Category Archive: 5.) Charles Hugh Smith

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What’s Your Line in the Sand? The $25 Burger?

2022-12-22

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2022-12-22

The gag reflex kicks in at some point and we walk away because it is no longer worth the price. Everyone has a line in the sand when it comes to inflated prices they refuse to pay. For one Walmart shopper I observed, it was a carton of eggs for close to $10. She announced her line in the sand verbally, with great force and sincerity.

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A Great Madness Sweeps the Land

2022-12-19

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2022-12-19

Those who see the madness for what it is have only one escape: go to ground, fade from public view, become self-reliant and weather the coming storm in the nooks and crannies. A great madness sweeps the land. There are no limits on extremes in greed, credulity, convictions, inequality, bombast, recklessness, fraud, corruption, arrogance, hubris, pride, over-reach, self-righteousness and confidence in the rightness of one's opinions.

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Monopolies and Cartels Are "Communism for the Rich"

2022-12-15

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2022-12-15

What's unfettered in America is "Communism for the Rich" and the normalization of corruption that results from the auctioning of political power to protect monopolies and cartels. The irony of constantly being accused of being a communist is rather rich.

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The Blowback from Stripmining Labor for 45 Years Is Just Beginning

2022-12-13

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2022-12-13

The clueless technocrats are about to discover that unfairness and exploitation can't be measured like revenues and profits, but that doesn't mean they're not real. Economists and financial pundits tend to make a catastrophically flawed assumption.

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How Things Fall Apart

2022-12-12

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2022-12-12

That's how things fall apart: insiders know but keep their mouths shut, outsiders are clueless, and the decay that started slowly gathers momentum as the last of the experienced and competent workforce burns out, quits or retires. Outsiders are shocked when things fall apart. Insiders are amazed the duct-tape held this long.

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The Monopoly – Labor "Let It Rot" Death Spiral

2022-12-08

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2022-12-08

The only rational response to this reality is to opt out, lay flat and let it rot. In my previous post, The Bubble Economy's Credit-Asset Death Spiral, I described the self-reinforcing feedback of expanding credit and soaring asset valuations and how the only possible result of this financial perpetual motion machine was a death spiral of collapsing debt service, collateral and credit impulse.

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Die “Titanic”-Analogie, die Sie noch nicht gehört haben | Von Charles Hugh Smith

2022-12-06

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Den vollständigen Tagesdosis-Text (inkl. ggf. Quellenhinweisen und Links) finden Sie hier: https://apolut.net/die-titanic-analogie-die-sie-noch-nicht-gehoert-haben-von-charles-hugh-smith

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Die “Titanic”-Analogie, die Sie noch nicht gehört haben | Von Charles Hugh Smith

2022-12-06

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Den vollständigen Tagesdosis-Text (inkl. ggf. Quellenhinweisen und Links) finden Sie hier: https://apolut.net/die-titanic-analogie-die-sie-noch-nicht-gehoert-haben-von-charles-hugh-smith Ein Kommentar von Charles Hugh Smith. Passive Akzeptanz des Verleugnens Ob wir uns dessen bewusst sind oder nicht, wir reagieren mit passiver Akzeptanz des Verleugnens. Sie haben zweifellos gehört, dass die Neuanordnung der Liegestühle auf der Titanic eine...

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The Bubble Economy’s Credit-Asset Death Spiral

2022-12-06

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2022-12-06

Who believed that central banks' financial perpetual motion machine was anything more than trickery designed to generate phantom wealth? Central banks seem to have perfected the ideal financial perpetual motion machine: as credit expands, money pours into risk assets, which shoot higher under the pressure of expanding demand for assets that yield either hefty returns (junk bonds) or hefty capital gains as the soaring assets suck in more capital...

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This Is of Course Insane

2022-12-01

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2022-12-01

Greed is a powerful motivation to be an ardent believer in the central banking cult. The ideal cult convinces its followers that it isn't a cult, it's simply the natural order of things.In current terms, this normalizes insane behaviors and beliefs. Sacrificing youth to appease the gods isn't a cult; it's simply the natural order of things.

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The "Oil Curse" and Splashy PR Announcements of Oil Production Cuts

2022-11-29

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2022-11-29

It's not just the price of oil that matters: how much disposable income consumers have left to buy more goods and services matters, too. The Oil Curse (a.k.a. The Resource Curse) refers to the compelling ease of those blessed with an abundance of oil/resources to depend on that gift for the majority of state/national revenues.

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The Uncertainty in China Is Kryptonite to Global Markets

2022-11-28

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2022-11-28

Few seem alive to the potentially consequential financial risks arising from uncertainties evolving in China. One thing we know rather definitively is that markets don't like uncertainty: uncertainty is Kryptonite to markets. Another thing we know is that the events unfolding in China are generating uncertainty on multiple levels.

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There’s No Bottom Until Frenzied Speculation Turns to Dust

2022-11-21

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2022-11-21

Only when speculative sizzle attracts no buyers / marks will the bottom be in. There hasn't been a truly organic bottom in stocks in decades. Fifteen years of relentless central bank manipulation since the 2008-09 Global Financial Meltdown has persuaded punters that central banks will always save us should the market turn down because relentless central bank suppression of interest rates and expansion of liquidity (a.k.a. free money for financiers)...

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FTX: The Dominoes of Financial Fraud Have Yet to Fall

2022-11-20

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2022-11-20

Once assets are revealed as worth far less than claimed, insolvency is the inevitable result. If you haven't plowed through dozens of post-collapse commentaries on FTX, I'm saving you the trouble: here's a distillation of what matters going forward. If you're seeking a forensic accounting of FTX, others have done this work already.

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Where Crypto Went Wrong

2022-11-15

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2022-11-15

You want to fix the world with finance? Then fix this: wages' share of a financialized, globalized, speculative-bubble dependent economy have been falling for decades. Fix this and you really will change the world. Anything less changes nothing.

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Asymmetries, Distortions and Denial

2022-11-14

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2022-11-14

When bubbles pop, it's natural selection at its most unforgiving: "adapt or die," and those who ignore or discount consequential asymmetries will have a very difficult time navigating the triage. After years of relative stability, it seems asymmetries, distortions and denial are playing out in unexpectedly destabilizing ways.

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The Unintended Consequences of Unintended Consequences

2022-11-08

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2022-11-08

Decades of central bank distortions and regulatory / market-share capture by cartels and monopolies have completely gutted "markets," destroying their self-correcting dynamics. Unintended consequences introduce unexpected problems that may not have easy solutions.

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What Does Liberation Mean in the Real World?

2022-10-31

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2022-10-31

Liberation in the real world is the result of self-reliance and investing in our own well-being.Liberation has many contexts. It can mean being freed from imprisonment or servitude, freedom from gnawing want or oppression, or being liberated from prisons of the mind.

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The End of the "Growth" Road

2022-10-27

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2022-10-27

Everyone caught by surprise that the infinite road actually has an end will face a bewildering transition. The End of the "Growth" Road is upon us, though the consensus continues to hold fast to the endearing fantasy of infinite expansion of consumption.

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Now That Housing Is Rolling Over, Is That Fixer-Upper a Deal?

2022-10-26

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2022-10-26

So-called "cosmetic work" can cost tens of thousands of dollars.Now that housing is finally rolling over due to rising mortgage rates and bubble valuations, many of those who have been priced out of the market are hoping to take advantage of lower prices.

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