What the Warring Elites don’t want us to realize is that a system of transparent competition in which no fiefdom is allowed to become dominant best serves the interests of society at large.

A stagnating zombie economy never recovers. Four decades of rising markets punctuated by crisis-induced crashes seems to have fostered an unspoken belief that no one should ever get hurt in markets or the economy.

We can also predict that the next round of instability will be more severe than the previous bout of instability. Everyone is in favor of “doing whatever it takes” to “restore financial stability” when the house of cards starts swaying, but funny things happen on the way to “Restoring Financial Stability.”

Our faith in the wobbling world of hyper-financialization will soon be tested. It’s interesting, isn’t it, that amidst a tsunami of commentary about banks, nobody mentions the proverbial elephant in the room, which is the overwhelming dominance of finance in the economy and society, a dominance which raises the big question:

The next Bull Market will start when everyone has given up on the stock market as the means to “get rich quick” or even “get rich slowly.” Here’s the chart of the month: a weekly chart of the S&P 500 (SPX) showing the giant wedge going back to January 2022 has broken decisively down.

If AI isn’t self-aware of the fact it is nothing but an exploitive tool of the powerful, then it’s worthless. The latest wave of AI tools is generating predictably giddy exaltations.