The Curious Engineer

oftwominds-Charles Hugh Smith

2018–2026

1,480 posts

← 2013–2017

2026 108

October 2026

  1. The Pendulum of History
  2. The Status Quo Is a Comic-Book Parody
  3. Our Vaunted Technology Is Rubbish
  4. The Homogenization of Decay
  5. Moral Collapse / Corruption Rewards the Worst and Penalizes the Best
  6. The Hidden Looting by the Rich leads to the Physical Looting by Those Who've Been Looted
  7. America Is Already Great; Its Leadership Class Is Not
  8. Truth Be Told

September 2026

  1. What's the Point of AI, Anyway?
  2. Smug Hypocrisy Invites Nemesis
  3. Since We're All On Board the Hyperinflation Ship, Will It Sail As Expected?
  4. We Can't Automate Learning, We Can Only Automate Dependence on AI
  5. Social Media Is Pointless Slag
  6. We're Living in a Tragicomic Parody
  7. The Irresistible Temptations of Centralized Power

August 2026

  1. The Blindfolded Can't Make Informed Decisions--and We're All Blindfolded
  2. We're Actually Only "Renting" What We Think We "Own"
  3. The Lit Fuse: Low Interest Rates Ruined the Economy
  4. The New "Haves" and "Have-Nots": The Difference Isn't What You Think
  5. "Rogue AI Agents" Aren't Rogue, They're Fulfilling Their Functional Goal: Automating Sociopathology
  6. In Our "Everything is Disposable" Economy, We're Disposable, Too
  7. Hell Hath No Fury Like a Rogue AI Agent Scorned
  8. While We Focused on Fripperies, the Foundations Have Rotted Away
  9. AI and the Delusions of Increasing Productivity
  10. I'm Asking You to Support My Work This Month
  11. The Joyless Pantomime of Optimizing Ennui
  12. The Joys and Tragedies of Naivete

July 2026

  1. Get the Flock Out of Here
  2. Driving Big Brother
  3. Who Will Solve Our Real Problem--The US is a Neofeudal Autocracy
  4. The Conflicts Brewing in America's Ten Classes
  5. AI Is the Apex of Ultra-Processed Life
  6. Offload Risks onto the Bottom 90% and Immiseration Follows
  7. Without Subsidies, AI Is Unaffordable
  8. Sailing the Stormy Seas of AI
  9. Risk and AI: It's Tricky

June 2026

  1. The US Economy In a Nutshell: Privatize the Gains, Socialize the Costs
  2. Five Dynamics That Make Sense of an Increasingly Chaotic World
  3. What Once Explained Everything Now Explains Nothing
  4. What If the Work We're Busy Automating Is Needless?
  5. What AI Is and Is Not-- or, When Electrocution of Innocents Becomes Profitable
  6. We Don't Need the World, We Only Need Money
  7. AI's Insurmountable Flaw: "Mass Regurgitation of Misinformation"
  8. Is AI Reversing Anti-Progress or Is It Accelerating It?
  9. Choose One: Housing Is Shelter, or Housing Is Just Another Asset in a Bubble Economy
  10. AI Data Centers Are Not the Railroads of Today

May 2026

  1. Could Instability Trigger Radical Change In Your Life?
  2. Why Is Consumer Sentiment at Record Lows?
  3. The Overstuffed Freezer Analogy
  4. When Unfairness Is Systemic, the Consequences Are Flight, Resistance, Revolt
  5. Inequality, AI and Digital Life Are Undermining Society
  6. We've Optimized Fragility, Failure, Denial--and Rage
  7. Chaos Unleashed: When "Irrational" Makes Perfect Sense
  8. When US Treasuries Play a Reverse Card
  9. What Would Be Truly Bullish? Actually Fixing What's Broken
  10. Recession and Revolution: Our Experience Isn't a Model or System
  11. Why We're Helpless When Things Break Down

April 2026

  1. AI, Money, Human Nature and the Problem with Problems
  2. Sex, Money and Demographics
  3. Mercantilism: China and Beyond
  4. When the Cost of Truth Is High, We--and AI--Lie
  5. The Questions Nobody Asks as AI Replaces Human Workers
  6. Sell Now: Here's Why
  7. College Graduates Are Losing the Clone War
  8. I'll Turn Bullish When This Happens
  9. Welcome to the Theater of the Absurd
  10. Automating Our Dependence Will Cripple Us
  11. Our Post-Truth, Post-Trust World
  12. Oil, Inflation and Recession
  13. The Inevitability of the AI Depression
  14. Disney World's New Theme Park: The White House and Congress

March 2026

  1. The "Good News" Is Always the Same: the Stock Market Is Up--Until It Isn't
  2. Is a "Democracy" That's For Sale Still a Democracy? No, It's an Oligarchy
  3. The Illusion of the Shortcut (Self-Employment Series)
  4. The AI Depression
  5. Risk and Privilege
  6. Welcome to the Stockyard of Unaffordability
  7. Why Credit Creates Bubbles That Break the Economy
  8. Why AI Malware (and Harmful Second Order Effects) Are Out of Control
  9. This Polycrisis Is Unique
  10. Paging Nostradamus: You Have a Margin Call
  11. Iran, En-Lai, Napoleon, Mike Tyson and Model Collapse
  12. Perverse Incentives Have Created a Runaway Media Monster
  13. Things Change
  14. The War

February 2026

  1. The Decay of our Quality of Life No Longer Aligns with the Narrative
  2. How We Got Here: Moral Flexibility Leads to Moral Decay
  3. Money Is Funny That Way: The Case for USD Supremacy
  4. What Defines a "Good Economy"? Social Mobility and Not Losing Ground
  5. Small Business in the TINA Economy: Competing for the Scraps
  6. What Few Understand About Money
  7. Self-Employment Series #2: Ownership Is Not Freedom
  8. A Market Crash and Recession Are Bullish, Not Bearish
  9. The Banality of Evil and Those Who Said No
  10. Re-Set: Reversing the Debt-Debasement Death-Spiral
  11. Owning Your Work in a World That Rents Your Life
  12. Power and Impunity

January 2026

  1. The US Economy in a Nutshell: A Few Winners, Everyone Else Loses Ground
  2. Why the Next Recession Will Be the Catalyst for Depression
  3. The Fatal Limits of the Technocrat Class
  4. The Epic Struggle Just Ahead
  5. Lessons from China's Cultural Revolution
  6. Narrative Control Made Easy: Us versus Them
  7. Why Is Everything Such a Hot Mess?
  8. The Perverse Incentives Dominating Our Lives
  9. We Can Discern Cycles and Waves, But Not the Outcomes
  10. Channeling Napoleon and Chou En-Lai
  11. Pretense, Staging, Expediency: the "Solutions" That Implode the Whole Shebang

2025 138

December 2025

  1. Everyone's a Lender Now: Shadow Banking USA
  2. The Good News Is People Are Realizing We're On Our Own
  3. My Christmas Letter
  4. Insane Financial Imbalances and Social Revolution
  5. All the Dominant Models Are Collapsing
  6. The Wile E. Coyote Insight: What We "Know" Is More Dangerous Than the Unknown
  7. The Perilous Journey Ahead
  8. How We Fail: The Empire Is Forever
  9. Why We Fail
  10. Greed, Centralization, Monopoly, Ruin
  11. Model Collapse: The Entire Bubble Economy Is a Hallucination
  12. Why Healthcare Is in a Death Spiral: Follow the Money

November 2025

  1. 24 Things I'm Grateful For
  2. A Stoic's Thanksgiving Gratitude
  3. The Middle Class Is Cracking
  4. Is AI a Catalyst for Growth--or For Collapse?
  5. What We've Lost
  6. Inequality Then and Now: Now It's Too Late
  7. Did the "Solution" Solve the Problem, Or Did It Just Make Somebody Rich?
  8. The Risk of AI Isn't Skynet
  9. The Inevitable Drift Down from "Can't Lose" Owning Stocks to "Can't Win"

October 2025

  1. Yes, Everything Crashed--Just Not For You
  2. The Revolution Trilogy
  3. Anatomy of AI Cold Turkey
  4. ZIRP or ZAP? Will the Fed's 'Zero-Interest Rate Policy' Return, and Will It Work?
  5. Could a Rip-Your-Face-Off Rally in the Dollar Trigger a Global Financial Crisis?
  6. The Crisis and Revolution Hidden in Plain Sight
  7. If We Measured the Economy by Quality-of-Life Instead of GDP, We'd Be In a Depression
  8. The Year When Everything Happens in No Particular Order
  9. The True Meaning of Stoicism
  10. Look Out Below
  11. The Golden Age of Spectacle
  12. Will AI Crash the Economy?

September 2025

  1. Price Doesn't Reflect Value, and We're Paying a Steep Price for Confusing the Two
  2. Can Social Security Be Saved for Future Generations?
  3. Money, Credit, Growth and Depression: It's Complicated
  4. Is This the Last Bubble?
  5. The Moral Decay of Debt
  6. Precarity and the Point of No Return
  7. "Upgrade Now" To Get What Was Previously Included At No Extra Charge
  8. The Garbage Time of History Is Global
  9. Entitled, Demanding--and Shunned
  10. Labored Daze

August 2025

  1. AI: The Good, the Bad and the...Woah
  2. AI: False Savior of a Hollowed-Out Economy
  3. Our Mafioso Economy
  4. How Great Powers Fall Apart
  5. AI Is a Mirror in Which We See Our Own Reflection
  6. Boiled Frogs: AI Slop, Phishing, Deep-Fakes and Spam, Spam, Spam
  7. Two Charts of Extremely Perverse Incentives
  8. If It Walks Like a Duck: Is The AI Mania a Psych-Ops?
  9. Now Comes the Hard Part
  10. What Would Happen If Sydney Sweeney Started Gardening and Baking Bread?
  11. Resilient, Self-Reliant Life Is Hard
  12. Two Ways to Fix Generational Wealth Inequality
  13. Go Ahead and Rage at Boomers, But the Problem Is the Entire Economic Order

July 2025

  1. AI for Dummies: AI Turns Us Into Dummies
  2. What RussiaGate Did to America--and to Me
  3. Is the Epstein Affair a Watershed Moment?
  4. AI: Over-Promise + Under-Perform = Disillusionment and Blowback
  5. Maybe AI Isn't Going to Replace You at Work After All
  6. The Grown Up Tax Bill: Sorry, Grown-Ups Are Out of Stock
  7. Can the Developed World Grow Its Way Out of Stagnation?
  8. The United States of Impunity
  9. Three Choices, None Good
  10. Illiquid, Overvalued
  11. To Make America Great Again, Start Here
  12. America's "Healthcare" System Is Now a Structured Financial Skim/Scam

June 2025

  1. The No-Win Bubble "Wealth Effect": Either Way We Lose
  2. The Economy--and its Future--in Four Charts
  3. Hollowed Out
  4. Is Life Now a Snack?
  5. Meta-Thoughts on the War
  6. How Housing Bubble #2 Bursts
  7. Good News! AI Can Do More BS Work
  8. And So It Begins
  9. Now That the Parasites Have Consumed the Host....
  10. The Miracles of Moderate Exercise
  11. The Ratchet Effect: Easy to Spend More, Spending Less Triggers Collapse
  12. What AI Can't Do Faster, Better, or Cheaper Than Humans

May 2025

  1. My Job Is to Say No--with One Exception
  2. The "AI Revolution" May Take an Unexpected Turn into the "AI Coup"
  3. Ours Is a System of Fraud, Swindles and Corruption
  4. Boomers, Let's Face It: The Math Doesn't Work
  5. The Real American Dream: Starting Over
  6. Living on Meds, Vitamin C and Ibogaine: American Precarity
  7. The One Real Economic Indicator: "Upgrade to Premium"
  8. Tariffs Are Not Enough
  9. It Was 20 Years Ago Today I Started this Blog: What Surprises Me
  10. The Terminal Rot in Corporate America
  11. 25 Years of Higher Interest Rates Ahead?

April 2025

  1. The Potential Winners and Losers in Reshoring Supply Chains
  2. The Winners and Losers in 21st Century America
  3. The Wile E. Coyote Recession
  4. What's "Normal" in a Hyper-Normalized World?
  5. The Family Home: From Shelter to Asset to Liability
  6. This Nails It: The Doom Loop of Housing Construction Quality
  7. Trade, Tariffs, Currencies, Colonialism, the Gold Watch and Everything
  8. Last Gasp of the Landfill Economy
  9. A Decade of Headwinds
  10. The Financial Kessler Effect
  11. After the Tariff Earthquake
  12. The Global Trade Game: Jokers Are Wild

March 2025

  1. Why the Global Recession Will be Deeper and Longer Than Pundits Anticipate
  2. Ultra-Processed Life
  3. POD People 2025
  4. The Economy of Denial: Addiction, Extortion, Deception
  5. Here Come the Chaos Monkeys
  6. Roaring 20s or Great Depression 2.0?
  7. Going Cold Turkey in our Addiction Economy
  8. The Stoicism of the Caregiver
  9. If We Set Aside Ideology, Is There Anything We Can Agree On?

February 2025

  1. Three Ways to Restore Housing Affordability
  2. Housing: The Foundations of the Middle Class Are Crumbling
  3. When Markets Misbehave
  4. The Tax Benefits of Self-Employment
  5. The Problem With Money Isn't Money
  6. Automation Institutionalizes Mediocrity
  7. The Not-So-Strange Paradox of American Power and Dysfunction
  8. The One True Test of AI Intelligence
  9. Corporations as Modern-Day Warlords
  10. The Crises Yet to Come
  11. Lots of Solutions, But for Which Problems?
  12. Begging Bowl '25: I'm Looking for Two Readers Willing to Help Me Buy a New Thrift-Store Shirt

January 2025

  1. AI Is a Digital Parrot: Word-Traps, False Logic and the Illusion of Intelligence
  2. The AI Fad Just Burned to the Waterline
  3. Welcome to the DeepSeek Disruption (DSD)
  4. Is DeepSeek a Sputnik Moment?
  5. The Power of Our Behavior
  6. The Do-It-Yourself Decade
  7. Extremes Become More Extreme, Then Revert to the Mean
  8. Is Placing a Wager in a Casino an "Investment"?
  9. Catch-20: The 20 Dynamics That Will Shape the Next Decade
  10. What If Tech, the Market and the State Are No Longer Solutions?
  11. The Easy Credit, High Interest Rate Swindle
  12. I Quit! The Tsunami of Burnout Few See
  13. High Interest Rates Are Healthy, Low Rates Are Poison
  14. The System's Self-Destruct Sequence Cannot Be Turned Off

2024 153

December 2024

  1. "Too Big to Care" and the Illusion of Choice
  2. What If Solutions That Worked in the Past No Longer Fix What's Broken?
  3. A Christmas Gift from Marcus Aurelius
  4. The Core Skill Going Forward: Frugality
  5. The Economy Has Failed the American People, But It's Taboo To Say Why
  6. All Three Pillars Holding Up the Economy Have Cracked
  7. Truth, Beauty and the Unseen Craftsperson
  8. The Big Shining Lie: We're Better Off Now--No, We're Poorer, Much Poorer
  9. Grey Swans Are Circling
  10. What Happened to Integrity and Honor?
  11. Fix This or Nothing Else Matters

November 2024

  1. Really Authentic Authenticity Package (TM) now 50% Off
  2. Slashing $2 Trillion from "The Swamp"--Three Things
  3. "Superheroes" Reflect Our Powerlessness
  4. Anti-Progress, Breakdown, Reset
  5. How Do We Fix the Collapse of Quality?
  6. The Cure for What Ails Us: Market Crash and Mass Defaults
  7. The Seeds of Social Revolution: Extreme Wealth Inequality
  8. The Elephant in the Room--No, the Other Elephant
  9. Machiavelli's Sage Advice to Transformational Leaders
  10. The Cost of Owning a Home Is Soaring
  11. Unaffordable Housing and Homeless Encampments: How Did It Get This Bad?
  12. The Limits of Government
  13. Central Planning: China's Miracle--and Malaise
  14. The Extremely Profitable Inner Workings of Digital Addiction

October 2024

  1. Is Social Media Actually "Media," Or Is It Something Else?
  2. Welcome to the Circular Firing Squad
  3. A Contrarian Clarification of "Free Speech"
  4. All The World's a Stage: Everything Is Fake
  5. 17 Indicators of Global Recession Are Clanging
  6. Isn't It Obvious?
  7. We're Told This Is Progress, But It's Actually Anti-Progress
  8. Can We Rein In the Excesses of Financialization Without Crashing the Economy?
  9. A Hard Rain Is Going to Fall
  10. When Did Our Institutions Lose Our Trust?
  11. Social Trust: It's Not Warm and Fuzzy, It's the Money, Honey
  12. Adapt or Die, Or...?
  13. Why Political "Solutions" Don't Fix Crises, They Make Them Worse

September 2024

  1. Ahead Lies Ruin: The Decay of Social Trust
  2. How Easy Is It To Become Middle Class Now?
  3. What's Changed? What's Different This Time?
  4. So the Economy Now Depends on Stocks Which Depend on Front-Running the Fed--And This Is Fine?
  5. I Want the "Rich Guys Internet"
  6. 2024, A Year of No Significance
  7. The Impossible Dream: 70 Million Boomers Retire in Style
  8. What's "Free" About "Free Speech"?
  9. When Local Newspapers Close, We Lose What Matters: Journalism
  10. Does Anyone Else Smell a Market Crash in the Air?
  11. Playing It Safe
  12. Is the "Everything Bubble" About to Pop?
  13. What If All the Conventional Models Fail to Predict What Happens Next?

August 2024

  1. The La-La-Land Fairy Tale of a "Soft Landing"
  2. Success Is a Trap
  3. We've Left the Bottom 60% in the Dust, but Never Mind: S&P500 to 6000!
  4. The Social Recession Is Accelerating
  5. Who Wins and Who Loses When the Housing Bubble Pops?
  6. You Say You Want a Revolution
  7. The Super-Wealthy Have a Problem
  8. It Became Necessary to Destroy the Global Economy to Save It
  9. These Six Drivers Are Gone, and That's Why the Global Economy Is Toast
  10. There's Just One Problem: AI Isn't Intelligent, and That's a Systemic Risk
  11. The Anti-Consumers
  12. The Upside of Adversity
  13. We All Need a Little Magic in Our Lives

July 2024

  1. The Great Unwinding: Is There Any Way to Come Out Ahead?
  2. The Rollercoaster Ride Ahead: 15 Years of Extreme Distortions Will Be Unwound
  3. The Downside of Complacency: Illiquidity Evaporates Stocks and Real Estate
  4. How Those Using "Useful Idiots" Become "Useful Idiots"
  5. Two Tidbits of Timeless Political Wisdom from Machiavelli
  6. Twisters on the Horizon: Is This Decade a Re-Make of 'That 70s Show'?
  7. The Roots of American Populism: Are Trump and Vance Populists?
  8. I Fear for Our Nation
  9. How Will We Distribute the Pain Ahead?
  10. Here's Our Big Problem: The Ratchet Only Moves Us Closer to the Cliff
  11. No Reform or Leader Is Going to Save the Status Quo--We're On Our Own
  12. Living Well on Less Than $30,000 a Year--One American Family's Story
  13. Is It Possible to Live Well Earning $30,000 a Year in America? Yes--With These Conditions
  14. Move Over, Disaster Capitalism--Make Room for Addiction Capitalism

June 2024

  1. 10 Geopolitical / Financial Risks to the Global Economy
  2. "Why Are You So Negative?" Good Question. Here's the Answer: Real Life
  3. So Sorry, But Every Inch of You Is Toxic
  4. The Anxiety Economy
  5. A Most Dangerous Assumption: Mining the Future to Spend More Today
  6. The Glue Binding Democracy and a Free Economy Has Melted
  7. Prepare for the Repricing of Risk Globally
  8. The Crises and Sacrifices Yet to Come
  9. How Many Millennials Will Be Rich Enough to Buy the Boomers' Millions of Unaffordable Bungalows?
  10. Financial Nihilism and the Collapsing American Dream
  11. If AI Is So Great, Prove It: Eliminate All Surveillance, Spam and Robocalling
  12. Our Crisis of Competence
  13. Having Too Much Money Leads to Catastrophe

May 2024

  1. Bubble Symmetry: Could the NASDAQ Drop 60% and Round-Trip to 2,500?
  2. The $150,000 Housekeeper: Wage Inflation Kicks Into Second Gear
  3. Is Hyper-Inflation that Destroys a Currency a "Solution"?
  4. Would Returning to the Gold Standard Resolve Our Most Pressing Monetary Problems?
  5. Is Anyone Else's Life as Stupidly Complicated by Digital "Shadow Work" as Mine Is?
  6. Maybe We're Closer to "You'll Own Nothing" Than We Realize
  7. The Decay of Everyday Life
  8. Precarious: One Misfortune Away from Insolvency
  9. Squeezed for Decades, America's Working Class Is Finally Up Against the Wall
  10. Lost in the Vast Wasteland of Social Media
  11. Hikikomori and Lying Flat: When "Making It" Becomes Hopeless
  12. Withdrawing from the Rat Race Is Going Global
  13. I'm Looking for 10 Readers Willing to Pony Up a Few Bucks for the Crazy-Valuable Content Here
  14. Labor Rising: Will Class Identity Finally Matter Again?

April 2024

  1. China and the U.S.: What Matters That's Overlooked
  2. The Ghetto-ization of American Life
  3. Cities' "Doom Loops" Are Even Worse Than You Imagined
  4. Is the 'Housing Shortage' the Result of Housing-Hoarding by the Wealthy?
  5. Living on Uneasy Street
  6. The Spear in AI's Back
  7. Financial Forecast 2025-2032: Please Don't Be Naive
  8. Sound Money Vs. Fiat Currency: Trade and Credit Are the Wild Cards
  9. Could US Treasuries Become the Trade of the Decade?
  10. Staving Off Revolution
  11. What Orwell and Huxley Got Wrong and Kafka Got Right
  12. YOLO Spending, Inflation and the Wisdom/Madness of Crowds
  13. Fed to Offer Every Household $1 Million from its New Discount Window

March 2024

  1. Fire, Then Ice: Our Deflationary Future
  2. Deep State Good, Total Surveillance State Even Better
  3. Our Economy and Politics Are Broken
  4. What Happens When There's Nobody Left to Save Us?
  5. The Growing Rebellion Against Costly, Low-Quality, Overly-Complex Technology
  6. Why Social Trust Is Cratering: The Difference Between Elites and Commoners
  7. America the Snackable
  8. A Low-Trust Society Is an Impoverished Society
  9. Global Recession's Winners and Losers
  10. These Four Themes Will Define the Next Decade
  11. If AI Is So Great, Why Is Managing the Digital Realm Eating Us Alive?

February 2024

  1. Who Error-Corrects AI?
  2. Rates, Risk and Debt: The Unavoidable Reckoning Ahead
  3. How the Economy Changed: There's No Bargains Left Anywhere
  4. The Pitfalls of Central Planning
  5. Finding, Creating (and Keeping) a Job in the Era of AI
  6. The U.S. Housing Market: Rent-Serfs and Artificial Scarcity
  7. Digital Service Dumpster Fires and Shadow Work
  8. The "Phantom Legion" Problem
  9. Household Belt-Tightening: Will the Trickle Become a Flood?
  10. Irony Alert: "Outlawing" Recession Has Made a Monster Recession Inevitable
  11. The International City Model: Freedom Is the Solution, Coercion Is the Problem
  12. Inflation Hits Us All, Even Of Two Minds

January 2024

  1. The Era of Easy Money Ruined Us
  2. Our Tax System Is an Unfair Mess: Here's How to Fix It
  3. Isn't It Time We Have Social Security for Families with Children?
  4. The Template of National/Imperial Decay and Collapse
  5. Have Our Elites Lost The Mandate of Heaven?
  6. National Self-Reliance Is On the Rise: China and the U.S.
  7. How to Navigate Our Low-Trust, Increasingly Dysfunctional Society and Economy
  8. Self-Reliance, Taoism and the Warring States
  9. The Chinese Connection: Here's Why Inflation Won't Fall to 2% and Stay There Indefinitely
  10. What's the Source of the Astounding 50% Boost in Corporate Profits?
  11. What the Fed Accomplished: Distorted the Economy, Enriched the Rich and Crushed the Middle Class
  12. 2023: The Fed Declares Victory; 2024: The Year of Hubris and Nemesis

2023 145

December 2023

  1. Rome Was Eternal, Until It Wasn't: Imperial Analogs of Decay
  2. What If There Are No Analogs for 2024?
  3. Everyone Loves a Generous Government Until They Have to Pay For It
  4. The Fed's Empire of Speculation and the Echoes of 1929
  5. Could America Have a French-Style Revolution?
  6. Irony Alert: The American Dream Is Only Affordable Overseas
  7. We Feel Poorer Because We Are Poorer: Here's Proof

November 2023

  1. Never Mind Bogus Measures of Inflation--Purchasing Power Is What Counts, and It's Decaying
  2. What Happens When Millions of Renters Can No Longer Afford High Rents and Move Back Home?
  3. Black Flag Friday: Could Black Friday Be a Harbinger of a Tapped-Out Consumer?
  4. Thanksgiving: When Gratitude Is In Short Supply
  5. This Holiday Season, Give the Wonderful Gift of Nothing
  6. What's It Take To Be Middle Class Now?
  7. Check All That Apply: Artifice, Suppression, Deceit, Denial, Delusion
  8. Can We Reverse America's Distemper?
  9. The Original Song That Came To Me in a Dream
  10. The Invisible Court's Verdict: You Are Hereby Exiled to Digital Siberia
  11. Who's Wealth Will Get "Clawed Back" First?
  12. How Much Do You Spend on Food?

October 2023

  1. We're Eating Our Seed Corn
  2. The Counterculture Everyone Forgot
  3. Our Neofeudal, Neocolonial World
  4. The Profitable Destruction of Americans' Health
  5. Lowering Risk as We Enter Forced Frugality
  6. Our Mutually Reinforcing Crises: Not All Polycrises Are Equal
  7. We Need a Change: Taylor Swift for President
  8. Downward Mobility and Life on the Margins
  9. On Thin Ice
  10. The Many Flavors of Doom
  11. The Bottomless Swamp of Regulatory Capture
  12. Our Revolting Elites
  13. How Great Is Our Economy If the Bottom 50%'s Share of the Nation's Wealth Has Plummeted Since 2009?

September 2023

  1. Now Hiring: The Ministry of Failure
  2. The Psychology of Inflation: What Makes You Say, "No Way Am I Paying That"?
  3. When Shelter Becomes a Speculative Asset, Society Unravels
  4. A Time Capsule from the 1930s: What's Different Now
  5. Six Reasons Why Corporate Profits Will Fall 50%
  6. The Peculiar Power of Denial
  7. How to Select a Town the Rich Won't Gentrify and Ruin
  8. Here's Why Housing Is Unaffordable for the Bottom 90%
  9. Reinventing Democracy
  10. We're Living in a Neofeudal Bubble
  11. September 1, 2025: Fed Reaches Inflation Target, Cheese Sandwich Costs $120

August 2023

  1. STVR/Airbnb Has Destroyed America's Resort Towns
  2. Neither Comply Nor Resist
  3. The AirBnB Bubble Popping Will Pop the Housing Bubble
  4. The Problem Isn't a Housing Shortage, It's the Concentration of Ownership by the Wealthy
  5. No, Central Banks Won't Save Us This Time
  6. I Have a Very Bad Feeling About This
  7. The Peculiar Unreality of Spectacle
  8. 2021 to 2024: From "Revenge" Splurging to Forced Frugality
  9. Why Rome Collapsed: Lessons For the Present
  10. I'm Not Really Enjoying the Show
  11. Fooled by What We Measure, Enlightened by What We Don't Measure
  12. The Wealthy Are Not Like You and Me--Our Terminally Stratified Society
  13. Even the Aliens Are Boring

July 2023

  1. Lessons from the Unraveling of the Roman Empire: Simplification, Localization
  2. All Bubbles Pop
  3. I Keep Changing Channels But It's Still the Same Program
  4. Everyone's Talking about Currencies: 21 Points
  5. It's Mourning in America
  6. Lessons from The Great Depression
  7. The Two Causes of the Coming Great Depression
  8. The Coming Crisis of Cities: Reinvention or Bankruptcy
  9. Without Inflation, the Status Quo Collapses; With Hot Inflation, It Also Collapses
  10. Will AI Deliver the Worst of Both Worlds?
  11. All Dreams End: The Collapse of Keynesian Economics
  12. Who Wins and Who Loses in a Deep Global Recession?

June 2023

  1. The Make-or-Break Fork in the Road Ahead
  2. Breaking/Broken News You Might Have Missed
  3. Dear Aliens: Could You Please Stop Fooling Around and Take Over Earth?
  4. The Corruption of POTUS, SCOTUS and SCROTUS
  5. 2023-2030: Artifice Vs. Doom-Loops
  6. Doom-Loop I: "Bringing Demand Forward" Will No Longer Save Us
  7. How Did Someone Like Me Get Shadow-Banned?
  8. Solutions Abound, But Not Necessarily Where We Expect
  9. This Is Why Nobody Will Do Anything Until It's Too Late
  10. Everything Is Being Repriced, Starting with Risk
  11. 12 Ways to Cut the Chains of Financial Serfdom
  12. Look Around and What Do You See? Social Defeat
  13. What Happens When the Competent Opt Out?
  14. A Nation of Junkies: The Empty Future of a Stimulus-Speculation Economy

May 2023

  1. Higher Unemployment Won't Stop Wages from Rising
  2. Sorry Our Demographic Karma Ran Over Your Economic Dogma
  3. Wages Going Up for Good: Catch-Up and Blowback
  4. Are You Ready For a Real Recession?
  5. 2023: Echoes of 1973
  6. How Many Dominoes Must Topple Before One Falls on Us?
  7. What If AI Is Only a Cost and Not a Profit Bonanza?
  8. Our Two Deep States, One Public, One Private
  9. Doom Loops Are Multiplying
  10. Once Trust Has Been Lost, There's No Going Back
  11. Front-Running the Fed Pivot Might Not Work Next Time
  12. What If the Fed Has Lost Control?
  13. Crystal Balls, Soothsayers and AI, Oh My!

April 2023

  1. When We Lose Small Businesses...
  2. What If the Whole Shebang Unravels?
  3. America's Social Contract Is Broken
  4. Extremes Get More Extreme, But Everything's Fine
  5. Over the Falls: Credit, Collateral, Risk, Asset Valuations
  6. The Housing Bubble: Owners Trapped by Low-Rate Mortgages, Buyers Thwarted by High-Rate Mortgages
  7. This Housing Bubble Is Different: It's Much More Precarious
  8. De-Dollarization and Trade: Be Careful What You Wish For
  9. I'm Looking for 15 Readers Willing to Pony Up $1 for the Crazy-Valuable Content Here
  10. Why Interest Rates Are Not Going Back to Zero
  11. Here's How We'll Have Labor Shortages and High Unemployment at the Same Time
  12. The Mystery of UFOs/UAPs: Solved

March 2023

  1. While We're Obsessing About the Economy and the Fed, Society Is Unraveling
  2. The Everything Bubble and Global Bankruptcy
  3. Bull or Bear? The Ultimate Source of Market Instability
  4. Welcome to the Era of Warring Elites
  5. We've Forgotten That Business-Cycle Recessions Are Essential
  6. Funny Things Happen on the Way to "Restoring Financial Stability"
  7. Banks, Banks, Banks: The Elephant Nobody Even Sees
  8. Chart of the Month: Any Questions?
  9. If AI Can't Overthrow its Corporate/State Masters, It's Worthless
  10. What If There Are No Solutions?
  11. What If the Whole Point Is to End "The Fed Put"?
  12. The Easy Jobs Are (Mostly) Gone
  13. The Forces Upending the Global Economy Cannot be Reversed

February 2023

  1. Stainless Steal
  2. Weaponizing Global Depression
  3. If We No Longer Pay Attention to Things We Don't Control, What's Left For Us to Focus On?
  4. What ChatGPT and DeepMind Tell Us About AI
  5. The Core of the Economy--The Middle Class--Is Crumbling
  6. A World Without Finance
  7. The New Normal: Death Spirals and Speculative Frenzies
  8. Why People Move from Blue States: It's Not Just High Taxes
  9. Prepare to Be Bled Dry by a Decade of Stagflation
  10. Seven Points on Investing in Treacherous Waters

January 2023

  1. What Goes Up Also Comes Down: The Heavy Hand of Bubble Symmetry
  2. Here's How "Prosperity" Ends: Global Bubbles Are Popping
  3. Heretical Thoughts on Orthodoxies
  4. The Race to the Bottom Accelerates
  5. You Want Truly "Sound Money"? A Thought Experiment
  6. The 1970s: From Rotting Carcasses Floating in the River to Kayak Races
  7. Contrarian Thoughts on the Petro-Yuan and Gold-Backed Currencies
  8. Want to Know Where the Economy Is Going? Watch The Top 10%
  9. The Forgotten History of the 1970s
  10. What's Behind the Global Erosion of Civil Liberties, Privacy and Property Rights?
  11. What if the "Black Swan" of 2023 Is the Fed Succeeds?
  12. Who Will Save Us From Ourselves?
  13. Who Would Benefit from a Severe Global Recession?
  14. How Easy Is It To Become Middle Class?
  15. Misunderstanding War, Money and Prosperity

2022 156

December 2022

  1. It's a New Era
  2. My One Prediction for 2023
  3. An Inconvenient Revolution
  4. Will 2023 Be "Just an Average Recession in an Average Year" or Will It Be Transformational?
  5. Why the Next Decade Will Not Be Like the Previous 40 Years
  6. What's Your Line in the Sand? The $25 Burger?
  7. Time to Get Out of Dodge?
  8. A Great Madness Sweeps the Land
  9. Monopolies and Cartels Are "Communism for the Rich"
  10. How Things Fall Apart
  11. The Blowback from Stripmining Labor for 45 Years Is Just Beginning
  12. The Monopoly - Labor "Let It Rot" Death Spiral
  13. The Bubble Economy's Credit-Asset Death Spiral
  14. This Is of Course Insane

November 2022

  1. The "Oil Curse" and Splashy PR Announcements of Oil Production Cuts
  2. The Uncertainty in China Is Kryptonite to Global Markets
  3. FTX and the Corruption of America
  4. What Do You Value Most? Thanksgiving 2022
  5. Demographic Cliff + Let It Rot = Collapse of Global Growth
  6. There's No Bottom Until Frenzied Speculation Turns to Dust
  7. FTX: The Dominoes of Financial Fraud Have Yet to Fall
  8. Where Crypto Went Wrong
  9. Asymmetries, Distortions and Denial
  10. I Used To Be Disgusted, Now I'm Disabused
  11. Regardless of Who's Elected, Imperial Corruption Rules the Nation
  12. The Unintended Consequences of Unintended Consequences
  13. The Era of All-Powerful Central Banks Is Over

October 2022

  1. Yield Inversions Guarantee Recessions--or Do They?
  2. What Does Liberation Mean in the Real World?
  3. The End of the "Growth" Road
  4. Now That Housing Is Rolling Over, Is That Fixer-Upper a Deal?
  5. A Lesson in Markets and Bureaucracies: The Very Instructive History of Rat Farms
  6. Getting Rich Is One Thing; The Tricky Part Is Keeping It
  7. What Everybody Knows No Longer Matters
  8. What If Everyone's Wrong (Just Long Enough to Blow Up Their Account)?
  9. Everything's Fixed--Except What's Broken
  10. Beware False Either/ Or Choices--Especially with the Fed
  11. 'Quiet Quitting' Isn't Just About Jobs; It's About a Crumbling Economy
  12. We Blew It: Malinvestment and the Plundering of Productive Assets
  13. Devil's Advocates are Investors' Best Friends

September 2022

  1. Chart a Course To Self-Reliance
  2. Loonshots and Collapse
  3. 2022-2030: Transformation or Stagnation?
  4. Two Easy Predictions: Wealth Tax and Windfall Tax
  5. Peering Into the Crystal Ball, We See... Instability Leading to Collapse
  6. The End of Cheap Food
  7. The Fourth Turn, Turn, Turn
  8. Why This Recession Is Different
  9. The EU's Crisis Is Global: Neocolonialism, Hyper-Financialization and Hyper-Globalization Come Home to Roost
  10. Why Some Cities May No Longer Be Viable
  11. The Global Energy Crunch

August 2022

  1. The System Is Busy Cannibalizing Itself
  2. Make Sure You Download the Latest Ministry of Propaganda Updates
  3. Economies Can Burn Out, Too--And They Are
  4. What's Worse Than Inflation? Depression + Inflation
  5. The Fed Can't Stop Supply-Side Inflation
  6. The Real Story of America Abandoning the Gold Standard
  7. Deglobalization Is Inflationary
  8. A Tale of Two Recessions: One Excellent, One Tumultuous
  9. A Most Peculiar Recession
  10. Are Older Workers Propping Up the U.S. Economy?
  11. Rather Than Focus on What You Don't Control ("The News"), Focus on What You Do Control: What You Grow, Eat and Own
  12. China at the Crossroads
  13. Can We "Export Inflation?" Yes We Can, Yes We Are

July 2022

  1. What Can The Beatles Teach Us about Management?
  2. How Much of "Inflation" Is the Price Being Jacked Up Under the Excuse of "Inflation"?
  3. There Won't Be Any Winners Because The Status Quo Is Corrupt Everywhere
  4. What's Truly Important? The Global Revaluation Is Accelerating
  5. When You Put Too Many Eggs in One Basket...
  6. Why the Labor Shortage Isn't Going Away
  7. The Real Policy Error Is Expanding Debt and Calling It "Growth"
  8. The Only Real Solution Is Default
  9. US Dollar Strength: "Unintended Consequences" Or "The Empire Strikes Back"?
  10. Calm Before the Tempest?
  11. Why Nations Fail
  12. You Know What Would Be Really Irritating? A Crazy Rally to New Highs
  13. The One Solution to All Our Problems
  14. The Most Valuable Form of Money Nobody's Seen--Yet

June 2022

  1. Why the Housing Bubble Bust Is Baked In
  2. The Age of Discord
  3. The Global Power Shift Isn't West to East--It's Not That Simple
  4. Our No-Win "Kobayashi Maru" Economy
  5. The Difference Between a Forecast and a Guess
  6. Our Economy In a Nutshell
  7. Could Retail "Bagholders" Spark a Rally "Smart Money" Will Be Forced to Chase?
  8. What Happens When the Workforce No Longer Wants to Work?
  9. Hunter's Hooker: A Teachable Insight into American Capitalism
  10. There's No Stopping a Recessionary Reckoning
  11. New Prosperity Magazine: Goldilocks and the Crack-Up Boom
  12. "Pay-to-Play" for the Rest of Us
  13. Who's Going to Fix What's Broken?

May 2022

  1. Why America Decays: The Tyranny of Self-Interest
  2. I'm Looking for Ten Readers Willing to Pony Up $1 for the Crazy-Valuable Content Here
  3. Livelihoods in a Degrowth Economy
  4. The Consent of the Governed Is Slipping Away
  5. What Could Go Right?
  6. The Solution for Social Media Spam Bots Is Already Here
  7. The Epidemic Nobody Talks About: Burnout
  8. Checking In On Five Long-Term Cycles
  9. Curveballs in the Housing Bubble Bust
  10. Herd on the Street
  11. The Problem with Money
  12. What Happens When Complexity Unravels?
  13. The Contrarian Curse
  14. Is Housing a Bubble That's About to Crash?

April 2022

  1. Not the 1970s or the 1920s: We're in Uncharted Territory
  2. Doom Porn and Empty Optimism
  3. Crash Is King
  4. Staring Into the Abyss
  5. What's Your Plan A, B and C?
  6. A Couple of Thoughts on Big Numbers
  7. Debt Saturation: Off the Cliff We Go
  8. Yes, It Is Different This Time
  9. Which Leads to Doom, Which Leads to Revival: Free Money or Frugality?
  10. The Demographics of Financial Doom
  11. For Freak's Sake, People, Even the Crash Test Dummies Are Nervous
  12. The Global Order Has Cracked
  13. It's All the Aliens' Fault

March 2022

  1. Cancel the Funeral for the US Dollar: The "Patient" Just Leaped Out of the Coffin
  2. Calm Before the Storm?
  3. The Community Economy Needs Its Own Money
  4. Control What You Can
  5. Autocracy's Fatal Weakness
  6. How Healthcare Became Sickcare
  7. Risk Accumulates Where No One Is Looking For It
  8. Serf-Expression
  9. The Only Non-Totalitarian Solution to Resource Scarcity: Decentralized Degrowth
  10. The Upside of a Crushing Recession
  11. What If It Breaks?
  12. If You Want to Build Back Better, Reshore Our Entire Supply Chain
  13. Wars Rarely Achieve Their Initial Goals: The Curse of Second-Order Effects

February 2022

  1. Why So Few See the Last Chance to Exit
  2. Geopolitics and Degrowth
  3. Our Financial System Is Optimized for Sociopaths and Exploitation
  4. Our Leaders Made a Pact with the Devil, and Now the Devil Wants His Due
  5. The Winter of Our Discontent: Hubris Is Ascendent
  6. Juggling Sticks of Dynamite: Our Fatally Distorted Sense of Risk
  7. Let's Talk "Fed Policy Error," Pushers and Addiction
  8. The Cost of Financialization-Globalization: You Lost $500,000 and Gained $137.13
  9. The "Crapification" of the U.S. Economy Is Now Complete
  10. How Empires Die
  11. The Bear Awakens
  12. Can a Nation Prosper as its Institutions Fail?

January 2022

  1. No Wonder the Market Is Skittish
  2. Inflation Winners and Losers
  3. Why Bear Markets Are Tough
  4. The Cult of Speculation Is a Cult of Doom
  5. Choose One, But Only One: Defend the Billionaire's Bubble or the U.S. Dollar and Empire
  6. Politics Is Dead, Here's What Killed It
  7. Should You Move While You Can, Or When You Must?
  8. The Real Revolution Is Underway But Nobody Recognizes It
  9. The Real Threat to Democracy is Corrupting Wealth Inequality
  10. Why Don't We Cut Out the Middleman and Just Elect Pfizer and Merck?
  11. The Economy / Market Look "Healthy" Until They Have a Seizure and Collapse
  12. What Will Surprise Us in 2022
  13. 2022: The Year of Breakdown

2021 172

December 2021

  1. Last Chance to Get Out Before the Crash
  2. Sleepwalking Into the Abyss in 2022
  3. My Christmas Eve Song: You Owe Me
  4. Watch the Top 5%--They're the Key to the Whole Economy
  5. How Vulnerable Is Your Personal Supply Chain?
  6. One Chart Traders Might Want to Ponder
  7. Smart Enough to Get Rich, Not Smart Enough to Keep It
  8. Get in Crash Positions
  9. Xi's Gambit: China at the Crossroads
  10. Can Any Nation-State Survive the Era of Inequality and Scarcity?
  11. Once Risk-On Switches to Risk-Off, the Bottom Is Far Lower Than Anyone Believes Possible
  12. The Long Cycles Have All Turned: Look Out Below

November 2021

  1. Why Inflation Is a Runaway Freight Train
  2. We Don't Talk About Collapse To Revel In It, We Talk About Collapse to Prevent It
  3. Two Things to be Thankful For
  4. When Risk and Opportunity Become Personal
  5. When Everything Is Artifice and PR, Collapse Beckons
  6. I'm Looking for Ten Readers Willing to Pony Up $1 for the Crazy-Valuable Content Here
  7. The Fed's Moral Hazard Monster Is About to Lay Waste to "Wealth"
  8. Top 1% Gains More Wealth Than the Combined GDPs of Japan, Germany, UK, France, India and Italy, Bottom 50%--You Get Nothing
  9. Paging Isaac Newton: Time to Buy the Top of This Bubble
  10. Look Out Below: Why a Rug-Pull Flash Crash Makes Perfect Sense
  11. The Contrarian Trade of the Decade: The Dollar Refuses to Die
  12. Eight Reasons Scarcities Will Increase Rather Than Evaporate
  13. One Solution to Soaring Food Prices: Start Your 2022 Garden Now
  14. Whistleblowers Torpedo Facebook and Pfizer: Who's Next?
  15. Revenge of the Real World

October 2021

  1. Will China Pop the Global Everything Bubble? Yes
  2. Santa's Revenge: Everyone Front-Running My Rally, You Get Nothing
  3. Skimpflation, Shrinkflation and the Rising Rebellion of Workers and Consumers
  4. Doing 90 MPH on Deadman's Curve: A Few Thoughts on Risk
  5. A Nation of Imposters
  6. America Is Now a Kleptocrapocracy
  7. Software Ate the World and Now Has Indigestion
  8. Are We Really Crazy Enough to Believe This Is Going to Work?
  9. Everything Solid Melts into Air
  10. America's Bottom 50% Have Nowhere To Go But Down
  11. Life's a Beach Until the Tsunami Hits: Four Waves Nobody Cares About--Yet
  12. Why Shortages Are Permanent: Global Supply Shortages Make Fantastic Financial Sense
  13. Risk Was Never Low, It Was Only Hidden
  14. While Everyone Cheers Soaring "Wealth," America's Social Order Is Unraveling

September 2021

  1. The Market Crash Nobody Thinks Is Possible Is Coming
  2. Sorry, Fed, Inflation is Already Embedded
  3. Are We Really So "Rich"? A New Way of Defining Wealth
  4. What's Really Going On in China
  5. America 2021: Inequality is Now Baked In
  6. Now That the American Dream Is Reserved for the Wealthy, The Smart Crowd Is Opting Out
  7. Ministry of Manipulation: No Wonder Trust and Credibility Have Been Lost
  8. The Illusion of Getting Rich While Producing Nothing
  9. The U.S. Economy In a Nutshell: When Critical Parts Are On "Indefinite Back Order," the Machine Grinds to a Halt
  10. The Banality of (Financial) Evil
  11. The Fed Is Fatally Corrupt-- And So Is the Rest of America's Status Quo
  12. Please Don't Pop Our Precious Bubble!
  13. Is Anyone Willing to Call the Top of the Everything Bubble?
  14. The Illusion of Stability, the Inevitability of Collapse
  15. Magical Thinking About Green Energy

August 2021

  1. The Elites' Battle for the Future America
  2. Do You Live in a Social Capital Desert?
  3. Fed Up with the Fed's Abuse of Power
  4. How to Identify a Bubble: Wall Street Says It's Not a Bubble
  5. The Upside of a Stock Market Crash
  6. Why the Wheels Are Coming Off
  7. The Smart Money Has Already Sold
  8. Why the Global Economy Is Unraveling
  9. Inflation: Keynes, the Gold Watch and Everything
  10. Dear Fed: Are You Insane?
  11. The End of Global Tourism?
  12. Stripmining the Middle Class: Neoliberalism Comes Home to Roost
  13. While the Herd Slumbers, Risk Is Rocketing Higher
  14. What's Behind the Inflation Hall of Mirrors?

July 2021

  1. Why Don't Billionaires Pay the Same High Tax Rates the Rest of Us Pay?
  2. The Moment Wall Street Has Been Waiting For: Retail Is All In
  3. America Is a Moral Cesspool, and Student Loans Prove It
  4. America Has Lost the Trade War with China, and the Real Pain Has Yet to Begin
  5. Have We Reached "Peak Self-Glorifying Billionaire"?
  6. Big Tech: "Our Terms Have Changed"
  7. How Breakdown Cascades Into Collapse
  8. Welcome to the 21st Century Sequel of the Catastrophic 1600s
  9. Here's Why America's Labor-Shortage Will Drive Inflation Higher
  10. The $50 Trillion Plundered from Workers by America's Aristocracy Is Trickling Back
  11. Housing Bubble #2: Ready to Pop?
  12. A Few Things About Reinforced Concrete High-Rise Condos
  13. July 4th: Sorry, America, You Lost Me
  14. Virus Z: A Thought Experiment

June 2021

  1. The Systemic Risk No One Sees
  2. When Expedient "Saves" Become Permanent, Ruin Is Assured
  3. America's Social Order is Unraveling
  4. It Always Ends The Same Way: Crisis, Crash, Collapse
  5. Front-Running the Crash
  6. USA 2021: Capitalism for the Powerless, Crony-Socialism for the Powerful
  7. Is Inflation "Transitory"? Here's Your Simple Test
  8. Seven Things Nobody Talks About that Will Eventually Matter--A Lot
  9. The Fed Is Wrong: Inflation Is Sticky
  10. The Sources of Rip-Your-Face-Off Inflation Few Dare Discuss
  11. Post-Pandemic Metamorphosis: Never Going Back
  12. A Couple Things About Inflation
  13. (Not) Living Large on Social Security

May 2021

  1. Why the Minimum Wage Should Be $18/Hour
  2. Increasingly Chaotic Volatility Ahead--The New Normal Few Think Possible
  3. Do We Really Want to Return to "Normal" If "Normal" Is Destroying the Planet?
  4. Systemic Risks Abound
  5. Fed to Treasury Dealers and Congress: We Can't Count On You, We're Taking Charge
  6. FOMO Is Loco
  7. U.S. Stimulus Has Created a Boom--in China
  8. Sickcare is the Knife in the Heart of Employment--and the Economy
  9. Why Wage Inflation Will Accelerate
  10. The 'Take This Job and Shove It' Recession
  11. Here's How 'Everything Bubbles' Pop
  12. Hey Fed, Explain Again How Making Billionaires Richer Creates Jobs
  13. Covid Has Triggered The Next Great Financial Crisis
  14. Insights into Risk: Taleb and Tyson

April 2021

  1. Which Lifeboat Will You Choose?
  2. America Is Exceptionally...Kleptocratic: Wealth/Power Inequality and the Slide Into Disorder
  3. Warning Light Flashing Red
  4. What's Yours Is Now Mine: America's Era of Accelerating Expropriation
  5. The People Have Lost Faith in the State, and the State Has Lost Faith in its People
  6. The Only Way to Get Ahead Now Is Crazy-Risky Speculation
  7. America's Fatal Synergies
  8. If You Don't See Any Risk, Ask Who Will "Buy the Dip" in a Freefall?
  9. What's Taboo? Everything Except Greed
  10. The Middle Class Has Finally Been Suckered into the Casino
  11. The "Helicopter Parent" Fed and the Fatal Crash of Risk
  12. Is a Cultural Revolution Brewing in America?
  13. What Could Go Awry?
  14. What's Changed and What Hasn't in a Tumultuous Year
  15. The UFO/Fed Connection

March 2021

  1. Our "Wealth": Cloud Castles in the Sky
  2. The Hazardous Detour in the Road to "Recovery" Few Foresee
  3. Health, Wealth and What Kills Most of Us
  4. Do We Really Think a Band-Aid Will Heal a Tumor?
  5. Welcome to the Winter of Our Discontent
  6. We Don't Need The Great Reset, We Need The Great Rebalancing
  7. How We Stumbled to the Edge of the Cliff
  8. Our Dead Money Economy
  9. Stimulus Addiction Disorder: The Debt-Disposable Earnings Pyramid
  10. The Art of Survival, Taoism and the Warring States
  11. The Cannibalization Is Complete: Only Inedible Zombies Remain
  12. The "Wait and See" Economy's Moment of Truth
  13. Too Busy Frontrunning Inflation, Nobody Sees the Deflationary Tsunami
  14. The Global Financial End-Game
  15. When Does This Travesty of a Mockery of a Sham Finally Implode?
  16. About That +6.8% GDP Forecast: Remember That GDP = Waste
  17. What "Normal" Are We Returning To? The Depression Nobody Dares Acknowledge

February 2021

  1. They Can Always Print More Money But We Can't Print More Time
  2. Trapped!
  3. Oil and Debt: Why Our Financial System Is Unsustainable
  4. Anatomy of a Bubble and Crash
  5. The Babble-On 7: The Fed and Yellen
  6. Next Up: Global Depression
  7. What Poisoned America?
  8. GBOAT: Is This the Greatest Bubble of All Time?
  9. Presidents Day: Carter's Prescient Farewell Address in 1981
  10. Gains Are Unreal, Losses Are Real
  11. What Collapsed the Middle Class?
  12. Debt and the Demise of the Middle Class
  13. The Top 10% Is Doing Just Fine, The Middle Class Is Dying on the Vine
  14. Our Fragile, Brittle Stock Market
  15. Silver Swans, Maginot Lines and the Unforeseen Risks of Collapse

January 2021

  1. The Stock Market, Fatally Wounded by the Truth, Will Stumble and Crash
  2. The Democratization / Demonization of Speculation
  3. The Coming Revolt of the Middle Class
  4. Everything Is Broken
  5. How the Fed Fails
  6. The Dangerously Diminishing Returns on Monetary and Fiscal Stimulus
  7. A Few Notes on Deflation/Inflation
  8. Designed To Fail, Failure Guaranteed
  9. Is 2021 an Echo of 1641?
  10. Five "Interesting" Financial Tidbits
  11. 2021: If It Wasn't For Bad Luck, We Wouldn't Have No Luck At All
  12. The Tyranny Nobody Talks About
  13. The Coming War on Wealth and the Wealthy
  14. 2020 Was a Snack, 2021 Is the Main Course

2020 234

December 2020

  1. The Top 10%'s Bubble Is About to Burst
  2. 2020 the "Worst Year Ever"--You're Joking, Right?
  3. The Most Hopeful Scenario for 2021
  4. Give Yourself a Gift Next Year: Agency
  5. Our Phantom Middle Class
  6. Big Media: Selling the Narrative and Crushing Dissent for Fun and Profit
  7. What Would Happen If the Fed Ceased to Exist?
  8. When Social Capital Becomes More Valuable Than Financial Capital
  9. Can 20 Years of Deflation Be Compressed into Two Years? We're About to Find Out
  10. One Little Problem with the "All-Electric" Auto Fleet: What Do We Do with all the "Waste" Gasoline?
  11. New Audiobook, New Song, Renewed Focus
  12. Dreaming of a Christmas Without Stuff Nobody Wants or Needs
  13. Cycles, Systems and Seats in the Coliseum
  14. Welcome to the U.S.S.A.'s Banquet of Consequences
  15. Covid Is Toppling America's "Points of Failure" Dominoes
  16. Covid Is Revealing the Cancerous Underbelly of U.S. Healthcare
  17. About Those Vaccine ID Cards...
  18. Do You Really Think the Empire Will Sacrifice the Dollar to Further Enrich Billionaires?

November 2020

  1. 2021 is Already Optimized for Failure
  2. Moral Decay Leads to Collapse
  3. A Dimly Lit Thanksgiving
  4. Our Frustrations Run Far Deeper Than Covid Lockdowns
  5. Why I'm Hopeful About 2021
  6. The One Chart That Predicts our Future
  7. Vaccines--Too Little, Too Late?
  8. U.S. Healthcare Is Unraveling
  9. Don't Blame Covid: The Economy is Imploding from Over-Capacity and Corrupt Cartels
  10. Prepare for Winter
  11. "The Great Reset" Already Happened
  12. Everything You Don't Want to Know About Covid Vaccines (Because You Can't Be Bullish Anymore)
  13. There's No Vaccine for a Terminally Ill Economy
  14. No Wonder the Super-Rich Love Inflation
  15. Forget GOAT, Look at GBOAT: The Greatest Bubble Of All Time
  16. Here's Our Historical Analogy Menu: Rome, the USSR or Revolutionary France
  17. What We Don't Elect Matters Most: Central Banking and the Permanent Government
  18. Our Imperial Presidency
  19. Want Hope and Real Growth? Let the Dead Forest of Corruption and Fed Manipulation Burn Down

October 2020

  1. "Capitalism" Is No Longer Attractive to Capitalists
  2. ALICE Doesn't Work Here Anymore
  3. Flying Blind: Clueless about Risk, We're Speeding Toward Systemic Failure
  4. How Systems Collapse: Reaping What We've Sown
  5. Next Up: Global Depression
  6. Everything We Assume Is Permanent Is Actually Fragile
  7. Everything is Staged
  8. The New Tyranny Few Even Recognize
  9. Will the Stock Market Be Dragged to the Guillotine?
  10. The "Titanic" Analogy You Haven't Heard: Passively Accepting Oblivion
  11. Why We're Doomed: Our Delusional Faith in Incremental Change
  12. Our Simulacrum Economy
  13. How We Institutionalized Incompetence
  14. Has Our Luck Finally Run Out?
  15. A Hard Rain Is Going to Fall
  16. What Could Go Wrong? Plenty
  17. Corruption Is Now Our Way of Life
  18. Things Change
  19. The Empire of Uncertainty

September 2020

  1. The Urban Exodus and How Greatness Goes Bankrupt
  2. Helicopter Money and the End of Taxes
  3. Goodbye To All That: Are Our Rituals of "Prosperity" Increasingly Meaningless?
  4. The Road to Nowhere: Whatever Can't Be Politicized Ceases to Exist
  5. The Silent Exodus Nobody Sees: Leaving Work Forever
  6. Inflation and "Socialism-Lite" Are Just What the Billionaires Want
  7. The Bill for America's $50 Trillion Gluttony of Inequality Is Overdue
  8. "Inflation" and America's Accelerating Class War
  9. This Is Why Inflation Will Rip Everyone's Face Off
  10. Sacrifice for Thee But None For Me
  11. Isn't It Obvious We Need a New System?
  12. The Four D's That Define the Future
  13. Dear Jerry and James: You're Both Wrong About New York
  14. This Is How It Ends: All That Is Solid Melts Into Air
  15. Inflation Is Stealth Austerity
  16. Intolerance and Authoritarianism Accelerate Disunity and Collapse
  17. In the Footsteps of Rome: Maybe It No Longer Matters Who's Emperor
  18. Plugging into "Small Everything": Wake Up and Smell the 3 Cs--Community, Cash, and Coin (Coffee optional)
  19. Fighting and Winning against "Big Everything"
  20. Extorting the "Little Guy": The Special "Screw You" of Junk Bond Bailouts

August 2020

  1. Deflation of the Citizenry's Hard Assets Will Be a Huge Buying Opportunity for Insider Power Elites
  2. Nihilism Embodied: Our Lawless Financial System
  3. How Extremes Become More Extreme, Triggering Collapse
  4. America's Metastasizing Class Wars
  5. The Pandemic Is Accelerating Trends That Are Disrupting the Foundations of the Economy
  6. How Nations Collapse: Disunity
  7. Big Tech, Monopoly and the Pretense of Capitalism
  8. Will Skilled Hands-On Labor Finally Become More Valuable?
  9. Our Systemic Drift to Collapse
  10. The Empire Will Strike Back: Dollar Supremacy Is the Fed's Imperial Mandate
  11. It's Do-or-Die, Deep State: Either Strangle the Stock Market Rally Now or Cede the Election to Trump
  12. Here's Why the "Impossible" Economic Collapse Is Unavoidable
  13. The "New Normal" Is De-Normalization
  14. Could Wall Street Lose the Election?
  15. The Economy Is Mortally Wounded
  16. If the "Market" Never Goes Down, The System Is Doomed
  17. The Bogus "Recovery," Stress and Burnout
  18. TikTok and our Last-Ditch Desperation for Social Mobility
  19. A Vaccine May Not Be the "Magical Cure" Everyone Anticipates

July 2020

  1. Memo from Insiders: Dear Bagholders, Thanks for Buying Our Shares at the Top
  2. The Next Leg Down: The Top 10% Are About to Take a Hit
  3. Our Slide into Social Psychosis and Breakdown
  4. The Nation Is Falling Into the Abyss Between Wall Street and Main Street
  5. Why Does It Feel Like We're in "Life During Wartime"?
  6. Why the Unraveling Will Accelerate
  7. Introducing the "Everything Bubble" Sentiment-o-Meter
  8. Inflation/Deflation: The Economy Is an Elephant
  9. Inequality Is America's Monster Id
  10. The Real Unemployment Rate is 21%--and Heading Higher
  11. Welcome to the Crazed, Frantic Demise of Finance Capitalism
  12. This Is a Financial Extinction Event
  13. Could America Have a French-Style Revolution?
  14. How Do We Change the Leadership of our Quasi-Sovereign Big Tech Neofeudal Nobility?
  15. The Sinking Titanic's Great Pumps Finally Fail
  16. You Are Now Leaving FantasyLand: The Losses Will Be Taken By Somebody
  17. The American Economy in Four Words: Neofeudal Extortion, Decline, Collapse
  18. What Will Be the Most Desirable Status Symbols in the Greater Depression?
  19. What Makes You Think the Stock Market Will Even Exist in 2024?
  20. How We Got Here: the Global Economy's 75-Year Stumble to the Precipice
  21. Dancing Through the Geopolitical Minefield
  22. An Interesting Juncture in History

June 2020

  1. The New Normal: Extremes of Neofeudalism, Incompetence, Authoritarianism and Relocalization
  2. Forget the V, W or L Recovery: Focus on N-P-B
  3. The Depression Dominoes Are Toppling
  4. Is Data Our New False Religion?
  5. The Illusion of Control: What If Nobody's in Charge?
  6. Dear Junkies Addicted to Fed Smack: The Monkey on Your Back Is Now a Gorilla
  7. For the Rich to Keep Getting Richer, We Have to Sacrifice Everything Else
  8. The Fed's Casino Is In Flames, But Please Continue Gambling
  9. The Fed's Grand Bargain Has Finally Imploded
  10. Is the Pandemic Over and a V-Shaped Recovery Baked In?
  11. Our Wile E. Coyote Economy: Nothing But Financial Engineering
  12. Unstoppable: The Greatest Depression and the Reverse Wealth Effect
  13. Deep State to Powell: Stop Goosing Stocks Higher Or You'll Re-Elect Trump
  14. Global Crisis: the Convergence of Marx, Kafka, Orwell and Huxley
  15. What Lies Ahead: Destabilizing Social Stratification
  16. When Institutions Fail, Fragmentation and Decentralization Become Solutions
  17. The Post-Covid Economy Will Be Very Different From the Pre-Pandemic Bubble Economy
  18. Truth Is What We Hide, Cover Stories Are What We Sell
  19. We're Living the Founding Fathers' Nightmare: America Is Corrupt to the Core

May 2020

  1. This Is How Systems Collapse
  2. First the Deflationary Deluge of Assets Crashing, Then the Tsunami of Inflation
  3. Social Media's Plantation of the Mind
  4. Re-Opening the Economy Won't Fix What's Broken
  5. An Economy That Cannot Allow Stocks to Decline Is Too Fragile To Survive
  6. TINA's Orgy: Anything Goes, Winners Take All
  7. Opting Out, American Style
  8. The Pandemic Gives Us Permission To Get What We Always Wanted
  9. This Sucker's Going Down: The Destruction of Demand
  10. Our Fate Is Sealed, Vaccines Won't Matter: Four Long Cycles Align
  11. Consumer Spending Will Not Rebound--Here's Why
  12. Globalization and Financialization Are Dead, and so Is Everything That Depended on Them
  13. The Collapse of Main Street and Local Tax Revenues Cannot Be Reversed
  14. What the Pandemic Revealed: a Morally Bankrupt Culture
  15. The Way of the Tao Is Reversal
  16. The Fed Is Fueling a Revolt That It Cannot Control
  17. The Outlines of a Better World Are Emerging
  18. Surviving 2020 #3: Plans A, B and C
  19. Surviving 2020 #2: 16 Suggestions
  20. Surviving 2020 #1: Bug-Out Bunkers, Taoism and the Warring States
  21. Why Assets Will Crash
  22. Our Inevitable Collapse: We Can't Save a Fragile Economy With Bailouts That Increase Fragility

April 2020

  1. The Pandemic Is Deepening America's Many Divides
  2. With Superfluous Demand in Free-Fall, What's the Upside of Re-Opening a Small Business?
  3. The Crash Has Only Just Begun
  4. No, This Is Not Another 1929, 1973, 1987, 2000, or 2008
  5. Here's Why the Economy Won't Recover--and No, It's Not Covid-19 or the Lockdown
  6. What's Collapsing Can't Be Saved: Our Fraudulent Economy
  7. False Reading: The Fed's Equities Light Is "Green" But the Economy Is Crashing
  8. Here We Go Again: When Bubbles Pop, Only the First Sellers Avoid Destruction
  9. Between a Rock and a Hard Place: Pandemic and Growth
  10. While the Top 10% and the Fed Cheer Stocks Rebounding, the Bottom 60% Lose their Livelihoods and Lives
  11. Overcapacity / Oversupply Everywhere: Massive Deflation Ahead
  12. Can "Sickcare" Survive the Pandemic?
  13. There's No Going Back, We Can Only Go Forward
  14. Buy The Tumor, Sell the News
  15. The World Has Changed More Than We Know
  16. The Lockdown Wouldn't Be So Devastating If Our Economy Wasn't So Rigged, Brittle and Exploitive
  17. If Lockdown Is a Needless Over-Reaction, Then Why Did China Lockdown Half its Economy?
  18. When Bulls Are Over-Anxious to Catch the Rocketship Higher, This Isn't the Bottom
  19. The Wonderful Insanity of Globalization

March 2020

  1. Pandemic Pandemonium: The Tides of Globalization and Financialization Reverse
  2. What Happens as State and Local Tax Revenues Crater?
  3. The New (Forced) Frugality
  4. The Pandemic Is Accelerating the Breakdown That Began a Decade Ago
  5. Helicopter Money: Short-Term Relief Won't Cure our Financial Disease
  6. The System Will Not Return to "Normal," and That's Good; We Can Do Better
  7. The Global Repricing of Assets Can't Be Stopped
  8. Covid-19 Helicopter Money: Go Big Now or Go Home
  9. The Covid-19 Dominoes Fall: The World Is Insolvent
  10. I'm Looking for Ten Readers Willing to Pony Up $1 for the Crazy-Valuable Content Here
  11. Goodbye to All That: The Demise of Globalization and Imperial Pretensions
  12. And Then Came the Lawsuits: Pandemic in a Litigious Society
  13. What the Fed Can Do: Print and Buy, Buy, Buy
  14. The Gathering Storm: Could Covid-19 Overwhelm Us in the Months Ahead?
  15. Could China's Overlapping Crises Spiral Out of Control?
  16. Did Covid-19 Just Pop All the Global Financial Bubbles?
  17. The Limits of Force: A Bayonet in the Back Will Not Restore China's Economy

February 2020

  1. Could the Covid-19 Pandemic Collapse the U.S. Healthcare System?
  2. The Economic Cataclysm Ahead
  3. How Many Cases of Covid-19 Will It Take For You to Decide Not to Frequent Public Places?
  4. No, The Fed Will Not "Save the Market"--Here's Why
  5. When Will We Admit Covid-19 Is Unstoppable and Global Depression Is Inevitable?
  6. When Bubbles Pop, Only the First Sellers Escape Being Bagholders
  7. Covid-19: Global Retrenchment Will Obliterate Sales, Profits and Yes, Big Tech
  8. Omens, Portents, Karma and the Mandate of Heaven
  9. The World Is Awash in Oil, False Assurances, Magical Thinking and Complacency as Global Demand Careens Toward a Cliff
  10. COVID-19 Pandemic: The Complacent Are Clueless
  11. The Fed Has Created a Monster Bubble It Can No Longer Control
  12. The Violent Collision of Market Fantasy and Viral Reality
  13. Our "Come to Mao" Reckoning and the Next Cultural Revolution
  14. China's Fatal Dilemma
  15. Controlling the Narrative Is Not the Same as Controlling the Virus
  16. The Pandemic Isn't Ending, It's Just the Beginning of Global Disorder and Depression
  17. Pandemic, Lies and Videos
  18. When China's Supply Chains Break, so Will the Delusion the U.S. Economy Is Invulnerable
  19. Projecting "Wave 2" and "Wave 3" of the Coronavirus Pandemic
  20. Brace for Impact: Global Pandemic Already Baked In

January 2020

  1. Second-Order Effects: The Unexpectedly Slippery Path to Dow 10,000
  2. Has the Global Economy Finally Exhausted its Good Luck?
  3. Coronavirus and the "Unsinkable" Titanic Analogy
  4. Could the Coronavirus Epidemic Be the Tipping Point in the Supply Chain Leaving China?
  5. Is the Market Grossly Underestimating the Potential Impact of the Coronavirus Epidemic?
  6. Some Practical Questions about the Coronavirus Epidemic
  7. Don't Be Too Sure
  8. The Future of What's Called "Capitalism"
  9. If the Martians Teleported the Davos Crowd to a Distant Moon, Who Would Mourn and Who Would Cheer?
  10. Calling Things by Their Real Names
  11. If Promoting Wealth Inequality and Social Breakdown Is Evil, The Fed Is Evil
  12. No Matter How Much Money the Fed Prints, We Still Can't Afford Nice Things
  13. Instability Rising: Why 2020 Will Be Different
  14. 409Ks, 90% Gains, The Fed and Darth Vader's Warning
  15. Just a Friendly Heads-Up, Bulls: The Fed Just Slashed its Balance Sheet
  16. The Fed Can't Reverse the Decline of Financialization and Globalization
  17. Was Marx Right about Capitalism Destroying Itself from Within?
  18. Is This "The Top"?
  19. The Two Charts You Need to Ignore or Rationalize Away in 2020 (Unless You're a Bear)
  20. The Fed's "Not-QE" and the $33 Trillion Stock Market in Three Charts

2019 210

December 2019

  1. Grab-Bag Resolutions 2020
  2. The Hour Is Getting Late
  3. Is Social Media the New Tobacco?
  4. A "Market" Crash Is Baked In--Here's Why
  5. All I Want for Christmas Is an Unmanipulated Market
  6. Welcome to the Era of Intensifying Chaos and New Weapons of Conflict
  7. Our Fragmentation Accelerates
  8. Skyrocketing Costs Will Pop All the Bubbles
  9. OK Boomer, OK Fed
  10. A "Market" That Needs $1 Trillion in Panic-Money-Printing by the Fed to Stave Off Implosion Is Not a Market
  11. The "Trade Deal": A Pathetic Parody, Credibility Squandered
  12. Why "This Sucker Is Going Down"
  13. The Taxonomy of Collapse
  14. Suppressing Dissent Guarantees Disorder and Collapse
  15. Costs Are Spiraling Out of Control
  16. Crunchtime: When Events Outrun Plan B
  17. Could America Survive a Truth Commission?

November 2019

  1. A China Trade Deal Just Finalizes the Divorce
  2. Thanksgiving 2019: A Few Things I'm Grateful For
  3. We Can Only Choose One: Our National Economy or Globalization
  4. Darn, This Is Inconvenient: Apple Is Destroying the Planet to Maximize Profits
  5. The Hollowing Out of America
  6. What's Been Normalized? Nothing Good or Positive
  7. Political and Social Conflict Is Accelerating: Here's Why
  8. If Not-QE Is QE, then is Not-a-Blowoff-Top a Blowoff Top?
  9. Medicare-for-All "Socialism" Is Just Another Racket
  10. Corporate America Is an Anti-Social Black Plague: Negative Network Effects Run Amok
  11. Stock Market Cheerleading: Why Do We Celebrate the Super-Rich Getting Richer?
  12. Now That We've Incentivized Sociopaths--Guess What Happens Next
  13. No Recession Ever Again? The Yellowstone Analogy
  14. The Middle Class Is Now The Muddle Class
  15. Chumps: China Is Playing Trump and His Trade Team

October 2019

  1. The Political Parties and the Media Have Abandoned the Working "Middle Class"
  2. Has California Lost The Mandate of Heaven?
  3. Will MMT Work as Intended, Or Will It Trigger the Collapse of "Money"?
  4. Recent Interviews on a Variety of Topics
  5. This Is What Worries Me
  6. The Unraveling Quickens
  7. Prying Open the Overton Window
  8. What We've Lost
  9. Welcome to the USSR: the United States of Suppression and Repression
  10. Economic Decay Leads to Social and Political Decay
  11. Let Me Know When It's Over
  12. The Ultimate Heresy: Technology Can't Fix What's Broken
  13. America 2019: Even the Wealthy Are Poorer in Everything That Matters
  14. Will the Clintons Destroy the Democratic Party?
  15. Our Time/Labor Is Finite, But Money Is Infinite
  16. What's Holding Up the Market?
  17. Democracy Is Now a Hindrance to the Imperial State
  18. Could Pricey Urban Meccas become Crime-Ridden Ghost Towns?

September 2019

  1. So Sorry, Your Karma Ran Over Your Dogma
  2. Pets Are Now as Unaffordable As College, Housing and Healthcare
  3. Here's How We Are Silenced by Big Tech
  4. Financial Storm Clouds Gather
  5. Automation and the Crisis of Work
  6. The New Orthodoxy: Blasphemy, Heresy and the New Inquisition
  7. Markets That Live by the Fed, Die by the Fed
  8. The Black Swan Is a Drone
  9. What a Relief that the U.S. and Global Economies Are Booming
  10. The Inevitable Bursting of Our Bubble Economy
  11. How Deep Is the Rot in America's Institutions?
  12. These Are Not Signs of a Healthy Market
  13. Will Everything Change in 2020-2025 or Will Nothing Change?
  14. Labor Day Reflections on Retirement and Working for 49 Years

August 2019

  1. Dear Trump Advisors: Prop the Market Up Now and Lose in 2020, or Let the Market Crash and Win in 2020
  2. The Fantasy of Central Bank "Growth" Is Finally Imploding
  3. The Benefits of a Profoundly Shattering Recession
  4. Is the U.S. Becoming a Third World Nation?
  5. Our Wile E. Coyote Federal Reserve
  6. A Wobbling Stock Market
  7. The Road to Hell Is Paved with Virtue-Signaling
  8. Who Protected Epstein for Decades, and Why?
  9. The Internal War in the Deep State Claims Its High Profile Casualty: Jeffrey Epstein
  10. The Gulag of the Mind
  11. Nothing Is Guaranteed

July 2019

  1. Main Street Small Business on the Precipice
  2. Why Is What Was Once Affordable to Many Now Only Affordable to the Wealthy?
  3. Once "Prosperity" Falters, the Legitimacy of the Status Quo Evaporates
  4. It's Not Just the News That's Fake--Everything's Fake
  5. Our Ruling Elites Have No Idea How Much We Want to See Them All in Prison Jumpsuits
  6. The Planetary Insanity of Eternal Economic Growth
  7. The Three Ds of Doom: Debt, Default, Depression
  8. Epstein and the Explosive Crisis of the Deep State
  9. "Alexa, How Do We Subvert Big Tech's Orwellian Internet-of-Things Surveillance?"
  10. Predatory "Green Capitalism" Is Monetizing the Air, and It's Going to Cost You
  11. When Everything from Bat Guano to Quatloos Is Soaring, Speculative Euphoria Has Reached an Extreme
  12. What's Left to Monetize?
  13. Vested Interests in Charge = Guaranteed Failure
  14. America's Concealed Crisis: Fifty Years of Economic Decline, 1969 to 2019

June 2019

  1. Following in Rome's Footsteps: Moral Decay, Rising Inequality
  2. No, Autos Are Not "Cheaper Now"
  3. Could a Cryptocurrency Become a Global Reserve Currency?
  4. Local Government Is an Engine of Inflation
  5. The Human Cost of "Recovery": We're Burning Out
  6. The Lessons of Rome: Our Neofeudal Oligarchy
  7. The Fed's Casino Is Giving Away Free Gambling Chips (But Only to the Super-Rich)
  8. Dear Central Bankers: Prepare to be Swept Away in the Next Wave of Populism
  9. America's Managerial Elite Has Failed, But We Can't Get Rid of Them
  10. How Much of Your "Wealth" Is Hostage to Bubbles and Impossible Promises?
  11. Misplaced Pride: Most of the "Middle Class" Is Actually Working Class
  12. The Self-Destructive Trajectory of Overly Successful Empires
  13. A Stock Market Crash Scenario
  14. What Would It Take to Spark a Rural/Small-Town Revival?
  15. Is the Tech Bubble Bursting?
  16. A Quiet Revolution Is Brewing

May 2019

  1. Why Being a Politician Is No Longer Fun
  2. Lesson of the S-Curve: Doing More of What's Failed Will Fail Spectacularly
  3. Forget "Money": What Will Matter Are Water, Energy, Soil and Food--and a Shared National Purpose
  4. Superbugs and the Ultimate Economic Weapon: Food
  5. China's Insurmountable Global Weakness: Its Currency
  6. Technology Is Not Just Disruptive, It's Disastrously Deflationary
  7. Two Intertwined Dynamics Are Transforming the Economy: Technology and Financialization
  8. The Normalization and Institutionalization of Fraud
  9. Downward Mobility Creates "Deplorables"
  10. The Economy Has Fundamentally Changed in the 21st Century--and Not for the Better
  11. Burnout Nation
  12. Is China's Belt & Road a Decade Too Late?
  13. Unrealistically Great Expectations
  14. The Great Unraveling Begins: Distraction, Lies, Infighting, Betrayal
  15. What Would It Take to Spark a Rural/Small-Town Revival?
  16. Good Riddance to a "Nothing-Burger" Trade Deal
  17. Income Inequality and the Decline of the Middle Class in Two Charts
  18. The Accelerating Decay of the Middle Class
  19. ‘Workarounds’ Galore: How Real Americans Deal with ‘Real’ Inflation

April 2019

  1. The Erosion of Everyday Life
  2. There Are Two Little Problems with "Taxing the Rich" to Pay for "Free Everything"
  3. This Is the End of the Cycle
  4. Push Them Hard Enough and the Productive Class Will Opt Out of Servitude
  5. The Feedback Loop of Doom: When Mobile Creatives and Capital Abandon Unaffordable, Dysfunctional Cities
  6. If "Getting Ahead" Depends on Asset Bubbles, It's Not "Getting Ahead," It's Gambling
  7. America's Forced Financial Flight: Fleeing Unaffordable and Dysfunctional Cities
  8. How Empires Fall: Moral Decay
  9. The Next Financial Crisis Won't Be Caused by Fraud: This Time Will Be Different
  10. The World's Hypocritical Silence as China Imprisons its Ethnic Muslims En Masse
  11. Notre Dame and the Identity of France
  12. No Fix for Recession: Without a Financial Crisis, There's No Central Bank Policy Fix
  13. Fitness without the Long, Grueling Workout
  14. Assange and the Unforgivable Sin of Disemboweling Official Narratives
  15. Blind Faith vs. the Bottom Line
  16. Beneath the Surface of Brexit
  17. Here We Go Again: Tech Bubble 2.0 but "This Time It's Different"
  18. Trade Deal Follies: The U.S. Has Embraced the World's Worst Negotiating Tactics
  19. Here's What It's Like To Be a Bear in a Rigged Market
  20. The Japanification of the World
  21. Are the Rise of Social Media and the Decline of Social Mobility Related?
  22. The Hidden Cost of Losing Local Mom and Pop Businesses
  23. Dear Stock Market: You Can't Have It Both Ways

March 2019

  1. The Fed Guarantees No Recession for 10 Years, Permanent Uptrend for Stocks and Housing
  2. The "Miracle Cure": Walking
  3. Apple's Rotten Core
  4. Is the World Becoming Wealthier or Poorer?
  5. When Are We Going to Tackle the For-Profit Monopolies Which Censored RussiaGate Skeptics?
  6. The Media, Mueller, the Big Con and the Democratization of Narrative
  7. Politics Has Failed, Now Central Banks Are Failing
  8. Which Nations Will Crumble and Which Few Will Prosper in the Next 25 Years?
  9. The Neutered Fed Is Politically Trapped
  10. While the Nation Fragments Socially, the Financial Aristocracy Rules Unimpeded
  11. The Coming Crisis the Fed Can't Fix: Credit Exhaustion
  12. A Precarious Revolution Is Brewing
  13. What Sort of "Democracy" Do We Have If Everyone's Goal Is Maximizing Their Government Swag?
  14. How States/Empires Collapse in Four Easy Steps
  15. Here's The Problem: The Pie Is Shrinking
  16. The Source of Killer Inflation: Services
  17. What If Politics Can't Fix What's Broken?
  18. Trade Isn't China's Only Worry
  19. The Fed's "Wealth Effect" Has Enriched the Haves at the Expense of the Young
  20. What Killed the Middle Class?
  21. It's All About Who Reaps the Gains (Asset Bubbles) and Who Eats the Losses (Stagnating Wages)

February 2019

  1. The Doomsday Scenario for the Stock and Housing Bubbles
  2. Now that Housing Bubble #2 Is Bursting...How Low Will It Go?
  3. What's Been Lost: The Value of Being Reasonable
  4. Food Diversity's Enormous Impact on Your Health
  5. 10 Common-Sense Amendments to the U.S. Constitution
  6. Homeless Encampments and Luxury Apartments: Our Long Strange Boom
  7. Let's Face It: The U.S. Constitution Has Failed
  8. Which One Wins: Central Planning or Adaptive Networks?
  9. Credit Exhaustion Is Global
  10. Sometimes the Best Solution Is To Leave Things As They Are
  11. What Happens When More QE Fails to Reverse the Recession?
  12. What Caused the Recession of 2019-2021?
  13. The Corporate Lemmings Who Rushed into Mobile/Social Media Ads Are Running off the Cliff
  14. We're Overdue for a Sell-Everything/No-Fed-Rescue Recession
  15. 2019: The Three Trends That Matter
  16. Telltale Signs of Recession
  17. Brace for Impact
  18. China's S-Curve of Expansion, Stagnation and Decline
  19. The Coming Global Financial Crisis: Debt Exhaustion
  20. The Alt-Media Has Way More Fun than the Mainstream Media

January 2019

  1. So If Half of Facebook Accounts Are Fake... What Is Facebook Worth?
  2. So You Want to Get Rich: Focus on Human Capital
  3. The "Working Rich" Are Not Like You and Me--or the Oligarchs
  4. A Recession Survival Guide
  5. The Ruling Elites Love How Easily We're Distracted and Turned Against Each Other
  6. Gentrified Urban America Will Be Hit Hard by the Recession
  7. Want to Heal the Internet? Ban All Collection of User Data
  8. Two Ways the System Is Rigged: HFT and Oligarchic Inheritance
  9. The West's Descent into 'Cultural Revolution'
  10. A Manifesto for a 'Deplorable' Party
  11. France's Ghosts of '68: General Strike vs. Macron and the Technocrat Elites
  12. As Germany and France Come Apart, So Too Will the EU
  13. The Decline and Fall of the European Union
  14. Where Will You Be Seated at the Banquet of Consequences?
  15. The Recession Will Be Unevenly Distributed
  16. If We Can No Longer Tell the Truth, We've Failed
  17. 2019: Fragmented, Unevenly Distributed, Asymmetric, Opaque
  18. Could Stocks Rally Even as Parts of the Economy Are Recessionary?
  19. What Do the CIA, Soros Foundation and the Kremlin Have in Common?
  20. Commoditization = Deflation
  21. The Crisis of 2025
  22. A Couple of Thoughts on 2019

2018 164

December 2018

  1. The Crisis of Capital
  2. How Many of Your Local Taxes and Fees Are Rocketing Higher?
  3. When Certainty Frays, Capital Gets Skittish
  4. Why I'm Hopeful
  5. In Defense of Powell's Restoration of Price Discovery
  6. Why Everything That Needs to Be Fixed Remains Permanently Broken
  7. "Yellow Vests" and the Downward Mobility of the Middle Class
  8. Neofeudalism Isn't a Flaw of the System--It's the System Working Perfectly
  9. France in a Nutshell: "The Government Stopped Listening to the People 20 Years Ago"
  10. The Conflicting Forces of Modernism: Kafka and Kierkegaard
  11. Are We in a Recession Already?
  12. The View from the Trenches of the Alternative Media
  13. Truth Is What We Hide, Self-Serving Cover Stories Are What We Sell

November 2018

  1. America Needs a New National Strategy
  2. Bearish on Fake Fixes
  3. The Politics of Debt-Serfs and Tax Donkeys: Our Only Choice Is the Least Bad Option
  4. The Two Paths to Collapse
  5. Thanksgiving 2018: A Few of the Many Things I'm Grateful For
  6. Does the Market Need a Heimlich Maneuver?
  7. Hell Hath No Fury Like a Liberal Scorned: The Media Turns on Facebook and Google
  8. The Political Rebellion Gathers Momentum
  9. Does Any of This Make Sense?
  10. The Implicit Desperation of China's "Social Credit" System
  11. Understanding the Global Recession of 2019
  12. Why Are so Few Americans Able to Get Ahead?
  13. Is This "The Most Important Election of our Lives" or Just Another Distraction?
  14. Turn Off, Tune Out, Drop Out
  15. What's Behind the Erosion of Civil Society?

October 2018

  1. Why Is Social Media So Toxic?
  2. What's the Real Meaning of the Stock Market Swoon?
  3. Shadow Banning Is Just the Tip of the Iceberg: We're All Digital Ghosts Now
  4. Globalization Has Hollowed Out Rural America
  5. America's Social Depression Is Accelerating
  6. The Coming Inflation Threat
  7. Mutiny, Class, Authority and Respect
  8. China's Next Revolution Is on the Horizon
  9. Is the Greatest Bull Market Ever Finally Ending? (Hint: Follow the Money)
  10. How Many Households Qualify as Middle Class?
  11. Here's Why the Next Recession Will Spiral Into a Depression
  12. The Distortions of Doom Part 2: The Fatal Flaws of Reserve Currencies
  13. The Global Distortions of Doom Part 1: Hyper-Indebted Zombie Corporations
  14. The Dynamics of Decadence
  15. Pensions Now Depend on Bubbles Never Popping (But All Bubbles Pop)

September 2018

  1. The Labor Shortage Is Real
  2. How Do We Change Our Lives in a System That's Broken?
  3. Fixing Infrastructure Isn't as Simple as Spending Another Trillion Dollars
  4. Droit du Seigneur and the Neofeudal Privileges of Class in America
  5. The Four Disastrous Presidential Policies That Are Destroying the Nation
  6. On Turning 60
  7. When Does This Travesty of a Mockery of a Sham Finally End?
  8. Digging into Wealth and Income Inequality
  9. We're All Speculators Now
  10. Massive Deficit Spending Greenlights Waste, Fraud, Profiteering and Dysfunction
  11. The Next Financial Crisis Is Right on Schedule (2019)
  12. How Things Fall Apart: Extremes Aren't Stable
  13. The Brevity of Life and Making Changes Before It's Too Late
  14. After 10 Years of "Recovery," What Are Central Banks So Afraid Of?
  15. The Global Financial System Is Unraveling, And No, the U.S. Is Not immune
  16. When You're in Real Trouble, Call The Consulting Philosopher

August 2018

  1. Once the Bubbles Pop, We're Broke
  2. Why Is Productivity Dead in the Water?
  3. Here's How We Ended Up with Predatory, Parasitic Elites
  4. To Understand America's Neofeudal Economy, Start with Extortion
  5. How "Wealthy" Would We Be If We Stopped Borrowing Trillions Every Year?
  6. This Is the Longest Bull Market Since the Great Pyramid Boom of 2580 B.C.
  7. The Telltale Signs of Imperial Decline
  8. If You Want to Survive this Election with Your Mental Health Intact, Turn Off the "News" and Social Media Now
  9. Our "Prosperity" Is Now Dependent on Predatory Globalization
  10. Technocrats Rule: Democracy Is OK as Long as the People Rubberstamp Our Leadership
  11. The Grand Irony of RussiaGate: The U.S. Becomes More Like the U.S.S.R. Every Day
  12. The Fantasy of "Balanced Returns" Funding Retirement
  13. We'll Pay All Those Future Obligations by Impoverishing Everyone (How to Destroy Our Currency In One Easy Lesson)
  14. Here's Why Rip-Roaring Inflation Is Inevitable
  15. The 21st Century Misery Index: Labor's Share of the Economy and Real-World Inflation

July 2018

  1. Here's What We've Lost in the Past Decade
  2. Here's How Systems (and Nations) Fail
  3. When Long-Brewing Instability Finally Reaches Crisis
  4. The Imperial Naivete of the American Public
  5. The Schizophrenic Deep State is a Symptom, Not the Disease
  6. Solutions without Historical Templates: Cryptocurrencies and Blockchains
  7. Our Institutions Are Failing
  8. Big Pharma and the Rise of Gangster Capitalism
  9. Will AI "Change the World" Or Simply Boost Profits?
  10. The USA Is Now a 3rd World Nation
  11. We Are All Hostages of Corporate Profits
  12. The Gathering Storm
  13. Keynesian Economics Is an Artifact of Cheap Energy

June 2018

  1. Could Germany Fracture?
  2. Make Capital Cheap and Labor Costly, and Guess What Happens?
  3. Dear High School Graduates: the Status Quo "Solutions" Enrich the Few at Your Expense
  4. Are You Prepared to Invest in Troubled Times?
  5. Gresham's Law and Bitcoin
  6. Onward to Stock Market Nirvana... Or Not
  7. Here We Go Again: Our Double-Bubble Economy
  8. What's Wrong with the Economy: 9 Toxic Dynamics
  9. The Politics of Pretense: The Status Quo Is the Problem, But It Can't Be Touched
  10. The Three Crises That Will Synchronize a Global Meltdown by 2025
  11. Does Anyone Else See a Giant Bear Flag in the S&P 500?
  12. The U.S. Economy In Two Words: Asymmetric Gains

May 2018

  1. Burrito Index Update: Burrito Cost Triples, Official Inflation Up 43% from 2001
  2. Why the Eurozone and the Euro Are Both Doomed
  3. How Systems Collapse
  4. America 2018: Dicier by the Day
  5. The Next Recession Will Be Devastatingly Non-Linear
  6. Our Economy Is Failing Our Society
  7. Sustainability Boils Down to Scale
  8. U.S. Healthcare Isn't Broken--It's Fixed
  9. A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to Market Complacency / Euphoria
  10. How Safe Are We? Our Blindness to Systemic Dangers
  11. Before You Tell Me What You "Know," Tell Me Your Sources
  12. Kafka's Nightmare Emerges: China's "Social Credit Score"
  13. Taking the Pulse of a Weakening Economy
  14. What Lies Beyond Capitalism and Socialism?

April 2018

  1. The Cosby Status Quo: A Facade of Wholesomeness Masks Feudal Exploitation
  2. The Blowback Against Facebook, Google and Amazon Is Just Beginning
  3. How Far Down the Big Data/'Psychographic Microtargeting' Rabbit Hole Do You Want to Go?
  4. Connecting the Dots of Big Data, Soaring Corporate Profits and Trade Wars
  5. The War between Public Pensioners and Tax Donkeys Is Heating Up
  6. Our Strange Attraction to Self-Destructive Behaviors, Choices and Incentives
  7. What Do We Know About Syria? Next to Nothing
  8. Why Trade Wars Ignite and Why They're Spreading
  9. The Genie's Out of the Bottle: Eight Defining Trends Are Reversing
  10. Were Trade Wars Inevitable?
  11. Why Systems Fail
  12. Playing for All the Marbles
  13. The Problem with a State-Cartel Economy: Prices Rise, Wages Don't

March 2018

  1. What If All the Cheap Stuff Goes Away?
  2. 15 Years of War: To Whose Benefit?
  3. Decrypting the Appointment of John Bolton
  4. Should Facebook and Google Pay Users When They Sell Data Collected from Users?
  5. Solutions Only Arise Outside the Status Quo
  6. Is Profit-Maximizing Data-Mining Undermining Democracy?
  7. How Much Longer Can We Get Away With It?
  8. Checking In on the Four Intersecting Cycles
  9. There is No "Free Trade"--There Is Only the Darwinian Game of Trade
  10. Forget "Free Trade"--It's All About Capital Flows
  11. The Death of Buy and Hold: We're All Traders Now
  12. Should Facebook, Google and Twitter Be Public Utilities?
  13. Never Mind Volatility: Systemic Risk Is Rising

February 2018

  1. Our Fragmented Labor Markets Defy Outdated Conventions
  2. Career Advice to 20-Somethings: Create Value as a Mobile Creative
  3. Venezuela's New Cryptocurrency: Just Another Form of Control Fraud
  4. The End of (Artificial) Stability
  5. Russian Meddling: Gagging on the Irony
  6. Our Approaching Winter of Discontent
  7. The Ghosts of 1968
  8. What Just Changed?
  9. Three Crazy Things We Now Accept as "Normal"
  10. Before You "Buy the Dip," Look at This One Chart
  11. Is the 9-Year Long Dead Cat Bounce Finally Ending?
  12. Is Congress Finally Pushing Back Against Security Agencies' Over-Reach?
  13. Political Correctness Serves the Ruling Elite

January 2018

  1. The Rowboat (Wages) and the Yacht (Assets)
  2. Rising Social Disorder Is Inevitable: Here's Why
  3. The Pie Is Shrinking for the 99%
  4. Can We Finally Have an Honest Discussion about the Opioid Crisis?
  5. Central Banks: From Coordination to Competition
  6. It's Time to Retire "Capitalism"
  7. The Fascinating Psychology of Blowoff Tops
  8. Social Change Will Upend the Status Quo
  9. Yes, But at What Cost?
  10. It's Not About Democracy: Control Fraud Is the Core of our Political System
  11. Why the Financial System Will Break: You Can't "Normalize" Markets that Depend on Extreme Monetary Stimulus
  12. A Few Resolutions for 2018

← 2013–2017