What’s It Take To Be Middle Class Now?
By Charles Hugh Smith Can an economy in which 10% of the households qualify as middle class claim to offer widespread opportunities for secure prosperity?…
Charles Hugh Smith
The Invisible Court’s Verdict: You Are Hereby Exiled to Digital Siberia
By Charles Hugh Smith As in the Gulag it replicates, the innocent are swept up with the guilty in a disconcertingly unjust ratio. The human…
How Much Do You Spend on Food?
By Charles Hugh Smith Maybe the question isn’t just “how much do you spend on food,” but “what value are you getting for what you…
Lowering Risk as We Enter Forced Frugality
By Charles Hugh Smith If things unravel, these risk-reduction strategies quickly shift from “nice to have” to “essential.” But by then, it will be too…
How Great Is Our Economy If the Bottom 50%’s Share of the Nation’s Wealth Has Plummeted Since 2009?
By Charles Hugh Smith Something has been going very wrong in the US economy for a very long time, and whatever is going wrong accelerated…
When Shelter Becomes a Speculative Asset, Society Unravels
By Charles Hugh Smith Does anyone really believe that the renunciation of massive, sustained stimulus of speculation in housing would leave housing valuations unchanged because…
September 1, 2025: Fed Reaches Inflation Target, Cheese Sandwich Costs $120
By Charles Hugh Smith Editor’s Note: This article is satire … possibly. In stock market news, toilet paper manufacturers continued rallying while tech and luxury-brand…
The Airbnb Bubble Popping Will Pop the Housing Bubble
By Charles Hugh Smith This is how bubbles collapse: the “vital few” 4% sell at whatever the market will bear, pushing prices down, and the…
Everyone’s Talking About Currencies: 21 Points
By Charles Hugh Smith The ideal “sound money system” is one in which many currencies, both state-issued and privately issued, compete in a transparent global…
Lessons from The Great Depression
By Charles Hugh Smith The risks of gambling in speculative frenzies and depending on serial asset bubbles continuing forever are easily observable, yet few act…
The Two Causes of the Coming Great Depression
By Charles Hugh Smith But the status quo has much to unlearn, and it seems the only pathway to a new understanding is a Great…
Will AI Deliver the Worst of Both Worlds?
By Charles Hugh Smith So what happens if AI destroys both profits (due to it being “free” and a freely distributed commodity) and jobs? Setting…
2023-2030: Artifice Vs. Doom-Loops
By Charles Hugh Smith If you prefer reality to artifice, oh, you wretched doom-and-gloomer. Just look at our social media feed, that’s what real. The…
12 Ways to Cut the Chains of Financial Serfdom
By Charles Hugh Smith Just because nobody talks about financial serfdom doesn’t mean it’s not real. Ours is a neofeudal economy of financial serfs in…