The Economy: Why It's Different This Time

Excerpt from This Isn't Just Another Crash, by Charles Hugh Smith

1. Households have never been so dependent on debt as a substitute for stagnating wages.

2. Real earnings (adjusted for inflation) have never been so stagnant for the bottom 90% for so long.

3. Corporations have never been so dependent on debt (selling bonds or taking on loans) to fund money-losing operations (see Netflix) or stock buybacks designed to saddle the company with debt service expenses to enrich insiders.

4. The stock market has never been so dependent on what amounts to fraud — stock buybacks — to push valuations higher.

5. The economy has never been so dependent on absurdly overvalued stock valuations to prop up pension funds and the spending of the top 10% who own 85% of all stocks, i.e. “the wealth effect.”

6. The economy and the stock market have never been so dependent on central bank free money for financiers and corporations, money creation for the few at the expense of the many, what amounts to an embezzlement scheme.

7. Federal statistics have never been so gamed, rigged or distorted to support a neo-feudal agenda of claiming a level of wide-spread prosperity that is entirely fictitious.

8. Major sectors of the economy have never been such rackets, i.e. cartels and quasi-monopolies that use obscure pricing and manipulation of government mandates to maximize profits while the quality and quantity of the goods and services they produce declines.

9. The economy has never been in such thrall to sociopaths who have mastered the exploitation of the letter of the law while completely overturning the spirit of the law.

10. Households and companies have never been so dependent on “free money” gained from asset appreciation based on speculation, not an actual increase in productivity or value.

11. The ascendancy of self-interest as the one organizing directive in politics and finance has never been so complete, and the resulting moral rot never more pervasive.

12. The dependence on fictitious capital masquerading as “wealth” has never been greater.

13. The dependence on simulacra, simulations and false fronts to hide the decay of trust, credibility, transparency and accountability has never been so pervasive and complete.

14. The corrupt linkage of political power, media ownership, “national security” agencies and corporate power has never been so widely accepted as “normal” and “unavoidable.”

15. Primary institutions such as higher education, healthcare and national defense have never been so dysfunctional, ineffective, sclerotic, resistant to reform or costly.

16. The economy has never been so dependent on constant central bank manipulation of the stock and housing markets.

17. The economy has never been so fragile or brittle, and so dependent on convenient fictions to stave off a crash in asset valuations.

18. Never before in U.S. history have the most valuable corporations all been engaged in selling goods and services that actively reduce productivity and human happiness.

Related: 
ZH: "Unprecedented" - Companies Slashed Over 20 Million Jobs In April, ADP

A Ukrainian Cabinet Meeting

December 14, 2015:

Note: All those speaking, Avakov, Saakashvilli and Poroshenko ( who calls the meeting closed to prevent escalation of violence), speak in Russian, the only common language they have.

We in Canada support these thieves, liars, and opportunists (and here, and here, and here) to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars to please the Canadian Ukrainian Congress and the United States of (Russophobic) Aggression.

Related: 

The Ukraine begs Canada for arms to kill some more of those stinking Donbass Ruskies

Why do those idiots in the Ukraine want arms? Crimea has gone in accordance with the will of the great majority (more than 80%) of the people (and that's according to a Pew Research poll, not Russian propaganda). Donbass demands autonomy within the Ukraine in accordance with the will of the people. And what's hard to understand about that? Remember, Julia Tymoshenko, American Lacky, ex-convict, former two-time Ukrainian Prime Minister, leader of Ukraine's Fatherland Party, calling for a gun to go kill damn Russians (that is, ethnic Russians of the Ukraine's Donbass region).

What the Ukies need do is to get the CIA out of Kiev and all the other foreign scum, Tony Blair for example, out of The country, and adopt a sensible policy of friendship toward both East and West: that way, they'd become a major bridge between the two to the benefit of all parties.

Ukraine minister throws water in governor's face in new row

Ukraine's Econ Minister Denounces Corruption, Storms Out of Government

Ukrainian Canadian Congress confirms that the Trudeau government continues Canada's grovelling support for Ukraine's Nazi-backed, kleptocracy