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Our overweening faith and confidence in our wealth and power make this a dimly lit Thanksgiving. A public expression of gratitude by victorious sports stars, lottery winners, etc. is now the convention in America: coaches, teammates, family and mentors (or agents) are recognized as an expression of the winners’ humility and gratitude for everyone that contributed to the success.

The reality is the roulette wheel is rigged and only chumps believe it’s a fair game. It’s easy to lay America’s visible frustrations at the feet of Covid lockdowns or political polarization, but this conveniently ignores the real driver: systemic unfairness.

What we need is not a return to the corrupt, tottering kleptocracy of 2019, but a re-democratization of capital, agency and money. I’m hopeful about 2021, and no, it’s not because of the vaccines or the end of lockdowns or anything related to Covid. The status quo is cheering the fantasy that we’ll soon return to the debt-soaked glory days of 2019 when everything was peachy.

That our “leadership” reckons “bread and circuses” is what the stripmined bottom 90% want is beyond pathetic. There’s one chart that predicts our future, and no, it’s not related to Covid–it’s related to capital, specifically the concentration of capital and power in the hands of the few at the expense of the many.

Trust in institutions, authorities and Big Pharma are scraping the bottom of the barrel, and rushing these vaccines into mass use with extremely high expectations of efficacy is setting up the potential for a devastating loss of trust in the vaccines should they fail to live up to the claims of 100% safety and 95% effectiveness.

The confidence that there will always be facilities and professionals to care for us is no longer realistic. I’ve covered the systemic problems of U.S. healthcare for over a decade, and as a result I’ve attracted numerous healthcare professionals as correspondents. I’ve been corresponding with some for almost 15 years, and this correspondence has given me a sobering education in the realities of our fully financialized (and thus hollowed-out) healthcare system.

Now that the bubble has burst, the hope is that removing the pin will magically restore the burst bubble. Sorry, it doesn’t work that way. Here’s the fantasy: if we stop the shutdowns, the economy will naturally bounce back to its oh-so wunnerful perfection of Q3 2019.

Realism must precede optimism or the optimism will collapse as the tsunami of reality comes ashore. It’s time to prepare materially and psychologically for a winter unlike any other in our lifetimes.

Put another way: the elites have cannibalized the system so thoroughly that there’s nothing left to steal, exploit or cannibalize. The global elites’ techno-fantasy of a completely centralized future, The Great Reset, is addressed as a future project. Too bad it already happened in 2008-09.

In such a highly polarized, politicized environment, is such a scrupulously objective study even possible?

Concentrate wealth and power in the hands of the few at the expense of the many and you guarantee collapse. Very few are willing to face the reality that the U.S. economy was on life support long before Covid came on the scene.

Asset inflation benefits the super-rich more than anyone else because they own the vast majority of these assets. With the reflation euphoria running full blast, maybe central banks will finally get all that inflation they’ve been pining for. So let’s ask –who will benefit from inflation?

So enjoy the GBOAT (greatest bubble of all time) but watch the clock. Sports fans debate who qualifies as GOAT–the greatest of all time in hoops, Kobe, Jordan, Kareem, Magic; in boxing, Ali, and so forth. What we have today is GBOAT–the greatest bubble of all time. That it’s GOAT is beyond doubt, as the charts below reveal.

The core dynamic is ultimately the loss of social cohesion within the ruling elites and in the social order at large. There’s a definite feeling to the euphoria that the world didn’t end on November 3. And what better way to celebrate the victory of what passes for normalcy with a manic stock market rally?

We’re Number One in wealth, income and power inequality, yea for the Fed and the Empire! If we avert our eyes from the electoral battle on the blood-soaked sand of the Coliseum and look behind the screen, we find the powers that matter are not elected: are owned by a few big banks Federal Reserve, run by a handful of technocrats, and the immense National Security State, a.k.a. the Permanent Government.