The Downside of Complacency: Illiquidity Evaporates Stocks and Real Estate

Confidence / complacency doesn't map the real world, in which liquidity dries up and markets go bidless.

When Alan Greenspan issued his mea culpa in late 2013 about missing the subprime mortgage implosion and the resulting Global Financial Meltdown (Why I Didn't See the Crisis Coming Foreign Affairs), he started by noting the complete and utter failure of everyone's sophisticated models to predict the collapse of confidence.

The core failure, he suggested, lay in the models' reliance on the notion that humans make decisions rationally as Homo economicus, when the reality is we are extremely prone to irrational exuberance (a.k.a. running with the greed-enchanted herd) and panic (running off the cliff with the herd). He invoked Keynes famous "animal spirits" as the missing variable in economic models.

Irrational "animal spirits" generate "tail risk," events that supposedly happen only rarely but when they do happen, they trigger outsized consequences, and the Fed's models failed to accurately account for "tail risk" because they happen more often than statistical models predict.

All this boils down to liquidity and illiquidity: When "animal spirits" are confident in future increases in asset valuations, participants place a constant bid under the market because prices will keep going up so I'll make more money in the future. This constant bid is called liquidity: cash is flowing into the asset class, be it stocks or housing or cryptocurrencies or commodities.

When "animal spirits" turn to panic, sellers rush to sell as buyers vanish as they fear that prices will keep going down so I'll lose more money in the future. Buying into a downtrend is known as "catching the falling knife": the initial "buy the dip" players have their head handed to them on a platter, and those on the sidelines decide not to try to catch the falling knife.

This is an illiquid market: when sellers dump assets on the market and buyers vanish, the bid keeps dropping until buyers are willing to gamble that "this is the bottom." But should asset prices continue sliding after an initial euphoric pop higher--"the bottom is in, buy!"--then those who held back find their caution reinforced: that wasn't the bottom after all, and everyone who jumped in lost money.

As every surge of "buy the dip" players has their head handed to them on a platter, the market goes bidless--everyone who wanted to play "catch the falling knife" has been burned, and those who have lost the "animal spirits" to gamble stay out. The market goes bidless, and asset prices crash to levels no one in the greed-euphoria stage could imagine were even remotely possible.

Those who follow liquidity assume that the more cash sloshing around the system, the more money will flow into assets. But this assumes participants--and therefore markets--are rational. When caution--and then panic--take hold of the herd, no matter how much cash is sloshing around, none of it will be gambled on a losing bet.

Take a look at this chart of the Nasdaq dot-com bubble, and note the bubble symmetry: what shot up soon plummeted back to pre-bubble levels. Stocks that had reached $60 per share were recommended as "buys" at $45--a rational play perhaps, but wildly off the mark, as the stock eventually bottomed at $4.

When sellers desperate to sell swamp buyers, prices decline. If buying dries up, prices crash.



It's worth pondering the psychological reality that losses make a much bigger impression on us than gains. This is the foundation of risk aversion: once burned, twice shy. Everyone's surprised when "animal spirits" reverse polarity, but the confidence that any asset has reached "a permanently high plateau" is misplaced. Every manic greed-inflated bubble pops and cascades back to Earth. Here is a preview of the Everything Bubble popping:



Greenspan's models--and everyone else's--projected a rational market in which buyers continued to buy assets even as they lost money on previous attempts to "catch the falling knife." In other words, the markets will always be liquid.

The Pavlovian "buy the dip" reflex that was so profitable on the way up now becomes the road to ruin as every pop higher gets sold. Those playing "buy the dip" are eventually wiped out, leaving only those burned and wary. Eventually people tire of losing and they give up. After losing 40%, a 4% return on a Treasury bond--brushed off in the glorious ascent as foolishly cautious--now looks pretty good.

Confidence / complacency doesn't map the real world, in which liquidity dries up and markets go bidless. In the real world, humans panic and eventually decide to never again buy stocks or real estate, as the sting of their losses lingers far longer than their memories of glorious gains earned by riding the bubble higher.

---

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Will You Be Richer or Poorer?: Profit, Power, and AI in a Traumatized World
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How Those Using "Useful Idiots" Become "Useful Idiots"

And that's how totalitarian movements come to power: the citizens give up on the Establishment factions, as they've failed to solve the problems being exploited by extremist groups.

Useful Idiots describes those who support or encourage movements of mayhem in the misguided belief that these movements are positive or necessary. The classic example (and no, V. Lenin did not coin the phrase) are Western fellow-travelers who supported the totalitarian Soviet regime out of naivete, idealism or sentimentality.

But there is another class of Useful Idiots: when powerful factions are jockeying for supremacy in societies riven by chronic crisis (economic stagnation, social discord, etc.), some of these groups may cynically see extremist movements as Useful Idiots who can be directed to further the interests of the cynical group.

This is one of the implicit themes in the German TV series Babylon Berlin, a lavish, intricately plotted drama set in Berlin in the years before the Nazi rise to power in 1933. Netflix hosted the first three seasons for several years but gave it up a few years ago. The entire four seasons (season 4 was released in the US this year) are available on MHZ Choice, which serves up a wide range of European TV programming with subtitles.

Various factions are battling for influence in the wretched stew of poverty, political turmoil and postwar trauma of 1920s Berlin: there's the Communists, suitably ruthless; the gangsters running the seamy, thriving Berlin Underworld, also ruthless but in a more calculated, nuanced fashion; the Militarists, who seek to restore the Monarchy and Germany's military might by dispensing with Germany's troubled experiment with democracy, and the nascent Nazis, represented by the SA Brown Shirts street thugs loyal to the ideals of the Nazi party who organize street mobs to beat up their enemies: Communists and Jewish shopkeepers.

Lastly, there are the embattled police, trying to keep order and treat every miscreant fairly under the law, and the government of the Republic, trying to maintain a weak, debt-burdened democratic state against the forces trying to tear it down.

The Monarchist / Militarist Industrialists view the Brown Shirts as Useful Idiots who helpfully weaken the Communists and labor unions threatening their profits and political power. The Nazis also generate a general sense of uncertainty and chaos which the Militarists intend to use for their own purposes: the more dire the economic and social situation becomes, the greater the appeal of a restored monarchy and a powerful military to "restore order."

Unlike the characters in Babylon Berlin, we know how the struggle ends: it's the Militarist Industrialists who were the Useful Idiots of the Nazis, not the other way around. This is how those trying to use Useful Idiots for their own purposes end up being the Useful Idiots of those fomenting extremism.

We can discern the dynamic underlying this reversal. Once extremism is normalized, extreme polarization is also normalized, and those Establishment factions who started out seeking to position themselves as the restorers of order and prosperity are increasingly viewed as no longer up to the task: stronger medicine is now needed to restore order and right the sinking ship of state.

The extremists who were once small thorns in the side of the Establishment are now viewed as the only groups capable of doing "whatever it takes" to end the chaotic decline of civic order and the economy.

The citizens' loyalty to the Establishment factions is weak, while the fervent True Believers in the extremist camps are completely committed to the righteousness of their cause: only we can save the nation.

And that's how totalitarian movements come to power: the citizens give up on the Establishment factions, as they've failed to solve the problems being exploited by extremist groups.

Note to those currently in power: be careful about who you're encouraging as Useful Idiots: you might end up being the Useful Idiots in the endgame.



Play it as it lays, but play it carefully. Overconfidence and hubris can lead us into becoming unknowing Useful Idiots.

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Two Tidbits of Timeless Political Wisdom from Machiavelli

"Generosity" funded by debt or currency devaluation is the opposite of generosity: it is the ultimate taking.

Now that the air is thick with the burned-rubber stench of politics, let's consider two tidbits of timeless political wisdom from Machiavelli. Though often-maligned as the dark Lord of amoral cunning, my re-reading of Machiavelli's The Prince (completed in 1514, published after his death in 1532) reveals Mr. M. as a practical sort, not so much a promoter of devilish amorality as an observer wise to the vagaries of power.

Let's start with a famous excerpt from Chapter Six. The first is a translation in the modern vernacular; the second is an older more literal translation.

The Prince (PDF):

Here we have to bear in mind that nothing is harder to organize, more likely to fail, or more dangerous to see through, than the introduction of a new system of government. The person bringing in the changes will make enemies of everyone who was doing well under the old system, while the people who stand to gain from the new arrangements will not offer wholehearted support, partly because they are afraid of their opponents, who still have the laws on their side, and partly because people are naturally skeptical: no one really believes in change until they've had solid experience of it. So as soon as the opponents of the new system see a chance, they'll go on the offensive with the determination of an embattled faction, while its supporters will offer only half-hearted resistance, something that will put the new ruler's position at risk too.

The literal translation:

The Prince (PDF):

And it ought to be remembered that there is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success, than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things, because the innovator has for enemies all those who have done well under the old conditions, and lukewarm defenders in those who may do well under the new. This coolness arises partly from fear of the opponents, who have the laws on their side, and partly from the incredulity of men, who do not readily believe in new things until they have had a long experience of them. Thus it happens that whenever those who are hostile have the opportunity to attack they do it like partisans, whilst the others defend lukewarmly, in such wise that the prince is endangered along with them.

What Mr. M. is describing here is the immense incentive of those who have been well-served by the status quo to fight tooth and nail to defend its current configuration to maintain their share of the gravy train. Those who fear losing will fight far more vociferously than those who hope to gain from an uncertain and risky change of regime.

This generates what I've termed doing more of what's already failed for if the status quo was actually functioning as wonderfully as its defenders' claim, then there would be little need to defend it against calls for a new arrangement.

What Mr. M. didn't describe is the helping hand of collapse: when the status quo finally unravels, those it enriched will embrace the magical-thinking delusion that it can be restored in some sacrifice-free fashion, and that because they benefited so handsomely, everyone else should support this restoration.

But it's too late for a painless restoration, and so the defenders of the old order eventually give way and bitterly accept the necessity for a new arrangement. Short of systemic breakdown, those who have been enriched by the status quo will actually hasten its demise, for in their desperation to cling to "what's good for me is good for everyone," they will devalue the currency, borrow sums that can never be paid, and deploy other artifices to prop up an unsustainable status quo.

Which brings us to the second tidbit of timeless wisdom: the enduring advantage of frugality over liberality. The word "mean" in this contexts refers to frugality, not cruelty, and "liberal" refers to generous spending, not Progressive politics. We start with the modern vernacular translation again:

Since a ruler can't be generous and show it without putting himself at risk, if he's sensible he won't mind getting a reputation for meanness. With time, when people see that his penny-pinching means he doesn't need to raise taxes and can defend the country against attack and embark on campaigns without putting a burden on his people, he'll increasingly be seen as generous -- generous to those he takes nothing from, which is to say almost everybody, and mean to those who get nothing from him, which is to say very few. In our own times the only leaders we've seen doing great things were all reckoned mean. The others were failures.

Nothing consumes itself so much as generosity, because while you practice it you're losing the wherewithal to go on practicing it. Either you fall into poverty and are despised for it, or, to avoid poverty, you become grasping and hateful. Above all else a king must guard against being despised and hated. Generosity leads to both. It's far more sensible to keep a reputation for meanness, which carries a stigma but doesn't rouse people's hatred, than to strive to be seen as generous and find at the end of the day that you're thought of as grasping, something that carries a stigma and gets you hated too.

The literal translation:

Therefore, a prince, not being able to exercise this virtue of liberality in such a way that it is recognized, except to his cost, if he is wise he ought not to fear the reputation of being mean, for in time he will come to be more considered than if liberal, seeing that with his economy his revenues are enough, that he can defend himself against all attacks, and is able to engage in enterprises without burdening his people; thus it comes to pass that he exercises liberality towards all from whom he does not take, who are numberless, and meanness towards those to whom he does not give, who are few.

We have not seen great things done in our time except by those who have been considered mean; the rest have failed.

And there is nothing wastes so rapidly as liberality, for even whilst you exercise it you lose the power to do so, and so become either poor or despised, or else, in avoiding poverty, rapacious and hated. And a prince should guard himself, above all things, against being despised and hated; and liberality leads you to both. Therefore it is wiser to have a reputation for meanness which brings reproach without hatred, than to be compelled through seeking a reputation for liberality to incur a name for rapacity which begets reproach with hatred.

In other words, limited-spending frugality allows the ruler to be generous to the many by keeping taxes low. While generosity initially generates a warm and fuzzy feeling for the ruler, the eventual result of opening the spigots of the money reservoir is either the bankruptcy of the currency--the ultimate rapacity, as everyone's money is consumed in a great bonfire--or much higher taxes imposed as the only means to stave off insolvency.

Here is Federal debt--a parabolic increase in "generous" spending, "generous" until the consequences show up:



Here is total public-private debt: Everybody's borrowing and spending "generously" until the banquet of consequences is served, and Mr.M.'s rapacity which begets reproach with hatred is the main course.



In summary: "generosity" funded by debt or currency devaluation is the opposite of generosity: it is the ultimate taking. There is indeed an amoral cunning to this fake "generosity" and the temporary illusion of "wealth" it creates, but Mr. M. is not promoting this artifice, he is making the case against it.

---

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Global Crisis, National Renewal: A (Revolutionary) Grand Strategy for the United States (Kindle $9.95, print $24, audiobook) Read Chapter One for free (PDF).

A Hacker's Teleology: Sharing the Wealth of Our Shrinking Planet (Kindle $8.95, print $20, audiobook $17.46) Read the first section for free (PDF).

Will You Be Richer or Poorer?: Profit, Power, and AI in a Traumatized World
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The Adventures of the Consulting Philosopher: The Disappearance of Drake (Novel) $4.95 Kindle, $10.95 print); read the first chapters for free (PDF)

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Twisters on the Horizon: Is This Decade a Re-Make of 'That 70s Show'?

If we're in a re-make of 'That 70s Show', the plot twists--and twisters heading our way--may be far wilder than we can currently imagine.

I've often written about the 1970s, as it is a profoundly misunderstood decade in so many ways. As one example, the enormous expense of retooling America's industrial base to clean up pollution and become more efficient that I described in The 1970s: From Rotting Carcasses Floating in the River to Kayak Races (January 22, 2023) added to the stagflationary dynamics of the decade (trillions invested with no immediate increase in productivity or profits) but eventually paid enormous dividends in the decades that followed.

I often discuss cycles, and there are various theories about cycles. One is that all economic cycles share certain traits, for example, an unsustainable expansion of credit that leads to defaults and writedowns (the Kondratieff cycle, the business cycle), or an unsustainable expansion of the money supply.

Another theory holds that we don't repeat the most recent downturn, we repeat the one before that. In this scenario, we'll experience not a repeat of the stagflationary 1970s but the Crash and Depression of the 1930s.

If what we've entered is not just an economic cycle but an era of social-political tumult, then we have to be careful not to assume we can predict which features will echo past cycles. Perhaps we will experience the stagflation of the 1970s in this decade, as financial excesses are worked out and monumental investments to retool our industrial base and infrastructure place a drag on productivity and profits. There is substantial logic in that scenario.

As the charts below illustrate, stagflation also crushed the stock market's speculative dynamic. In the financial realm, That 70s Show was characterized by a massive devaluation of the purchasing power of stocks as a result of elevated inflation and an equally massive decay in the speculative impulse to play the stock market, as the percentage of household assets in the stock market fell from 38% to 14%.

But what we might experience in addition to stagflation is something few seem to recall about the 1970s: the extraordinary unpredictability of events and crises. Consider the situation in April 1973, at the start of President Nixon's second term.

The Christmas Bombing of North Vietnam in December 1972 had brought all parties to the negotiating table again, and a deal bringing closure to the war in Vietnam had been signed. Inflation had flared up, a currency crisis loomed and Nixon had issued sweeping policy changes in August 1971, ending the convertibility of the US dollar to gold in international markets and imposing wage and price controls.

The general outlook in early 1973 was positive, and the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) topped 1,000 again, reaching a new nominal high. If any seer predicted the Oil Embargo / Gas Crisis that pushed Americans into long lines around gas stations in October 1973, or the kidnaping of media heiress Patty Hearst in February 1974, or the Watergate cover-up leading to Nixon's resignation in August 1974, or the attempt on President Ford's life in September 1975, they are unknown to the world.

If anyone predicted a decade of anti-Establishment domestic terrorism, their prediction is lost to history. The hundreds of bombings of Corporate America buildings, banks and other symbolic fortresses of the Establishment has been ably documented in the book Days of Rage: America's Radical Underground, the FBI, and the Forgotten Age of Revolutionary Violence.

If anyone predicted that the US dollar would lose two-thirds of its purchasing power from 1966 to December 1981, their prediction is not well known. What $1 bought at the market peak in 1966 cost $3 by December 1981, in the throes of the deepest recession since the Great Depression, a recession triggered by soaring interest rates and monetary tightening to crush the wage-price-spiral inflation that had become embedded in the economy by 1980.

Note that "Dow 1,000" in October 1982 was only "Dow 330" when adjusted for inflation since the peak in 1966-- $1 in February 1966 = $3.07 in October 1982. From the Dow's top in January 1973 at 1051.70 to the point when the Dow reached 1,012 in October 1982, $1 in January 1973 = $2.31 in October 1982. So "Dow 1,000" in January 1973 = "Dow 435" in October 1982. These data points are from the CPI Inflation Calculator (BLS.gov).



Few predicted the demise of the belief that "stocks only go up" and the market was a money-making machine available to all gamblers, oops I mean "investors."



If we propose that the 2020s will mirror the 1970s not in the precise dynamics but in the unpredictability of crises and reversals of all that is stable, known and reliable, then we cannot possibly predict what lies ahead. We can only anticipate twisters on the horizon that will be completely unexpected and potentially disruptive on a scale that stretches across culture, society, politics and the economy.

If we're in a re-make of That 70s Show, the plot twists--and twisters heading our way--may be far wilder than we can currently imagine.

---

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When You Can't Go On: Burnout, Reckoning and Renewal $18 print, $8.95 Kindle ebook; audiobook Read the first section for free (PDF)

Global Crisis, National Renewal: A (Revolutionary) Grand Strategy for the United States (Kindle $9.95, print $24, audiobook) Read Chapter One for free (PDF).

A Hacker's Teleology: Sharing the Wealth of Our Shrinking Planet (Kindle $8.95, print $20, audiobook $17.46) Read the first section for free (PDF).

Will You Be Richer or Poorer?: Profit, Power, and AI in a Traumatized World
(Kindle $5, print $10, audiobook) Read the first section for free (PDF).

The Adventures of the Consulting Philosopher: The Disappearance of Drake (Novel) $4.95 Kindle, $10.95 print); read the first chapters for free (PDF)

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The Roots of American Populism: Are Trump and Vance Populists?

Let us hope that whomever ascends to the leadership is a populist in the full sense of the word, channeling Emerson and his fellow critics of what we now call neoliberalism.

What does it mean to say a politician is a populist? Over 30 years ago, Christopher Lasch observed in his book The True and Only Heaven: Progress and Its Critics that populism had been applied to such a wide swath of individuals and causes that it had lost any specific meaning.

This definition is a start: A political approach that strives to appeal to ordinary people who feel that their concerns are disregarded by established elite groups.

Lasch, if not alone among American intellectuals, was certainly one of the few who was deeply concerned with the roots of American populism, and with its critique of the changes in the American social, cultural and economic realms that were promoted by the status quo at the expense of those social classes diminished by those changes. Those who resisted these changes were deemed populists.

Lasch meticulously traces the roots of American 19th century populism through the influential Enlightenment era thinkers of Europe, the Protestant tradition's theological debates and American intellectual critics such as Ralph Waldo Emerson, of whom Lasch wrote: "his social views can easily be recognized, I think, as the views of a nineteenth-century populist. He has a populist distain for the fashionable life" which "fosters vanity, luxury and frivolous display."

Emerson's distain for the vanities of luxury was equaled by his distain for parasitic financiers, a position born of Emerson's religious beliefs. As Lasch notes, "Emerson believes in the moral value of manual labor." In other words, honest labor--what Emerson referred to as a calling--had a spiritual component. Here is Lasch: Emerson "would gladly sacrifice some of the 'conveniences' of civilization to the moral culture conferred by farming or a craft."

In his essay Politics (1844), Emerson "argues that the prevailing social arrangements allow 'the rich to encroach upon the poor.'" In Lasch's summary, Emerson held that "Society needs self-respecting men and women,, not a perfect set of institutions." He quotes Emerson: "Society can never prosper... until every man does that which he is created to do."

Emerson also held that those seeking to get something for nothing--the essence of the parasitic financialization and speculation Emerson viewed as a mortal threat--would eventually face a reckoning akin to karma: "A 'third silent party', Emerson notes, attends 'all our bargains'--nemesis or fate."

In the broad sweep of industrialization and financialization that took hold in the 19th century and utterly transformed America, populists viewed wage labor--being paid a wage rather than earning a living from one's own property and skills--was contrary to the American ideal and democracy, as only those with a stake in the system as owners could be entrusted to act in the interests of the nation as a whole, and only those with a path to ownership of their labor could reach their full potential and find their calling.

Let us turn now to the prevailing socio-economic arrangements in 21st century America, which are the result of 45 years of financialization and 30 years of rampant globalization, arrangement created not by forces beyond our influence but by policies promoted by political, social and economic interests on their own behalf.

These arrangements are quickly illuminated by a simple question: did they inflate your bubble or pop your bubble? In other words, did the bubble we each live in expand as a direct result of hyper-financialization and hyper-globalization, or was it popped by these forces?

That over 90 million Americans are expected to travel overseas this year offers a rough guide to the winners and losers in modern-day America: the 25% booking flights overseas who are reading articles asking if a $12,000 budget for a vacation in Europe is enough live in bubbles nicely inflated by financialization, speculation and globalization, while the bottom 60% are generally living paycheck to paycheck and cannot dream of having $12,000 available to spend on overseas travel.

In the America of today, a great many people have zero hope of buying a house in the city they grew up in and call home. Those who don't inherit a house or fortune, or who didn't choose their parents wisely have little hope of working their way through college with part-time jobs, as even state universities charge tens of thousands of dollars for tuition, fees and books, never mind living expenses.

I detailed these realities in "Why Are You So Negative?" Good Question. 4 Answers from Real Life (4/25/24)

Wage labor--what has been correctly identified as wage slavery--is now the norm, along with its sibling, debt serfdom. I have addressed the decline of self-employment (not gig-slavery, real self-employment) for years, and the rise of debt as the means to attempt social mobility and grab hold of a middle-class life.

A rigorous analysis of IRS data in 2015 revealed that only 1% of the US workforce of 145 million earns a middle-class income from self-employment: Only 4.48 million self-employed earn $50,000 or more, and 3 million of those are partnerships or corporations, i.e. professionals such as CPAs, attorneys, etc. That leaves leaves about 1.5 million people who aren't in the professional class (those with advanced degrees and professional licenses and credentials) who earn a middle class living as sole proprietors. Here is the analysis:

Endangered Species: The Self-Employed Middle Class (May 2015)

As inflation in both essentials and assets have shredded the earnings and pathways to ownership of the bottom 60%, the lived reality of those who didn't get rich from financialization, speculation and globalization is one of precarity, where any unexpected major expense such as a medical bill, car repair, insurance increase, etc. is enough to push financial anxiety into the red zone.

Precarious: One Misfortune Away from Insolvency (5/14/24)

The 45-year decline in labor's share of the economy was not the result of fate, but of central state / bank policies promoted by those who benefited most from these policies. I covered these realities in The Bill for America's $50 Trillion Gluttony of Inequality Is Overdue (9/21/20). This quote from Time Magazine encapsulates how policy created inequality on an unprecedented scale:

"There are some who blame the current plight of working Americans on structural changes in the underlying economy--on automation, and especially on globalization. According to this popular narrative, the lower wages of the past 40 years were the unfortunate but necessary price of keeping American businesses competitive in an increasingly cutthroat global market. But in fact, the $50 trillion transfer of wealth the RAND report documents has occurred entirely within the American economy, not between it and its trading partners. No, this upward redistribution of income, wealth, and power wasn't inevitable; it was a choice--a direct result of the trickle-down policies we chose to implement since 1975.

We chose to cut taxes on billionaires and to deregulate the financial industry. We chose to allow CEOs to manipulate share prices through stock buybacks, and to lavishly reward themselves with the proceeds. We chose to permit giant corporations, through mergers and acquisitions, to accumulate the vast monopoly power necessary to dictate both prices charged and wages paid. We chose to erode the minimum wage and the overtime threshold and the bargaining power of labor. For four decades, we chose to elect political leaders who put the material interests of the rich and powerful above those of the American people."



I regularly repost this chart because it's a snapshot of what's wrong with the status quo in America and what will eventually unleash nemesis on all those living in bubbles inflated by parasitic finance masquerading as "central bank policy," "shareholder value" and "investing" in speculation.

Those who believe that there will be no blowback from becoming a nation where the bottom 50% own a near-zero 2.6% share of the nation's immense private financial wealth are living in a bubble in desperate search of a needle.



Unsurprisingly, those who benefited the most from the ascendancy of parasitic finance and globalization approve most heartily of their own management of the nation's institutions and policies. The bottom 99% have a decidedly less favorable view of the nation's self-serving elites:



All of which brings us to the potential ascent of the Trump-Vance ticket to leadership. If populism means anything, it means restoring the value of work and especially manual labor of the real-world essential sort that ChatGPT, apps, bots and marketing cannot do, restoring the ladder of social mobility and gutting the forces that have laid waste to all those who didn't have the opportunity to buy stocks and real estate before they skyrocketed to unattainable heights: hyper-financialization and hyper-globalization.

Nemesis is running out of patience. Let us hope that whomever ascends to the leadership is a populist in the full sense of the word, channeling Emerson and his fellow critics of what we now call neoliberalism. What counts now isn't political labels; what counts now is promoting policies that reverse the 45-year hollowing out of the nation--morally, culturally and economically--that benefited the few at the expense of the many.

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My recent books:

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Self-Reliance in the 21st Century print $18, (Kindle $8.95, audiobook $13.08 (96 pages, 2022) Read the first chapter for free (PDF)

The Asian Heroine Who Seduced Me (Novel) print $10.95, Kindle $6.95 Read an excerpt for free (PDF)

When You Can't Go On: Burnout, Reckoning and Renewal $18 print, $8.95 Kindle ebook; audiobook Read the first section for free (PDF)

Global Crisis, National Renewal: A (Revolutionary) Grand Strategy for the United States (Kindle $9.95, print $24, audiobook) Read Chapter One for free (PDF).

A Hacker's Teleology: Sharing the Wealth of Our Shrinking Planet (Kindle $8.95, print $20, audiobook $17.46) Read the first section for free (PDF).

Will You Be Richer or Poorer?: Profit, Power, and AI in a Traumatized World
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The Adventures of the Consulting Philosopher: The Disappearance of Drake (Novel) $4.95 Kindle, $10.95 print); read the first chapters for free (PDF)

Money and Work Unchained $6.95 Kindle, $15 print) Read the first section for free


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