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The Global Template for Collapse: The Enchanting Charms of Cheap, Easy Credit
The Global Template for Collapse: The Enchanting Charms of Cheap, Easy Credit Cheap, easy credit has created moral hazard and nurtured magical thinking throughout the global economy. According to polls, the majority of Greek citizens want the benefits of membership in the euro/EU and the end of EU-imposed austerity. The idea that these are mutually exclusive […]
Greece, Democracy and Magical Thinking
Greece, Democracy and Magical Thinking Regardless of what the Greek people choose, at least the choice will be theirs, along with the consequences. What is representative democracy but organized bribery on a mass scale?Politicians seeking control of the spigots of state wealth and power promise endless swag to voters. Those who promise the most swag and do […]
Collapse, Part 5: Things Fall Apart
Collapse, Part 5: Things Fall Apart It is impossible to wean an economy that relies on debt and leverage for its “growth” of excessive debt and leverage. As noted earlier in this series, collapse is not an event, it’s a process, a process we experience as things fall apart. The phrase famously appears in William Butler Yeats’ […]
Collapse, Part 4: Loss of Faith in Public Institutions
Collapse, Part 4: Loss of Faith in Public Institutions Public institutions are now devoted to serving their own vested interests or the interests of private financial Elites. Though we may think of collapse in terms of ATMs not working and rampaging mobs, collapse actually starts with the intangible loss of faith in public institutions:elected officials, law enforcement, […]
Collapse Part 3: No Institutional Path to Contraction
Collapse Part 3: No Institutional Path to Contraction Collapse is not an event, it is a process. One poorly understood source of collapse is the lack of pathways to contraction and a reduction of complexity/cost. The only pathway that is clearly marked is the one to expansion–of production, debt, credit, government, income, benefits, costs and complexity: […]
Collapse, Part 2: The Nine Dynamics of Decay
Collapse, Part 2: The Nine Dynamics of Decay Rome didn’t fall so much as erode away. That’s the template for collapse. While collapse may be sudden, the decay that generated the collapse had been rotting away the foundation for years or decades. In distilling the vast literature on collapse into nine dynamics, I am drawing upon […]
Collapse, Part 1: Greece
Collapse, Part 1: Greece When systems are broke and broken, collapse is the only way forward. The theme this week is collapse. It’s a big, complex topic because there are as many types of collapse as there are systems. Some systems appear stable on the surface but collapse suddenly; others visibly decay for decades before finally […]
Future Shock and the Greening of America
Future Shock and the Greening of America What I find fascinating is our limited ability to make sense of trends unfolding in real time. During our recent breakfast meeting in Berkeley, author/blogger Jim Kunstler suggested that the coherence of eras waxed and waned, and the present era was incoherent. By this he meant the narratives being […]
Our Phantom Economy
Our Phantom Economy Those who believe that phantom recoveries and phantom metrics can be substituted for reality are in for a shock in the next downturn. Stripped of artifice, there are only two kinds of media stories: those that support the status quo narrative, and those that are skeptical of that narrative. What is the status […]
The Fed Is Funneling the Investing Herd Off a Cliff
The Fed Is Funneling the Investing Herd Off a Cliff What happens to price in a bidless market? It goes off a cliff. As you probably know by now, it turns out lemmings didn’t voluntarily commit mass suicide: they were driven off the cliff by those in charge. Lemming Suicide Myth: Disney Film Faked Bogus Behavior. […]
If Your BS Detector Isn’t Shrieking, It’s Broken
If Your BS Detector Isn’t Shrieking, It’s Broken Wishing it was true doesn’t make it true–it makes you a chump who fell for the con. Once upon a time in America, no adult could survive without possessing a finely tuned BS detector. Herman Melville masterfully captured America’s fascination with cons and con artists in his 1857 […]
Liberation Is Unprofitable
Liberation Is Unprofitable 12 examples of how liberation is not profitable and therefore it must be marginalized, outlawed, proscribed or ridiculed. If we had to summarize the sickness of our economy and society, we could start by noting that liberation is unprofitable, and whatever is not profitable to vested interests is marginalized, outlawed, proscribed or ridiculed. Examples […]
How Much More Extreme Can Markets Get?
How Much More Extreme Can Markets Get? These charts help us understand that a top is not just price, but a reversal in extremes of margin debt, valuation and sentiment. In blow-off tops, extremes of valuation, complacency and margin debt can always shoot beyond previous extremes to new extremes. This is why guessing when the blow-off […]
Surplus Repression and the Self-Defeating Deep State
Surplus Repression and the Self-Defeating Deep State The nation is wallowing self-piteously in a fetid trough of denial and adolescent rage/magical thinking now that the nation’s bogus, debt-based “prosperity” has crashed and cannot be restored. If you type Deep State into the custom search window in the right sidebar, the search results fill 10 pages. I think it […]
The Case for Nationalizing Monsanto
The Case for Nationalizing Monsanto Ridding the world of Monsanto via a state buy-out would be a boon to humanity. Capitalism fails in two situations: monopoly and state-capital cronyism. Monopoly extinguishes competition and that effectively extinguishes capitalism. When the elites of the state and private capital collude, i.e. crony capitalism, the few gain power and wealth […]
