Economy

Despite the Media, Trump Pulling Down Wins for We the People

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trumpLloyd Marcus – I love the old gospel song “Peace in the Midst of the Storm.”  In the midst of the Deep State’s raging, unprecedented hate-storm against Trump, he remarkably remains at peace, and so should we.

Trump and We the People are winning.  The fake news media sell their lie 24-7 that voters regret voting for Trump and he is mere days from impeachment.  In truth, Trump’s approval has risen to 51%.  Leftists are pulling their hair out in frustration, screaming, how can we stop this freaking outsider amateur politician?  The tide is turning in our favor.

The Deep State’s billions, traps, and lies continue to fail.  Incredibly, Trump repeatedly lands on his feet, confidently pressing forward on making America great again.  It’s a God thing, folks. Continue reading →

Rising Social Disorder Is Inevitable: Here’s Why

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economyCharles Hugh Smith – We are in a very peculiar point in history. On the one hand, we’re reassured that all is well because Every One of the World’s Big Economies Is Now Growing. (NY Times)

Yet at the same time, we read that “Something Is Very Wrong With The Global Economy”: Richest 1% Made 82% Of Global Wealth In 2017 and are asked, Can the World Survive a Winner-Take-All Global Economy?

Even the authors of the rah-rah NY Times piece on the wonderfulness of the global economy expressed concern that this “growth” may not be distributed any more equally than the previous 10 years of “recovery.”

We already know absolutely nothing will change because neither the inputs nor the feedback loops in the economy have changed. As Donella Meadows explained in her seminal paper Leverage Points: Places to Intervene in a System, the only ways to change a system’s outputs (in this case, widening income and wealth inequality and rising social disorder) is to change the inputs or add a new feedback loop. Continue reading →

Are We Fiddling While Rome Burns?

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economyCharles Hugh Smith – Are we fiddling while Rome burns? I would say yes–because we’re not solving any of the structural problems that are dooming the status quo. Instead, we’re allowing a corrupt, corporate mainstream media to distract us with fake “Russians hacked our election” hysteria, false “cultural war” mania, and a laughably Orwellian frenzy over fake news which magically avoids mentioning the propaganda narrativespushed 24/7 by the mainstream media–narratives that are the acme of fake news.

The media is only half the problem, of course; the audience doesn’t want to hear about structural problems that can only be fixed by disrupting the status quo. If we don’t accept that the financial system we inhabit is imploding, maybe all the problems will go away.

The system is coughing up blood and we still want to believe it is “recovering” from a cold. Continue reading →

Why 2017 Is Like 1969

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warCharles Hugh Smith – A deeply polarizing new president, a disastrously misguided official narrative that the political Establishment doggedly supports despite a damning lack of evidence, and an economy teetering on the edge of recession–and worse.

Sound familiar? Welcome to 1969 redux. The similarities between the crises unfolding in 1969 and the present-day crises are not just skin-deep–they’re systemic.

Consider the basic parallels.

1. Nixon was if anything more polarizing than Trump. If there was any politician Democrats loved to hate, it was Nixon. Yet Nixon won a close race against an Establishment Democrat, at least partly because he ran as a “peace candidate” and because he spoke to the Silent Majority who disagreed with the nation’s direction. The Silent Majority was mocked and ridiculed by the mainstream media as racist, close-minded deplorables. Continue reading →

We’re Fragmenting Because our Experience of the Economy Is Fragmenting

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economyCharles Hugh Smith – You’ve probably seen some version of this chart of average household income in America before. (You may have seen charts of median household income as well; here’s an article on the difference between the two methods of measurement: American families are learning the difference between median and mean)
Here’s the data in table format, if you prefer: Household Income Quintiles.

The point is that there is an enormous difference between the average household incomes of the bottom 80% and the top 10%, 5% and 1%. It’s important to separate the various income brackets, as including the top households distorts the average. Here we see the average household income of the bottom 80% of households is around $50,000, while the average income of the top 10% (which includes the wealthy 1% and the super-wealthy .1%) is almost four times greater: $185,000. Continue reading →