Charles Hugh Smith's Contributions

The last decade's fantasy that we could borrow our way to prosperity while lowering taxes on upper-income earners (because it's so cheap to borrow trillions at near-zero interest rates) is finally running into reality-based resistance: interest on all that debt is starting to squeeze the spending everyone wants, and long-term rates might rise despite the Federal Reserve's constant intervention.

If you set out to create an increasingly fragile economy, you'd do precisely what the Federal Reserve and our political "leaders" have done.

Everyone interested in real estate is asking the same question: Is the bottom in, or is this just another “green shoots” recovery that will soon wilt?

Amidst all the "fiscal cliff" talk of raising tax rates, few dare to ask: have tax revenues topped out?

Those with vested interests in the Status Quo tout data that supports the claim the "recovery" is now "self-sustaining," meaning that the economy is now expanding fast enough to fuel new growth.

Does China have what it takes to get from here (industrialized export economy) to there (sustainable growth, widespread prosperity)? The same can be asked of every nation: do they have what it takes to move beyond their current limitations to the next level?

Individuals, households, enterprises and nations can have goals--where they want to be in the future--but to get there, they need to construct the necessary foundation of values, processes, skillsets, networks, practical experience and capital.

In a misguided attempt to maintain an unsustainable Status Quo, the Federal government is borrowing unprecedented amounts of money that then must be serviced.

The abundance or scarcity of energy is only one factor in its price. As the cost of extraction, transport, refining, and taxes rise, so does the “cost basis” or the total cost of production from the field to the pump.

Raising taxes is the "solution." Too bad incomes are declining. What will raising taxes do to household savings, spending and the economy?

Japan is known for artful handcrafts, high-tech gadgets and outlandish fads. All modern economies depend on fads and fashions to drive consumption, and so Japan's leadership in fads reflects its advanced state of consumerism.

If there is any demarcation with profound implications going forward, it isn't the line between the 1% and the 99% or the line dividing the Status Quo into two safely complicit ideological camps: it is the divide between those who squarely face the burden of knowing the present is unsustainable and those who flee into the comforts of denial.

Inflation is generally viewed as a monetary phenomenon (print money excessively and you get inflation), but let's use a very simple definition: any loss of purchasing power. If your income buys fewer goods and services, for whatever mix of reasons (geopolitical, weather, monetary, fiscal, etc.), that's inflation "on the ground."

The velocity of money buried in a hole is zero. The velocity of hoarded money is also zero. The velocity of credit that is never used (i.e. no money is actually borrowed and spent) is also zero. Money that is created but which has zero velocity cannot spark inflation.

If the Fed wanted to "save" housing and not the banks, why not buy mortgages directly from homeowners? Instead of buying underwater mortgages from the banks, why not just buy the entire $10 trillion of residential mortgages outstanding and charge the homeowners the same rate the Fed charges banks, i.e. zero?

Cui bono--to whose benefit?--is a skeptic's scalpel that cuts through the fat of propaganda and political expediency to the hard truth. Since the world has been trained (in Pavlovian fashion) to hang on every word issued by America's privately owned central bank, the Federal Reserve...

The causal relationship between scarcity, demand, and price is intuitive. Whatever is scarce and in demand will rise in price; whatever is abundant and in low demand will decline in price to its cost basis.

Debt offers a compelling fantasy: there is no need for difficult trade-offs or sacrifices, everything can be bought and enjoyed now. In the old days when credit was scarce and dear, buying a better auto required substituting 1,000 brown-bag lunches for restaurant meals: yes, four years of daily sacrifice.

According to the conventional account, the Great American Middle Class has been eroded by rising energy costs, globalization, and the declining purchasing power of the U.S. dollar in the four decades since 1973.

If we look at the global economy with unclouded eyes, we reach this conclusion: "This whole thing is about leverage." If leverage doesn't increase, the system implodes. But since collateral is disappearing from the global economy like sand castles in a rising tide, and disposable income has stagnated, there is no foundation for more leverage.