"The OFR Financial Stress Index (OFR FSI) is a daily market-based snapshot of stress in global financial markets. It is constructed from 33 financial market variables, such as yield spreads, valuation measures, and interest rates. The OFR FSI is positive when stress levels are above average, and negative when stress levels are below average. The OFR FSI incorporates five categories of indicators: credit, equity valuation, funding, safe assets and volatility. The FSI shows stress contributions by three regions: United States, other advanced economies, and emerging markets."
"I told you once that I was searching for the nature of evil. I think I've come close to defining it: a lack of empathy. It's the one characteristic that connects all the defendants. A genuine incapacity to feel with their fellow man. Evil, I think, is the absence of empathy."
- G. M. Gilbert
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"'Nuremberg Diary' is Gustave Gilbert's account of interviews he conducted during the Nuremberg Trials of Nazi leaders, including Hermann Göring, involved in World War II and the Holocaust. Gilbert, a fluent German speaker, served as a prison psychologist in Nuremberg, where he had close contact with those on trial. The text is the verbatim notes Gilbert took immediately after having conversations with the prisoners, information backed up by essays he asked them to write about themselves."
“I remember several years back I heard something that changed my life forever. Up until that point I had been struggling through life – doing everything the hard way. I couldn’t figure out why my life wasn’t going the way I felt it should be. I saw some people going through life effortlessly and seemingly with less tension and frustration while I was wondering if I could ever straighten out the mess my life had turned out to be. I was behind on my dreams, my promises, and my bills. Then one day I was listening to a tape and the lady was talking about the power of having dreams and goals and all of the other stuff that those motivational speakers talk about. By that point I had listened to hundreds of such tapes, but it seemed as if nothing worked for me.
Probably the only reason I was listening to that one was because I had developed a habit of listening to cassette tapes while driving my car. The statement the lady said was simple and I think I had even heard it somewhere before but this time a light bulb went on in my head. I remember stopping the tape and rewinding it over and over again to hear the 17 words she said. I couldn’t believe it was so basic and simple. I was looking for something sophisticated and complicated. I thought I had to attend a $10,000 seminar. I didn’t know I could find it on a $10 tape program.
I’m taking the time to tell you all of this preliminary information because when I tell you the 17 words, I really want you to get it and get it NOW! Because if you get it NOW, your life will never be the same. You will be using the same principle that all who have became wealthy before you have used. Even those who became wealthy and can’t tell you how they did use this same principle without even being aware of what they are doing. Well, are you ready for the 17 words that made a powerful and positive impact on my life and on the life of tens of thousands of individuals who have achieved unimaginable success? Of course you are… Well, here they are…
For things to change,
you must get a picture of what you want them to change to.
Yes, it’s as simple as it sounds and as easy as it seems… Don’t try to make it any complicated than this because it will only frustrate you.
You must know exactly what you want and the more specific and clear you can get, the better. This is important because Human Beings are Teleological in nature… In other words, we move towards the pictures we constantly hold in our minds. Let me give you an example… Suppose you went to the store and bought a 1,000-piece jigsaw puzzle but it didn’t have a picture on the box of what the end result should look like.
Would you have a much harder time putting the picture together? Of course. You may eventually figure it out; however, the person who has a clear picture of what the end result should look like will be more than 100 times ahead of you. The question is are they 100 times ahead of you because their IQ is 100 times greater? Is it because they are 100 times better looking than you? Maybe it’s because they live 100 times closer to the person who created the puzzle? Ohh, I know – they were one of the first students to take the Evelyn Woods mind-expanding speed-reading and comprehension course right? If none of this is true then what is?
Yes, the person who had the clear and specific picture of what the outcome was supposed to be was simply operating in accordance to how our brain works. It moves towards the pictures we hold in our mind. It’s interesting because once you know exactly what it is you are moving towards, you seem to automatically know the steps to take or the necessary steps will soon become noticeable.
Your brain's subconscious mind, operating similar to a magnet, will start to attract in your direction the conditions, people, and circumstances that will help you move closer to the mental picture you maintain in your mind and it will repel all of those things that do not correlate to the picture you have in your mind. Therefore, the people who are clear and specific about what they want are using the powers of the Universe to assist them. This is, indeed, an awesome power. A person who knows how and uses this awesome power of the Universe to his or her advantage is a person who is working smart. A person who struggles every day trying to move closer to the success that they have no idea how it’s supposed to look is a person who is working hard.
Based on your observations over the years, do you think that most people are working hard or working smart? People who just work hard day in and day out without a clear picture of what they are moving towards are about as exciting as a tulip. Even though they may seem to be willing to work hard and put in the hours, they don’t seem to have much life in them. And people want to follow people who seem to have some life in them. If they want to find people who don’t seem to have much life in them, all they have to do is go to their job. People will follow people who look like they know where they are going and look like they are excited about the journey.
You must understand that your strength comes from knowing what you want. This will ignite the fire inside of you and enable you to borrow from the promise of the future so you can engage in the activities today that will move you closer and closer to what you want. It will enable you to go through the trials and tribulations that may be necessary so you can arrive at your destination. But remember the journey will be more important than the destination because in the journey you will become the person you require to become to finally arrive at your destination. So when you reach your destination, look at the person you have become and set a new destination so you can continue to grow and develop.
Whatever you do, just always remember that for things to change, you must get a picture of what you want them to change to. These are the "17 Words that Changed My Life Forever"… why not allow them to change yours too?”
"A gorgeous spiral galaxy some 100 million light-years distant, NGC 1309 lies on the banks of the constellation of the River (Eridanus). NGC 1309 spans about 30,000 light-years, making it about one third the size of our larger Milky Way galaxy. Bluish clusters of young stars and dust lanes are seen to trace out NGC 1309's spiral arms as they wind around an older yellowish star population at its core.
Not just another pretty face-on spiral galaxy, observations of NGC 1309's recent supernova and Cepheid variable stars contribute to the calibration of the expansion of the Universe. Still, after you get over this beautiful galaxy's grand design, check out the array of more distant background galaxies also recorded in this sharp, reprocessed, Hubble Space Telescope view.”
"Well, it is our fate to live in a time of crisis. To live in a time when all forms and values are being challenged. In other and more easy times, it was not, perhaps, necessary for the individual to confront himself with a clear question: What is it that you really believe? What is it that you really cherish? What is it for which you might, actually, in a showdown, be willing to die? I say, with all the reticence which such large, pathetic words evoke, that one cannot exist today as a person – one cannot exist in full consciousness – without having to have a showdown with one’s self, without having to define what it is that one lives by, without being clear in one’s mind what matters and what does not matter.”
"Be Ready For Stock Market Crash Just Like 1929 Crash!"
by Epic Economist
"In spite of the ravaging economic collapse that emerged as a result of the effects of the health crisis, 2020 has ended with stock markets registering record-highs. The evident disconnection between Main Street and Wall Street is making financial strategists argue that the hysterical market speculation is inevitably going to lead to the burst of the epic stock market bubble. Although it is impossible to predict the exact time a crash will occur, by analyzing historical patterns, experts can see that it is coming, and the more the bubble continues to be inflated, the sharpest the stock market crash will be. That's what we're going to investigate in this video.
2020 was one of the toughest years for the economy in all U.S. history. Nonetheless, the year ended with the S&P 500 up by 16%, which corresponds to a near-doubling of its average annual return since 1980. But considering that since the beginning of 1950, the S&P 500 has experienced 38 separate market corrections of at least 10%, it is possible to see a pattern of at least one sizable move lower in equities every 1.87 years. Which means that even though no one can tell for sure when a crash or correction will happen, how long it'll last, or how sharp the decline will be, it's always possible to see when one is coming.
According to billionaire investor Jeremy Grantham, the long bull market run on Wall Street that has been developing since 2009 has now turned into a full-fledged epic bubble. Grantham mentioned that the 30% recovery of the benchmark S&P500 from the March 2020 lows might indicate that the bubble is likely to be inflated for longer than usual, but the unsustainable overvaluations won't last for much longer and soon the stock market bubble will burst.
He advised that this is what investors should await from a late-stage bubble - "an accelerating, nearly vertical stage of unknowable length - but typically short". “Even if it is short, this stage at the end of a bubble is shockingly painful and full of career risk for bears,” he warned. The billionaire investor considers this as a late stage of a bubble because prices keep moving further away from the trend, at a sped-up pace and with a mounting speculative frenzy fuelling the growth of the bubble.
Just as Grantham, several wealthy investors are already aware that a market bubble is here, or at least near. According to a new survey from E-Trade Financial, just 9% of millionaires surveyed think the market is nowhere near a bubble. As for the rest of the affluent investor group, 16% think we’re “fully in a bubble”, 46% in “somewhat of a bubble”, and 29% think the market is approaching one. Additionally, the survey revealed that market volatility is being considered as one of the most riskiest factors, with 18% of millionaires viewing it as the biggest portfolio threat.
The apparent inconsistency of continued bullishness at a time of rising bubble fears is defying every risk thrown at the markets, as experts continue to defend the path of least resistance is up. That is to say, the stock market bubble is predicted to still move much higher before the burst, but if the economy fails to catch up with record-breaking valuations, one of the world's top market experts, Mohamed El-Erian has warned that there will be "serious and widespread unintended consequences" if global output fails to return to pre-outbreak levels.
He stated that there is "no doubt" that company valuations have become "massively disconnected" from the economy and that the enormous amount of stimulus money issued by governments and central banks is inflating shares instead of actually boosting the economy. Similarly, David Neuhauser, managing director of hedge fund Livermore Partners, has affirmed that Biden’s spending plan could reconstruct the same financial conditions witnessed in the run-up to the 1929 Wall Street crash.
In other words, markets are inevitably headed to a crash, whether the pop happens as a consequence of the massive inflation or investor delirious speculation, historical patterns outline that the system is set to a correction. And bearing in mind that we're at highs much higher than what was recorded in previous crashes, we're about to watch the steepest market decline ever, which will trigger catastrophic consequences for both the economic and the financial sector. At this point, it's just a matter of time, and we're aren't exactly short in determinant factors that could suddenly explode and blow up the markets with them."
"The COVID Tracking Project" Every day, our volunteers compile the latest numbers on tests, cases, hospitalizations, and patient outcomes from every US state and territory. - https://covidtracking.com/ ○
"In the darkest corners of our human instincts lies a psychological phenomenon that is the result of millions of years of evolutionary biology. It’s called “tonic immobility”. And it refers to a form of paralysis that occurs when we’re terrified and facing extreme mental or emotional trauma. Tonic immobility is common in nature. Animals in the wild will often freeze in place when confronted by a predator; the idea is that making no movement, and doing absolutely nothing, increases their chances of survival because the threat will simply go away. But as anyone who has ever been on safari or seen a nature documentary knows, the danger seldom goes away on its own.
This instinct to ‘do nothing’ in the presence of danger runs very deep in our instincts; and it’s related to a cognitive quirk within our brains that psychologists call ‘normalcy bias’. We’ve discussed this before. Normalcy bias is what causes human beings to believe, even in the face of obvious perils, that everything is going to be just fine.
Humans are creatures of habit. We easily fall into routines - waking up, going to work, stopping by the coffee shop on the way, spending time with the family in the evening, etc. And those routines define ‘normal’ for each and every one of us.
When the routine is disrupted, we often have a difficult time coping - even with little things. If the bakery down the street is out of the croissant flavor that we order every morning on the way to work, we’re irritated by it and don’t want to break routine by trying something new. And major disruptions to our ‘normal’ are met by severe psychological backlash. Our brains simply refuse to acknowledge it.
This is normalcy bias. It’s one of the reasons why denial is the first stage of grief. We cannot accept the loss of a loved one who has been part of our routine - our brains won’t allow it. Or occasionally we might find out someone has passed, and our first reaction is, “But I just saw them last week!” Again, our brains have an extremely difficult time grasping the concept that our deeply entrenched ‘normal’ is about to change.
And that’s why, when faced with something obvious that threatens our ‘normal’, it’s common for us to instinctively do nothing. Our brains are hard wired to believe that the danger will resolve itself and everything will go back to ‘normal’. Many of us felt this way in 2020.
When the pandemic struck, it was terrifying. No one really understood anything about it; the media practically made it out to be a flesh-eating superbug that would vaporize everyone immediately. And in the face of this threat, it was easy for politicians to convince people to literally do absolutely nothing: stay home, and shelter in place. The idea was that if we waited long enough - if we froze in fear long enough - then the danger would pass. And people maintained a belief throughout the year that life would eventually return to normal, no matter how crazy the world became.
When we were locked down in our homes, we believed that life would return to normal.
When mostly peaceful protestors were rioting and raging in the streets, torching private businesses that had absolutely nothing to do with their cause, we believed that life would return to normal.
When angry Marxists political candidates raged that they want to confiscate private property and nationalize entire industries, we believed that life would return to normal.
Today there are literally tanks lining in the streets of Washington DC and attack helicopters roaming the skies. A new US President is set to be inaugurated tomorrow with more than 20,000 troops guarding him.
They have already announced sweeping legislative and policy changes, ranging from substantially higher taxes to Green New nonsense to debilitating business regulations that will likely frustrate an already weakened economy.
There is absolutely zero fiscal or monetary restraint in government; there’s hardly a single policy initiative that doesn’t carry at least a trillion dollar price tag.
No one cares about the national debt - which is set to reach $30 trillion within the next few months, or the fact that the central bank balance sheet will likely pass $10 trillion this year. Their solution to everything is to squash productivity and print money.
Yet still, countless people believe that life will return to normal. For them, part of their ‘normal’ is that America is safe, stable, and powerful… and always will be. Their brains simply cannot accept a reality in which the country they love so dearly has changed. And it’s not going back.
This is normalcy bias, and it compels countless people to do absolutely nothing in the face of obvious threats.
When you see a government racking up trillions of dollars a year in wasteful new debt, and a central bank printing trillions of dollars of new money, a rational person would take steps to preserve his/her savings.
When the Treasury Secretary states in black and white that the Social Security trust funds will run out of money in a few years, a rational person would take steps to safeguard his/her retirement.
When the nation has become so fractured in conflict that it takes tanks and 20,000+ troops to hold a ceremony in the capital, a rational person would create a Plan B and have some backup options. But normalcy bias makes us believe that everything is going to back to normal. So we freeze in place and do nothing. There are plenty of solutions to mitigate these threats. But the most important thing to do right now is overcome normalcy bias."
Say, wouldn’t you like to know what’s going on in my mind?"
- "Big Spender", by Shirley Bassey
WEST RIVER, MARYLAND – "Here’s the nation’s new go-to person for everything that concerns money. Reuters reports: "Janet Yellen, U.S. President-elect Joe Biden’s nominee to run the Treasury Department, will tell the Senate Finance Committee on Tuesday that the government must “act big” with its next coronavirus relief package. “I believe the benefits will far outweigh the costs, especially if we care about helping people who have been struggling for a very long time,” she said in the statement, which was obtained by Reuters.
Who are these people who have been struggling? American household income (thanks to the feds’ bailouts and giveaways) was at its highest point ever last year – with $1 trillion more in earnings than the year before. And we need not remind dear readers that the U.S. government is broke – with a $2 trillion deficit already on the books.
Acting Stupid: But acting “big” is rarely the same as acting smart. In this context, it means acting stupid. There are two important tasks for an American president. He is meant to protect Americans’ freedom and their wealth. Everything else is detail. But already, the incoming jefe is promising to squander more of both. (I’ll come back to how he will squander Americans’ freedom later in the week...) But hey… give the guy a chance. It’s his turn!
Donald Trump acted “big,” too. He set a record for wasting wealth – with the largest budget increases in history. He followed Barack Obama, who was no slouch at dissipation either; he added $8.5 trillion to the national debt during his eight-year term, a 73% increase. He also put in place the “Obamacare” plan, an open-ended “entitlement” that is sure to bankrupt the country as Americans grow older.
hen, of course, there was George W. Bush, whose “big” act was the wacky War on Terror. It will cost $7 trillion. (We’ll get to his “Patriot Act” later this week, when we look at the loss of freedom I alluded to above.)
Act Bigger: But Mr. Biden seems to want to act bigger than any president before him. That is, he wants to out-retard them all. This is not necessarily his fault. You get to Hell one step at a time. The road is well trod and he’s already far along. All he has to do is keep walking. One foot after the other. Left after right. A is followed by B… It doesn’t matter who does the hauling. The ankle bone is connected to the shin bone… And when you’ve got an aging, degenerate empire… led by an aging Deep State hack… what do you expect?
Permanent Stimulus: And, by the way, the American people will whoop and holler… lining up behind him like a yahoo mob going to watch an execution. Then, thanks to the hard work of the public schools and the mainstream media – two pillars of the Elite Establishment – the poor knuckleheads will gladly salute their own firing squad.
Look at this, reported by MassLive.com: "Nearly two-thirds of Americans are on board with a progressive proposal – backed by some Massachusetts lawmakers – calling on the federal government to cut monthly $2,000 stimulus checks to Americans over the course of the COVID-19 pandemic, a new poll shows.
Data for Progress, a progressive polling and advocacy group, asked 1,166 likely voters across the country last week if they’d support or oppose the idea of a “$2,000 per month direct cash payment to every person for the duration of the pandemic.”
Sixty-five percent of respondents say they’d support recurring $2,000 checks, an idea still advocated by Sens. Ed Markey and Bernie Sanders, who along with Vice President-elect Kamala Harris proposed a bill for monthly checks back in May. Forty-one percent of respondents “strongly support” the idea, while 24% “somewhat support” it."
Note that this is not a one-time “stimulus” of $2,000 they are calling for, but MONTHLY checks… a permanent stimulus plan. It would function as a kind of monetary pacemaker… giving consumers a jolt every month just to keep their greedy little hearts pumping.
Does anyone ask, “Where will the money come from?” Does anyone worry about the expanding federal deficits… or the tilting tower of debt? No? Why not? Because they don’t have to.
Something for Nothing: That is the wonderful magic of the post-1971 money system. It corrupts federal spending… It distorts and weakens the economy… And it also eats away at the brain. The Federal Reserve has multiplied its balance sheet (the foundation of America’s money supply) by nearly 10 times so far this century. That is what paid (indirectly) for the War on Terror… Obama’s debt… the Wall Street boom… Trump’s tax cuts… and the COVID-19 “relief” boondoggles.
And now, brains all across the country are abuzz about the great things coming down the pike. “Something for nothing” is no longer a joke; it’s a fact of life. People expect to get a free lunch every day. And $2,000 a month will soon seem miserly."
"For years I have been cataloging America’s decline into collapse, not merely economic collapse from economic concentration and the offshoring of jobs and investment, but also the collapse of the belief system that created some unity among a diverse population. Today not only is the economy done for, but so is the belief system that sustained social and political stability.
America no longer exists. A geographical entity exists of diverse peoples and interests, but not a country, much less a nation. The United States itself has degenerated into an empire. It is no longer simply a country with an empire. The 50 states are themselves the Establishment’s empire, and it can only be held together by force.
Earlier in my life free speech was used by liberals to legalize pornography, homosexual marriage, and abortion, all of which were opposed by the majority of the population. This did not stop liberals from imposing their agendas on the people.
Today free speech is impermissible, because it can be used to protest what half of the population sincerely believes was a stolen presidential election. Even attorneys and legal firms that brought legitimate cases of electoral fraud for clients are being punished for doing the ordinary work of attorneys. The same is happening to university professors and to average Americans who exercised their Constitutionally protected right of free speech and association and attended the Trump rally. See for example: https://www.paulcraigroberts.org/
In America today, free speech can only be exercised in narrow and controlled channels. It can be used to demonize President Trump and his supporters as “enemies of democracy.” It can be used to demonize white people as “systemic racists” and “white supremacists,” and to demonize heterosexual white males as “misogynists.” Its one other use is to demonize countries—Russia, China, and Iran—that stand in the way of Washington’s hegemony. There are no other permissible uses of free speech today in the United States, an inappropriate name of the country as the country has been throughly disunited by Identity Politics and a presidential election widely perceived by voters to have been stolen.
I have provided for my readers a massive, but only partial, list of evidence of a stolen election. See: https://www.paulcraigroberts.org/
But a simple question suffices: If the election was not stolen, why is it impermissible to raise the question? Explanations that are off limits to investigation and public discussion are unlikely to be true. The reason they are off limits is because they cannot withstand examination. You don’t have to go back far in time to get a long list: Assassinations of JFK, RFK, and MLK, Waco, Oklahoma City Bombing, 9/11, Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction, Iranian nukes, Assayd’s use of chemical weapons, Russian invasion of Ukraine, Russiagate, 2020 electoral fraud, January 6 Trump Insurrection. And, yes, I left out some, but the point stands without them. A country in which explanations are controlled is a country in which people live in lies.
In America and Western civilization generally, the concept of objective truth has essentially been destroyed, especially in educational and communication institutions. Throughout the Western World the basis of truth has been shifted from evidence to emotion. Emotion has become the important evidence. Objective truth is dismissed as a construct that serves white males. https://www.paulcraigroberts.org/
In America today everything is aligned against the white heterosexual population. The Democrat left, universities, and media are aligned with race and gender victims of alleged white racism and transphobia. Kristen Clarke has been appointed to the Justice (sic) Department to ensure that employment and promotion policies are aligned with race and gender victims. https://www.rt.com/usa/
Immigration policy is aligned against white Americans. Powerless as a majority, white Americans have no future as a minority. https://www.zerohedge.com
Even if white Americans could escape their insouciance and realize that their country is being taken away from them, they are powerless to do anything about it. With the new domestic terrorism bill on the way, even a protest against dispossession is criminalized as sedition.
There are many interesting aspects of the situation that we could explore. But let’s take only one. The Biden regime seems to be filling up with neoconservative zionists who are agents of Washington and Israel’s hegemony. The pursuit of this hegemony involves conflict with Russia, China, and Iran.
Washington will be entering these conflicts with a collapsed economy and a sharply divided population. Will the real backbone of the American armed forces—Trump deplorables—fight for an Establishment that hates its guts? Will an economy drowning in debt and destroyed by corporate offshoring of investment and American middle class jobs and now by lockdowns that are destroying the remaining pieces of the middle class—small businesses—be able to sustain a conflict with nations more unified and free of external debt and unmanageable internal debt? If so, it will be the first time in history.
How long will Trump deplorables remain docile when they realize that they are being exterminated by being cut off from equal rights, constitutional protection, employment and avenues of success?
As for the Establishment itself, when will its arrogance and confidence be shaken by the realization that it cannot control the anti-white, anti-American ideologues it has created and is itself facing the situation faced by Kerensky, the Brownshirts, and the Chinese Communist Party when Mao unleashed the cultural revolution? Having empowered hatred and having let it out of the bottle, the Establishment itself will be destroyed by it.
Who will the Establishment appeal to when the revolution turns on them? What answer will the Establishment have when they are asked the question Bolsheviks put to Kerensky: “Who chose you?”
"Not unsurprisingly, people want a binary option: do we get deflation or inflation? Unfortunately, reality is messy. Broadly speaking, globalization is deflationary as capital seeks the lowest cost labor, parts and materials, the least stringent environmental standards and the most corrupt governance to maximize profits by any means available (in this case, exploitation and corruption). Wages lose purchasing power as every labor force competes with the cheapest available pool of global labor, and domestic companies must lower prices or face obliteration by the global corporations.
Broadly speaking, financialization is inflationary as the costs of services increase as financialization enables monopolies and cartels to dominate entire sectors. Once they control the sector, they increase prices while lowering quality to maximize profits by any means available (in this case, monopoly, cartels and political corruption). As the profits gush in, corporate monopolies and cartels can "invest in corruption" by using a sliver of their profits to buy political favors and protection.
Financialization lowers the cost of credit to corporations and financiers, giving the largest entities an unmatchable competitive advantage: they can borrow immense sums at near-zero cost and use this money (or newly issued stock) to buy competitors, insuring their monopoly won't be challenged by either regulations (since politicos and bureaucrats have been bought off) or competitors (all bought out with "free money".)
While many hold that inflation is always a monetary phenomenon, real-world scarcities are also inflationary. If you were waiting in a long line at a gas station in 1973, hoping to get a tank of gas at only double the price of a month earlier, you'll know that scarcity is absolutely marvelous at sending price soaring regardless of what's happening with the money supply. So inflation can be driven by either or both monetary and scarcity dynamics.
Enter the pandemic. Needless to say, restrictions in travel and gatherings are deflationary in travel-leisure-dining sectors as airlines lower prices to compete for a shrinking pool of passengers and surviving restaurants suppress prices to attract scarce customers. As millions of workers lose their jobs and depend on unemployment, the insecurity of future income weighs on overall consumption.
Lowering the cost of credit does little for these sectors while rocket-boosting speculation and financialization. The monetary "solution" to deflation is always the same: lower interest rates to zero and flood the financial sector with unlimited liquidity. The resulting stock market bubble and corporate orgy of borrowing and stock issuance are predictable results of unfettered, near-infinite financialization.
But lowering the cost of credit and incentivizing monopolies and cartels to expand their control doesn't actually help the economy. Enabling rapacious monopolies and cartels is systemically inflationary, while lowering the cost and availability of credit also increases the attractiveness of automation as a means of lowering labor costs, a dynamic that is deflationary as lower wages equals lower consumption.
The reality is relatively few gig economy workers earn a middle-class income working 40 hours a week. The large-scale reduction of wage and benefit security--i.e. the transition to a precariat work force--is highly deflationary in terms of wages and consumption, as precariats cannot count on future earnings being reliable or sufficient.
The political "solution" is Universal Basic Income (UBI) as a means of supporting consumption. But supporting the consumption of essentials doesn't magically incentivize innovation or the expansion of capacity and real-world production.
Meanwhile, the Federal Reserve will continue giving unlimited "free money" to corporations and financiers to increase the concentration of financial and political power in the hands of the few at the expense of the many. This fuels the dominance of corporations and financiers and increases the risks of monetary over-reach, which introduces the potential for a non-linear sudden and unpredictable explosion of monetary-driven inflation.
All of this sets the stage for both monetary and scarcity inflation. Monopolies and cartels are free to exploit their stranglehold on the nation by jacking up prices and reducing quality (while the bought-and-paid-for political class theatrically wrings their hands while skimming millions in campaign contributions). This is rabidly inflationary.
Since there are few incentives to expand real-world capacity and production, this sets the stage for scarcities in essentials and non-essentials alike. With Peak Globalization in the rearview mirror, the deflationary forces of globalization are ebbing.
The fly in the ointment is speculative bubbles always pop. All the inflation in the system has flowed into excessive speculation, which has inflated unprecedented bubbles across most asset classes. When these all pop, the results are deflationary as the wealth effect reverses and over-leveraged corporations default and/or go bankrupt.
I marked up this chart of the S&P 500 about a year ago, and since then the market crashed and then soared to new highs (SPX 3,826). The basic message here is extremes get more extreme until the rocket runs out of fuel--something the consensus now claims is "impossible." The consensus is that asset inflation is unstoppable and forever. History begs to differ."
"The OFR Financial Stress Index (OFR FSI) is a daily market-based snapshot of stress in global financial markets. It is constructed from 33 financial market variables, such as yield spreads, valuation measures, and interest rates. The OFR FSI is positive when stress levels are above average, and negative when stress levels are below average. The OFR FSI incorporates five categories of indicators: credit, equity valuation, funding, safe assets and volatility. The FSI shows stress contributions by three regions: United States, other advanced economies, and emerging markets."
