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A Covid-19 vaccine, or lack thereof, will have zero effect in terms of reversing these cycles. Call it Fate, call it karma, call it what you will, but the cycles have aligned and nothing can stop the unraveling of all that was foolishly presumed to be …

Any economy that concentrates its wealth and income in the top tier is a fragile economy.There are two structural reasons why consumer spending will not rebound, no matter how “open” the economy may be. Virtually everyone who glances at headlines …

Financialization was never sustainable, and neither was the destructive globalization it enabled.All the happy-story analogies to past pandemics being mere bumps in the road miss the mark. A popular claim is that the 1918-1919 flu pandemic killed …

The core problem is the U.S. economy has been fully financialized, and so costs are unaffordable.To understand the long-term consequences of the pandemic on Main Street and local tax revenues, we need to consider first and second order effects. Th…

Monopolies, quasi-monopolies and cartels are inherently exploitive and thus evil.What was “normal” for the past two decades was to turn a blind eye to the moral and financial bankruptcy of the American culture, the rot at the heart of its social, …

As Jackson Browne put it: Don’t think it won’t happen just because it hasn’t happened yet.We can summarize all that will unfold in the next few years in one line: The way of the Tao is reversal. This is the opening line of Chapter 40 of Lao T…

It’s not that hard to forecast a populist revolt against the parasitic class that’s grown obscenely wealthy as a direct result of Fed policies.Under the tender care of the Federal Reserve, America’s wealth inequality has skyrocketed to new heights of o…

Once the government’s ability to sustain its enforcement with money created out of thin air vanishes, the entire order vanishes along with it.The era of waste, greed, fraud and living on borrowed money is dying, and those who’ve known no other way of l…

Readers ask for specific recommendations for successfully navigating the post-credit/speculative-bubble era and I try to do so while explaining the impossibility of the task.As the bogus prosperity economy built on exponential growth of debt …

Longtime correspondent Paul B. suggested I re-publish three essays that have renewed relevance. This is the second essay, from July 2008. Thank you, Paul, for the suggestion.I received this timely inquiry from astute reader Paul B.:I’m interested in # …

If someone were to ask for a less risky survival strategy, I would suggest moving into town and start showing a little generosity rather than a lot of hoarding.I’m not trying to be difficult, but I can’t help cutting against the grain on topics like su…

This is how it happens that boats that were once worth tens of thousands of dollars are set adrift by owners who can no longer afford to pay slip fees.The increasing concentration of the ownership of wealth/assets in the top 10% has an under-appreciate…

By bailing out the sources of systemic fragility with trillions of dollars, the Fed has shifted the risk to the entire financial system and the nation’s currency.That the global economy is fragile is painfully obvious to all. What is less obvious …