, this overlooks the eras in which elites…
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…
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…
By now, we all know what’s happening in Venezuela: hyperinflation, empty stores, a regime in denial. The Trajectory of Venezuelan Hyperinflation Looks Frighteningly Familiar… (Zero Hedge) My contacts in Venezuela tell me that merely posting the black market exchange rate…
All the media chatter about work disappearing due to automation fails to draw the critical distinction between useful but unpaid work and profitable work.Since value (and profits/wages) flow to what’s scarce, what matters is not the decline of useful work–there’s…
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…
The majority of American households feel poorer because they are poorer. Real (i.e. adjusted for inflation) median household income has declined for decades, and income gains are concentrated in the top 5%: Even more devastating, wages’ share of GDP has…