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A fully financialized, totally debt and speculation-dependent economy is terminal once leverage and debt stop expanding exponentially.We all know the movie scene in which the character is wounded but dismisses it as no big deal, and then lurches into t…

The reliance on “good news” narratives dooms our financial system and economy to a death spiral once reality breaks through the induced euphoria.”Markets” that never go down aren’t markets, they’re signaling mechanisms of the Powers That Be. Marke…

We have three basic ways to counter the destructive consequences of stress.We have all experienced the disorientation and “brain freeze” that stress triggers. The pandemic and the responses to the pandemic have been continuous sources of stress, i…

Social media offers hope of achieving higher social status, something that is increasingly out of reach in our winner-take-most economy.I’ve often addressed the decline of social mobility and the addictive nature of social media, for example, Why …

Few appear willing to follow the probabilities of a future in which a vaccine cannot possibly be the “magic cure” everyone wants.Let’s attempt the impossible and set aside all preconceptions we might have about a vaccine for Covid-19, and think it thro…

The self-sustaining recovery is a fantasy that’s evaporated.What looks like a powerful, can’t-lose rally to newbies is recognized as distribution by old hands. In low-volume markets (as in the past few months), insiders holding large pos…

No federal bailout or stimulus can reverse these three dynamics, and no amount of legerdemain can replace the spending of the top 10%.Few of those anxiously seeking a rebound in consumer spending take into account the top 10% of households account for …

Not only is our lifestyle on back-order, so is our sanity.Yesterday I mentioned our collective inability to make sense of the contradictory messages of the status quo and our own experience. This inability to reconcile completely contradictory mes…

The abyss between the Fed’s illusion of phantom wealth for Wall Street and the collapse of Main Street is bottomless, and our descent into the abyss is accelerating.I know this runs counter to every dominant narrative, but a vaccine doesn’t really matt…

The laughably hopeless hope is that by propping up the corpses, the populace will discern some faint flicker of life in the decaying carcasses and return to their free-spending ways.Call it cultural synchronicity, but it increasingly feels like we…

Sclerotic, hidebound institutions optimized for linear stability and permanent growth are simply not designed to adapt to non-linear change and disruption of permanent growth.Since the first news of pandemic in late January, I’ve been discussing potent…

Since human wetware remains stuck in OS1.01, we can predict a remarkable reversal.The “Everything Bubble” has been a sight to behold. With central banks providing trillions to the big players and margin debt enabling small punters to leverage up, …

This is the key dynamic of the economy going forward: defaults on debt, declining wealth as assets are relentlessly repriced lower and sharp declines in income due to layoffs and debt defaults.The economy is like an elephant surrounded by blindfolded e…

What they don’t understand is inequality is America’s Monster Id: the more you try to suppress it, the more powerful it becomes.The word privilege is much bandied about now. I’ve been writing about privilege for many years, and ended up …