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Lessons from the Unraveling of the Roman Empire: Simplification, Localization
Lessons from the Unraveling of the Roman Empire: Simplification, Localization The fragmentation, simplification and localization of the post-Imperial era offers us lessons we ignore at our peril. There is an entire industry devoted to “why the Roman Empire collapsed,” but the post-collapse era may be offer us higher value lessons. The post-collapse era, long written off […]
Did the Economy Just Stumble Off a Cliff?
Did the Economy Just Stumble Off a Cliff? The signs are everywhere for those willing to look: something has changed beneath the surface of complacent faith in permanent growth. This is more intuitive than quantitative, but my gut feeling is that the economy just stumbled off a cliff. Neither the cliff edge nor the fatal misstep […]
Are We Fiddling While Rome Burns?
Are We Fiddling While Rome Burns? Solutions abound, but they require the retirement of obsolete systems that defend entrenched interests and soul-crushing inequalities. It turns out Nero wasn’t fiddling as Rome burned–he was 60 km away at the time. Did Nero Really Fiddle While Rome Burned? The story has become short-hand for making light of a […]
Why We’re Doomed: Our Economy’s Toxic Inequality
Why We’re Doomed: Our Economy’s Toxic Inequality Anyone who thinks our toxic financial system is stable is delusional. Why are we doomed? Those consuming over-amped “news” feeds may be tempted to answer the culture wars, nuclear war with North Korea or the Trump Presidency. The one guaranteed source of doom is our broken financial system, which is […]
Our Financial Buffers Are Thinning
Our Financial Buffers Are Thinning The fragility of our financial buffers will only be revealed when they fail in the next crisis. While buffer has a specific meaning in chemistry, I am using the word in the broad sense of a reserve resource that absorbs the initial destructive impacts of crises or system overloads. Marshland along a sea […]
The “News” Is Content-Free
The “News” Is Content-Free We’re “your” trustworthy news source, even though we’re all owned by six corporations or billionaires with political agendas. The “news” has loomed large in The News–a classic self-referential loop in which the media itself becomes its own content. While the controversy over what constitutes “fake news” and “real news” has itself become […]
We’re in a Boiling-Point Crisis of Exploitive Elites
We’re in a Boiling-Point Crisis of Exploitive Elites The “fixes” to the stagnation of postwar Capitalism in the 1970s were financialization, globalism, and the sustained expansion of debt–all have run out of steam. Many of us have written about cycles in the past decade: Kondratieff economic cycles, business/credit cycles, the Strauss–Howe generational theory (an existential national crisis arises […]
Debt Has No Consequences? Color Me Skeptical
Debt Has No Consequences? Color Me Skeptical The entire status quo is based on the delusion that rapidly rising debt will never generate any negative consequences. Here’s a chart of America’s national debt, extended a mere dozen years into the future: the current $20 trillion in debt will double to $40 trillion, and that assumes […]
The Path to Inflation: “Helicopter Money”
The Path to Inflation: “Helicopter Money” The general view in inflation is dead, essentially forever. Maybe. Maybe not. We all know real-world inflation for big-ticket expenses is far above the official rate of around 2% annually. Yet conventional economists are virtually unanimous that deflation is the danger and inflation is a “good thing” we need […]
Will the Crazy Global Debt Bubble Ever End?
Will the Crazy Global Debt Bubble Ever End? There are multiple sources of friction in the Perpetual Motion Money Machine. We’ve been playing two games to mask insolvency: one is to pay the costs of rampant debt today by borrowing even more from future earnings, and the second is to create wealth out of thin […]
Want to Understand Rising Wealth Inequality? Look at Debt and Interest
Want to Understand Rising Wealth Inequality? Look at Debt and Interest “Governments cannot reduce their debt or deficits and central banks cannot taper. Equally, they cannot perpetually borrow exponentially more. This one last bubble cannot end (but it must).” I often refer to debt serfdom, the servitude debt enforces on borrowers. The mechanism of this […]
Our State-Corporate Plantation Economy
Our State-Corporate Plantation Economy We’ve been persuaded that the state-cartel Plantation Economy is “capitalist,” but it isn’t. It’s a rentier skimming machine. I have often discussed the manner in which the U.S. economy is a Plantation Economy, meaning it has a built-in financial hierarchy with corporations at the top dominating a vast populace of debt-serfs/ […]
What’s Your Plan B?
What’s Your Plan B? Although Plan B includes a wide spectrum of options, these three basic categories define three different purposes for having an alternative residence lined up. We all have a Plan A–continue living just like we’re living now. Some of us have a Plan B in case Plan A doesn’t work out, and […]
Is Your “Democracy” Actually a Totalitarian State? Take this Quick Quiz
Is Your “Democracy” Actually a Totalitarian State? Take this Quick Quiz The USA is already a Totalitarian State with a Ministry of Propaganda that works overtime to generate a flimsy illusion of “democracy.” Is your “democracy” (or republic) actually a Totalitarian State? That is, is it a “democracy” or “republic” in name only? To find […]
Don’t You Hate Spammy, Sensationalist Click-Bait Like this?
Don’t You Hate Spammy, Sensationalist Click-Bait Like this? So what’s the difference between “fake news,” spammy sensationalist click-bait and so-called “mainstream news” that serves the interests of the corporate-state? It’s getting hard to tell. We’re inundated with spammy sensationalist click-bait. You know what I mean–the little boxes containing eye-candy photos and headlines such as “you won’t […]
