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Tag Archives: charles hugh-smith
Were Trade Wars Inevitable?
Were Trade Wars Inevitable? Trade in which mobile capital is the comparative advantage is a system of Neocolonial exploitation of developing-world nations. Were trade wars inevitable? The answer is yes, due to the imbalances and distortions generated by financialization and central bank stimulus. Gordon Long and I peel the trade-war onion in a new video […]
Why Systems Fail
Why Systems Fail Since failing systems are incapable of structural reform, collapse is the only way forward. Systems fail for a wide range of reasons, but I’d like to focus on two that are easy to understand but hard to pin down. 1. Systems are accretions of structures and modifications laid down over time.Each layer […]
Playing for All the Marbles
Playing for All the Marbles Global Plunge Protection Teams must be ordering take-out food; every night is a long one now. The current stocks/bonds game is for all the marbles, by which I mean the status quo now depends on valuations and interest rates remaining near their current levels for the system to function. If […]
The Problem with a State-Cartel Economy: Prices Rise, Wages Don’t
The Problem with a State-Cartel Economy: Prices Rise, Wages Don’t The vise will tighten until something breaks. It could be the currency, it could be the political status quo, it could be the credit/debt system–or all three. The problem with an economy dominated by state-enforced cartels and quasi-monopolies is that prices rise (since cartels can […]
What If All the Cheap Stuff Goes Away?
What If All the Cheap Stuff Goes Away? Nothing stays the same in dynamic systems, and it’s inevitable that the current glut of low costs / cheap stuff will give way to scarcities that cannot be filled at current low prices. One of the books I just finished reading is The Fate of Rome: Climate, […]
15 Years of War: To Whose Benefit?
15 Years of War: To Whose Benefit? As for Iraq, the implicit gain was supposed to be access to Iraqi oil. Setting aside the 12 years of “no fly zone” air combat operations above Iraq from 1991 to 2003, the U.S. has been at war for almost 17 years in Afghanistan and 15 years in […]
Central Banks Have Killed Free Trade
Central Banks Have Killed Free Trade Defenders and critics of “free trade” and globalization tend to present the issue as either/or: It’s inherently good or bad. In the real world, it’s not that simple. The confusion starts with defining free trade (and by extension, globalization). In the classical definition of free trade espoused by 18th […]
Solutions Only Arise Outside the Status Quo
Solutions Only Arise Outside the Status Quo Solutions are only possible outside these ossified, self-serving centralized hierarchies. Correspondent Dan F. asked me to reprint some posts on solutions to the systemic problems I’ve outlined for years, most recently in How Much Longer Can We Get Away With It? and Checking In on the Four Intersecting […]
Is Profit-Maximizing Data-Mining Undermining Democracy?
Is Profit-Maximizing Data-Mining Undermining Democracy? If targeting political extremes generates the most profit, then that’s what these corporations will pursue. As many of you know, oftwominds.com was falsely labeled propaganda by the propaganda operation known as ProporNot back in 2016. The Washington Postsaw fit to promote ProporNot’s propaganda operation because it aligned with the newspaper’s view […]
How Much Longer Can We Get Away With It?
How Much Longer Can We Get Away With It? Alas, fakery isn’t actually a solution to fiscal/financial crisis.. This chart of “debt securities and loans”–i.e. total debt in the U.S. economy–is also a chart of the creation and distribution of new money, as the issuance of new debt is the mechanism in our financial system for […]
Checking In on the Four Intersecting Cycles
Checking In on the Four Intersecting Cycles If you think this is a robust, resilient, stable system, please check your Ibogaine / Hopium / Delusionol intake. Correspondent James D. recently asked for an update on the four intersecting cycles I’ve been writing about for the past 10 years. Here’s the chart I prepared back in 2008 […]
There is No “Free Trade”–There Is Only the Darwinian Game of Trade
There is No “Free Trade”–There Is Only the Darwinian Game of Trade Rising income and wealth inequality is causally linked to globalization and the expansion of Darwinian trade and capital flows. Stripped of lofty-sounding abstractions such as comparative advantage, trade boils down to four Darwinian goals: 1. Find foreign markets to absorb excess production, i.e. […]
Forget “Free Trade”–It’s All About Capital Flows
Forget “Free Trade”–It’s All About Capital Flows In a world dominated by mobile capital, mobile capital is the comparative advantage. Defenders and critics of “free trade” and globalization tend to present the issue as either/or: it’s inherently good or bad. In the real world, it’s not that simple. The confusion starts with defining free trade […]
Should Facebook, Google and Twitter Be Public Utilities?
Should Facebook, Google and Twitter Be Public Utilities? This opaque corporate censorship amounts to a private-sector Stasi, pursuing an Orwellian world of profits reaped from the censorship and suppression of dissent My longtime friend GFB recently suggested I revisit my position on RussiaGate, the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 US election. I have […]
Never Mind Volatility: Systemic Risk Is Rising
Never Mind Volatility: Systemic Risk Is Rising So who’s holding the hot potato of systemic risk now? Everyone. One of the greatest con jobs of the past 9 years is the status quo’s equivalence of risk and volatility: risk = volatility: so if volatility is low, then risk is low. Wrong: volatility once reflected specific […]
