What Happens When the Competent Opt Out?
By Charles Hugh Smith By this terminal stage, the competent have been driven out, quit or burned out. What happens with the competent retire, burn…
Charles Hugh Smith
2023: Echoes of 1973
By Charles Hugh Smith So what’s changed? Everything, but mostly beneath the surface churn of circus and theater. 2023 is echoing 1973 in potentially consequential…
This Housing Bubble Is Different: It’s Much More Precarious
By Charles Hugh Smith And what happens next? Bubble symmetry: valuations fall at the same rate as they rose, declining back to the starting point…
The Everything Bubble and Global Bankruptcy
By Charles Hugh Smith The resulting erosion of collateral will collapse the global credit bubble, a repricing/reset that will bankrupt the global economy and financial…
Will 2023 Be “Just an Average Recession in an Average Year” or Will It Be Transformational?
By Charles Hugh Smith It shouldn’t surprise us if 2023 turns out to be atypical and disruptively transformational in ways few believe possible. It seems…
The Blowback from Stripmining Labor for 45 Years Is Just Beginning
By Charles Hugh Smith The clueless technocrats are about to discover that unfairness and exploitation can’t be measured like revenues and profits, but that doesn’t…
The Uncertainty in China Is Kryptonite to Global Markets
By Charles Hugh Smith Few seem alive to the potentially consequential financial risks arising from uncertainties evolving in China. One thing we know rather definitively…
“Quiet Quitting” Isn’t Just About Jobs; It’s About a Crumbling Economy
By Charles Hugh Smith The unraveling of hyper-Globalization and hyper-Financialization will generate consequences few conventional analysts and pundits anticipate. TikTok videos on ‘Quiet Quitting’–doing the…
Two Easy Predictions: Wealth Tax and Windfall Tax
By Charles Hugh Smith Looks like we need another $500 billion or so. Hum baby! Predictions are hard, especially about the future, but two predictions…
Peering Into the Crystal Ball, We See … Instability Leading to Collapse
By Charles Hugh Smith We can only choose one: open, dynamic stability (evolution) or autocracy (instability and collapse). When the fundamentals of life change, every…
The End of Cheap Food
By Charles Hugh Smith Global food production rests on soil and rain. Robots don’t change that. Of all the modern-day miracles, the least appreciated is…
10 Reasons Why This Recession Is Different
By Charles Hugh Smith All of these are structural dynamics that won’t go away in a few months or years. Let’s explore what’s different now…
The EU’s Crisis Is Global
By Charles Hugh Smith The EU’s crisis isn’t limited to energy. It is a manifestation of the global breakdown of Neocolonialism, Financialization and Globalization. The…
Why Some Cities May No Longer Be Viable
By Charles Hugh Smith Any city whose lifeblood ultimately depends on hyper-globalization and hyper-financialization will no longer be viable. The human migration from the countryside…