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Stagnation Nation: Middle Class Wealth Is Locked Up in Housing and Retirement Funds
Stagnation Nation: Middle Class Wealth Is Locked Up in Housing and Retirement Funds The majority of middle class wealth is locked up in unproductive assets or assets that only become available upon retirement or death. One of my points in Why Governments Will Not Ban Bitcoin was to highlight how few families had the financial […]
Stagnation Nation: Middle Class Wealth Is Locked Up in Housing and Retirement Funds
Stagnation Nation: Middle Class Wealth Is Locked Up in Housing and Retirement Funds The majority of middle class wealth is locked up in unproductive assets or assets that only become available upon retirement or death. One of my points in Why Governments Will Not Ban Bitcoin was to highlight how few families had the financial […]
Which Rotten Fruit Falls First?
Which Rotten Fruit Falls First? I predict the current investigations will widen and take a variety of twists and turns that surprise all those anticipating a tidy, narrowly focused denouement. The theme this week is The Rot Within. To those of us who understand the entire status quo is rotten and corrupt to its core, […]
GDP Is Bogus: Here’s Why
GDP Is Bogus: Here’s Why Here’s a chart of our fabulous always-higher GDP, adjusted for another bogus metric, official inflation. The theme this week is The Rot Within. The rot eating away at our society and economy is typically papered over with bogus statistics that “prove” everything’s getting better every day in every way. The […]
The United States of Weinstein: Complicity, Greed and Corruption Is the Status Quo
The United States of Weinstein: Complicity, Greed and Corruption Is the Status Quo If integrity means more than any of these baubles, then prepare to fail. The theme this week is The Rot Within. The sordid story of Harvey Weinstein is being presented as an aberration. It is not an aberration; it is merely a […]
The Endgame of Financialization: Stealth Nationalization
The Endgame of Financialization: Stealth Nationalization This is the new model of nationalization: central banks control the valuation of private-sector assets without actually having to own them lock, stock and barrel. As you no doubt know, central banks don’t actually print money and toss it out of helicopters; they create a digital liability and use […]
About Those “Hedonic Adjustments” to Inflation: Ignoring the Systemic Decline in Quality, Utility, Durability and Service
About Those “Hedonic Adjustments” to Inflation: Ignoring the Systemic Decline in Quality, Utility, Durability and Service The quality, durability, utility and enjoyment-of-use of our products and services has been plummeting for years. One of the more mysterious aspects of the official inflation rate is the hedonic quality adjustments that the Bureau of Labor Statistics makes to the […]
Our Protected, Predatory Oligarchy: Dirty Secrets, Dirty Lies
Our Protected, Predatory Oligarchy: Dirty Secrets, Dirty Lies If you want to understand why the status quo is unraveling, start by examining the feudal structure of our society, politics and economy. The revelations coming to light about Hollywood Oligarch Harvey Weinstein perfectly capture the true nature of our status quo: a rotten-to-the-core, predatory, exploitive oligarchy […]
The Consent of the Conned
The Consent of the Conned Every single line item in our entire Bernie Madoff scam of a system is cooked. My theme this week is The Great Unraveling, by which I mean the unraveling of our social-political-economic system of hierarchical, centralized power. Let’s start by looking at how the basis of governance has transmogrified from […]
Be Careful What You Wish For: Inflation Is Much Higher Than Advertised
Be Careful What You Wish For: Inflation Is Much Higher Than Advertised What the Federal Reserve is actually whining about is not low inflation–it’s that high inflation isn’t pushing wages higher like it’s supposed to. It’s not exactly a secret that real-world inflation is a lot higher than the official rates–the Consumer Price Index (CPI) […]
Stagnation Is Not Just the New Normal–It’s Official Policy
Stagnation Is Not Just the New Normal–It’s Official Policy Japan is a global leader is how to gracefully manage stagnation. Although our leadership is too polite to say it out loud, they’ve embraced stagnation as the new quasi-official policy. The reason is tragi-comically obvious: any real reform would threaten the income streams gushing into untouchably […]
You Can Only Choose One: Cheap Oil or a Weak Dollar
You Can Only Choose One: Cheap Oil or a Weak Dollar When the price of oil rises to the point of pain, just remember the handy-dandy discount mechanism: a much stronger US dollar. Glance at this chart of the trade-weighted U.S. dollar, and note the swing highs and lows in the price of oil per […]
The Demise of the Dollar: Don’t Hold Your Breath
The Demise of the Dollar: Don’t Hold Your Breath So let’s look at currency flows, reserves and debt. The demise of the U.S. dollar has been a staple of the financial media for decades. The latest buzzword making the rounds is de-dollarization, which describes the move away from USD in global payments. De-dollarization is often […]
Loving Our Debt-Serfdom: Our Neofeudal Status Quo
Loving Our Debt-Serfdom: Our Neofeudal Status Quo Democracy (i.e. political influence) and ownership of productive assets are the exclusive domains of the New Aristocracy. I have often used the words neoliberal, neocolonial and neofeudal to describe our socio-economic-political status quo. Here are my shorthand descriptions of each term: 1. Neoliberal: the commoditization / financialization of […]
