The Problem with a State-Cartel Economy: Prices Rise, Wages Don’t
By Charles Hugh Smith The vise will tighten until something breaks. It could be the currency, it could be the political status quo, it could…
Charles Hugh Smith
15 Years of War: To Whose Benefit?
By Charles Hugh Smith As for Iraq, the implicit gain was supposed to be access to Iraqi oil. Setting aside the 12 years of “no…
Decrypting The Appointment Of John Bolton
By Charles Hugh Smith So perhaps the dominant wing of the Deep State is finally willing to cut a deal with Trump. To many observers,…
Is Profit-Maximizing Data-Mining Undermining Democracy?
By Charles Hugh Smith If targeting political extremes generates the most profit, then that’s what these corporations will pursue. As many of you know, oftwominds.com…
Career Advice to 20-Somethings: Create Value as a Mobile Creative
By Charles Hugh Smith Finding work that fits who you are is rarely easy, especially if you don’t fit into the mainstream, and usually it…
Three Crazy Things We Now Accept As “Normal” For The Economy
By Charles Hugh Smith How can central banks “retrain” participants while maintaining their extreme policies of stimulus? Humans habituate very easily to new circumstances, even…
Why the Financial System Will Break: You Can’t “Normalize” Markets that Depend on Extreme Monetary Stimulus
By Charles Hugh Smith Central banks are now trapped. In a nutshell, central banks are promising to “normalize” their monetary policy extremes in 2018. Nice,…
Regulating Cryptocurrencies — And Why It Matters
By Charles Hugh Smith Nations that attempt to limit cryptocurrencies’ ability to solve these problems will find that protecting high costs and systemic friction will…
Could Central Banks Dump Gold in Favor of Bitcoin?
By Charles Hugh Smith All of which brings us to the “crazy” idea of backing fiat currencies with cryptocurrencies, an idea I first floated back…
Marx, Robotics and the Collapse of Profits
By Charles Hugh Smith Whatever commoditized robots can produce is no longer profitable; rather, the production destroys capital. Yesterday I discussed how robots only do work…
What Is Money? (Yes, We’re Talking About Bitcoin)
By Charles Hugh Smith Good ideas don’t require force. That describes the Internet, mobile telephony and cryptocurrencies. What is money? We all assume we know,…
A Radical Critique of Universal Basic Income
By Charles Hugh Smith This critique reveals the unintended consequences of UBI. Readers have been asking me what I thought of Universal Basic Income (UBI)…
The Demise of Dissent: Why the Web Is Becoming Homogenized
By Charles Hugh Smith In other words, we’ll be left with officially generated and sanctioned fake news and “approved” dissent. We’ve all heard that the…
Is This Why Productivity Has Tanked and Wealth Inequality Has Soared?
By Charles Hugh Smith Needless but highly profitable forced-upgrades are the bread and butter of the tech industry. One of the enduring mysteries in conventional…