oftwominds-Charles Hugh Smith: 2022

Friday, December 30, 2022

It's a New Era

This dynamic--making problems much worse by forcing more of whatever worked in the previous era into a saturated, increasing unstable new era--receives little attention or understanding.

Eras may last decades, and only those who've lived long enough to recall previous eras have experienced the transition from one era to the next. The era of financialization, globalization and low-cost, abundant oil/natural gas began over 40 years ago in 1981.

The era of digital / Internet technologies took off about 30 years ago. All of these dynamics accelerated in the early 2000s, roughly 20 years ago.

Only those 60 and older experienced working in a previous era (pre-1981).

All of these dynamics are entering a phase of nonlinear turbulence as the changes are outpacing these highly streamlined / optimized systems' ability to self-correct.

This nonlinear instability is being accelerated by doing more of what worked in the previous era, in the mistaken belief that the 2020s are simply an extension of the eras that began 40 and 30 years ago.

The fixes that worked in the past won't resolve the nonlinear instability because all these dynamics have reached saturation: adding more debt no longer generates organic expansion of productivity, all it does is inflate an even larger and more unstable credit-asset bubble.

Globalization has been optimized to the point of saturation: the potential downsides to national security outweigh any remaining marginal gains in corporate profitability.

Financialization has so distorted the economy that gambling on useless speculations is now viewed as the best (or only) way to get ahead.

When a system has absorbed all it can absorb, adding more is just a waste of resources.

We've entered a new era, and so the fixes and incentives that worked in the past 40 years no longer work.

The idea that the past 30 years were not a permanent era but an anomaly that's come to an end doesn't compute for everyone who has only experienced the "glorious 30" years of cheap energy, soaring assets and falling prices due to hyper-globalization and hyper-financialization.

The idea that this new era may evolve unpredictably is also anathema to a technocratic culture and economy that prides itself on forecasting and controlling everything with credit and money.

The previous 40 years of material abundance has nurtured a belief that the solution to any scarcity is to create more money, as some of this new money will inevitably flow into eliminating the scarcity.

The idea that some scarcities cannot be fixed by creating more money doesn't compute.

It may turn out that all the lessons we learned in the past 40 years will not only be useless in this new era, they will be disastrously counter-productive.

Their unparalleled success for decades may blind us to the power of previous solutions to make our problems worse than they would have been had we recognized the new era for what it is rather than seeing the future as a seamless extension of the previous era.

This dynamic--making problems much worse by forcing more of whatever worked in the previous era into a saturated, increasing unstable new era--receives little attention or understanding.

This dynamic helps us understand why systems that seemed permanent and forever can destabilize and fall apart with astonishing speed.

We thought we were fixing it by doing more of what worked in the past, but we were actually accelerating the turbulence and destabilization.

We have a hard time letting go of the idea that the recent past is an accurate guide to the future. In stable eras, it generally is, but not when an era ends and a new one begins.

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Wednesday, December 28, 2022

My One Prediction for 2023

The question that should be on our minds is: how are my household's buffers holding up?

Lists of predictions for the new year are reliably popular. Here's 10 predictions, there's 17 predictions, over here we have 23 and a half... let's strip it all down to one prediction: everyone's predictions will be wrong because 2023 isn't going to follow anyone's script.

There are several reasons for this. One is that the vast majority of predictions are based on historical comparisons to previous eras. If the current era is unique in its combination of dynamics and instability, previous pathways are not going to accurately predict what happens next.

Recency bias leads us astray. The past 50 years of relatively mild weather, the past 40 years of Bull Markets, the past 30 years of financialization and the supremacy of monetary policy--all of these offer a warm and fuzzy confidence that the future will be comfortingly similar to the recent past. This assumption works pretty well in stable eras but fails dismally in destabilizing, transitional eras.

Stability and instability are not evenly distributed, so every cherry-picked bias can be supported. You predict slow sales? Here's an empty shopping mall. See, I'm right! You predict a return to the good old days? Here's a crowded street fair. See, I'm right!

Those who happen to be living inside an island of coherence are inside a bubble that they mistakenly think encompasses the entire world. This is especially prevalent in the top 5% who shape the narratives that influence the rest of us. If real estate is sinking in their little corner of the world, they predict real estate will crash everywhere.

If everything's rosy in their protected enclave, they predict a mild recession and steady growth, blah blah blah.

Those living in a place that has lost its coherence and stability see the world differently. Systems are breaking down and when they are restored, they're not the same: they're less reliable, more expensive and prone to decay / decoherence.

This tracks the core-periphery model I often reference. Those in the still-coherent core cherry-pick evidence that all is well in the decohering periphery while those in the periphery expect the rot to spread quickly to the core.

It depends on how much is left in the buffers protecting core systems. As the diagram below illustrates, a system's ability to bounce back (restore stability and function) depends on the robustness of its buffers: how much labor, capital, expertise, spare parts, etc. can be rushed into service to repair damage and restore functionality.

The quality and quantity of these buffers are invisible to outsiders. When staffing has eroded and there's no one available to call up, when spare parts have been depleted, when budget constraints, corruption and managerial incompetence have stripped the system of expertise and the willingness to sacrifice, the system breaks down and cannot be restored because the means to do so are no longer available.

Outsiders clinging to recency bias are thus shocked when systems they assumed were rock-solid no longer function reliably. Insiders are amazed the duct-tape has held this long while outsiders are stunned to learn that student nurses are being passed off as certified nurses and the maintenance of critical systems has completely collapsed.

As I explained in How Things Fall Apart, The Blowback from Stripmining Labor for 45 Years Is Just Beginning and The "Let It Rot" Death Spiral, the competent are leaving in droves, leaving the ambitiously incompetent at the wheel while those keeping the whole mess glued together are burning out and retiring, quitting or downsizing to gigs with less pressure and more control of their work.

Systems that are still competently managed with ample buffers will maintain their coherence. The systems that are incompetently managed, riddled with corruption and favoritism and coasting on buffers that have been worn down and are now wafer-thin will break down and lose coherence and functionality.

This process is uneven and unpredictable. In some cases, the core will shield itself from the decay and breakdown in the periphery, in other cases the falling dominoes will destabilize the core that everyone in the bubble thought was permanently safe and secure.

The question that should be on our minds is: how are my household's buffers holding up? What resources do we have in reserve when systems lose their reliability and predictability?

Counting on the demi-gods in central banks to save us is not a substitute for strengthening your own buffers. There's no substitute for owning and controlling everything that counts in your life, and developing trusted personal networks of reliable, trustworthy, productive people. Those are the foundations of self-reliance.

My new book is now available at a 10% discount ($8.95 ebook, $18 print): Self-Reliance in the 21st Century.

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Tuesday, December 27, 2022

An Inconvenient Revolution

It's inconvenient when those whose sacrifices are essential to the system get fed up and find some other way to live.

Convenience isn't just about small appliances. It's also about ruling nations. Let's start with the semantics of ruling nations. Some labels might be viewed as somewhat inflammatory (Kleptocracy, anyone?), so let's stick with the neutral Ruling Order.

Some things have been extraordinarily convenient for the Ruling Order. Take the life and death of one Jeffrey Epstein, an intel "asset" who assembled a veritable goldmine of dirt on an astounding collection of bigwigs, and then became, well, inconvenient.

Very conveniently, the security camera in his cell failed, the guards dozed off and he hung himself in this fortuitous interlude. This was the acme of convenience.

Extending the Surveillance State into Big Tech's planetary-wide social media networks was also convenient, and a bargain to boot. Instead of all that expensive stuff the Communist State in China had to pay for, America's Ruling Order just put the squeeze on Big Tech and saved a bundle.

The Surveillance State assumes that any revolt / revolution can either be nipped in the bud by identifying foreign influences / domestic extremists, or crushed by foreknowledge of the storming of the barricades.

In conventional times, these are pretty safe assumptions. But the times are no longer conventional, and so the Ruling Order is in effect investing its treasure and confidence in fighting the last war.

It's convenient if rebelling citizens organize themselves in visible networks and concentrate into groups that can be crushed by force. It's inconvenient if the revolution is not neatly organized and crushable but an invisible revolution of not showing up.

In other words, a revolution of getting fed up and opting out, of finding some other way to live rather than spending 10 years paying down the student loans and another 30 years paying down the mortgage and the last few years of one's life watching the tides of financial excess erode the sand castles of pensions and retirement.

There's a consequential asymmetry to the inconvenience caused by people getting fed up and opting out. The average worker not showing up is consequential but not catastrophic. But when the managerial class thins out, and those doing the dirty work thin out, there are no replacements, and the system breaks down.

Few are willing to make the beds, empty the bedpans and work in slaughterhouses. When those willing to do the work nobody else wants to do quit, the system collapses. Those with higher expectations will not volunteer to do the dirty work, and many are unable to do the work even if they are willing. It's too hard and too physically punishing. (Says a guy who's carried stupid amounts of lumber up hillsides where no forklift could go.)

Despite what many of us may think, the majority of workers lack the experience and tools to manage complex operations. (Those of us who try soon reach our limits.) Many lack a deep enough knowledge to fix major breakdowns. When the critical operational and managerial people retire, quit, or find some other way to live, the system breaks down.

All the surveillance and all the force that the Ruling Order depends on to maintain its dominance is useless when people get fed up and quit supporting the system with their labor and their borrowing / spending. All the surveillance and facial recognition software is worthless, all the monitoring of kitten and puppy photos on social media, all the tracking of foreign influence--none of it matters any more.

It's inconvenient when those whose sacrifices are essential to the system get fed up and find some other way to live. Yet this is the inevitable consequence of a system hopelessly corrupted by fraud, inequality and unfairness, a system rigged to benefit the few at the expense of the many. People eventually get fed up and opt out.

They don't throw themselves on the gears of an odious system, they simply stop greasing the gears with their time, effort, experience, debt and money. It doesn't take many opting out to trigger decay and collapse. The Pareto Distribution applies. The system can adjust to the first 4% opting out, but those consequential few trigger the decay of the commitment of the next 20%, and the system cannot survive when the 20% find some other way to live. The 80% can still be willing to grease the gears but that's no longer enough to maintain the coherence of the system.

The asymmetry of decay and collapse is inconvenient.

My new book is now available at a 10% discount ($8.95 ebook, $18 print): Self-Reliance in the 21st Century.

Read the first chapter for free (PDF)

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Sunday, December 25, 2022

Will 2023 Be "Just an Average Recession in an Average Year" or Will It Be Transformational?

It shouldn't surprise us if 2023 turns out to be atypical and disruptively transformational in ways few believe possible.

It seems expectations about 2023 cleave neatly into two camps: the dominant mainstream view is that 2023 will be economically difficult due to a mild recession, but this will be nothing more than a run-of-the-mill recession.

Inflation will likely moderate but remain higher than recent averages. Everything else--politics, social issues, entertainment, fashion, social media, etc.--will continue on whatever path it is currently on.

In other words, 2023 will be much like any other year.

The implicit assumption in the mainstream view is that historical cycles are figments of fevered imaginations. The flow of human history is entirely contingent and follows no pattern or cycle.

The much smaller "outlier" camp sees the potential for a disruptive transformational year.

Those of us who conclude cycles are based on the ebb-and-flow dynamics of credit, energy and human nature and are therefore not just real but consequential despite their predictive imprecision see 2023 as a potential pivot in cycles which entered a new phase in the 2020-2021 time frame.

This cyclical shift isn't a result of Covid or the response to Covid. It's the result of diminishing returns and the exhaustion of the dynamics which powered the previous era: hyper-financialization, hyper-globalization and low-cost, abundant energy.

In terms of human nature, confidence and complacency rise and fall, euphoric greed and panicky fear ebb and flow and as Peter Turchin has demonstrated, order and disorder take turns as reasons to cooperate decay into reasons not to cooperate.

As David Hackett Fischer demonstrated in The Great Wave: Price Revolutions and the Rhythm of History, systemic increases in price--what we call inflation--sow the seeds of economic, social and political disunity, conflict and collapse.

In his book The Upside of Down: Catastrophe, Creativity, and the Renewal of Civilization, Thomas Homer-Dixon proposes a cyclical dynamic powered by the relative costs and rewards of participation in the status quo:

Once the costs exceed the rewards, people lose the incentive to support the status quo with their labor and participation. They drift away (what I term opting out) or reduce their effort to align with the diminished rewards and opportunities to advance their own interests.

The Russian economist Kondratieff famously observed how credit cycles between expansion and contraction, and this cycle powers economic expansion or contraction.

The Collapse of Complex Societies by Joseph Tainter outlines a dynamic in which the advantages of adding complexity to a social / economic system are substantial at the beginning but as the returns from additional complexity diminish, the costs eventually outweigh any gains and the system decays.

The success of adding complexity is institutionalized by the status quo, which then clings to this strategy even as the returns on adding complexity become negative and thus destructive.

I call this "doing more of what's failed."

Other systems analysts (Donella Meadows et al.) have illuminated the nonlinear character of systemic transformations. Ugo Bardi calls this "The Seneca Cliff": systems which expanded slowly and steadily can decay and collapse quite suddenly and violently, surprising everyone who took the previous stability as permanent.

Systems follow their own rules, and so unlike politics, our opinions don't change the results.

All of these dynamics are (in my analysis) clearly visible in the global status quo. The rational conclusion is the risks of disruption, disorder and conflict as things decay and fall apart are relatively high.

While some trends and conflicts can last for decades (the Thirty Years War in Europe, the Cold War between the US and the USSR), diminishing returns on status quo "solutions" that no longer work as anticipated tend to unravel on the periphery which then spreads quickly to the core.

Those economies and societies which are hidebound / centralized politically and economically are brittle because they lack the systemic means to adapt quickly and successfully to diminishing returns and seismic shifts in price and the availability of essentials.

Brittle systems that lack the structural means to adapt decay and collapse. This is scale-invariant, which means this is equally true of households, small businesses, global enterprises, nations and empires.

There are many such brittle systems in the global status quo, and to expect all of them to remain stable as diminishing returns start yielding negative returns (i.e. cost more than they produce in gains) and scarcities drive prices higher than the bottom 90% can afford as inflation reduces the purchasing power of their earnings--this expectation is based on a confidence that past trends are essentially permanent and every system in the world today will adapt successfully to scarcity, disorder and the reversal of financialization and globalization.

Maybe this will be the case, but given all the dynamics that are so readily visible, it would be prudent to consider the potential for dominoes falling on the periphery (i.e. in "places that don't matter") will soon be toppling dominoes in the core centers of power and control.

In my analysis, the dominant dynamic is always natural selection. Our opinions and projections don't change anything. What divides the systems that endure and become stronger and those that decay and collapse is their evolutionary vigor, which is a function of decentralized competition, transparency, sharing of information and experimentation that is rewarded rather than punished.

I cover these dynamics in my book Global Crisis, National Renewal: A (Revolutionary) Grand Strategy for the United States.

Simply put: systems that view dissent and disorderly churn as threats will decay and collapse because the most powerful forces of adaptability are dissent and disorderly churn.

It shouldn't surprise us if 2023 turns out to be atypical and disruptively transformational in ways few believe possible.

This essay was first published as a weekly Musings Report sent exclusively to subscribers and patrons at the $5/month ($50/year) and higher level. Thank you, patrons and subscribers, for supporting my work and free website.

My new book is now available at a 10% discount ($8.95 ebook, $18 print): Self-Reliance in the 21st Century.

Read the first chapter for free (PDF)

Read excerpts of all three chapters

NOTE: Contributions/subscriptions are acknowledged in the order received. Your name and email remain confidential and will not be given to any other individual, company or agency.

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Friday, December 23, 2022

Why the Next Decade Will Not Be Like the Previous 40 Years

The mainstream assumption is the status quo will continue on much as before. This isn't just unlikely, it's impossible if total energy produced and consumed declines.

Correspondent C.A. submitted this insightful interview with economic strategist and historian Russell Napier: "We Will See the Return of Capital Investment on a Massive Scale".

In Napier's telling, the 40-year period from 1980 to 2020 was dominated by central banks (monetary policy) and markets (enterprises seeking to maximize profits).

These forces fueled the rise of globalization (maximize profits by arbitraging lower labor and production costs overseas via offshoring production) and financialization (vastly expand debt and leverage but keep debt service low by steadily reducing interest rates).

The second-order effect of the resulting hyper-globalization and hyper-financialization was hyper-dependency on geopolitical rivals and on monetary intervention and credit/asset bubbles to support consumption.

Neither was sustainable. Near-total dependence on geopolitical rivals in service of private-sector profits created existential national security vulnerabilities which must now be addressed by reshoring / homeshoring / friendshoring critical production.

The market, ruled solely by incentives to maximize profits by any means available, created this vulnerability. It is incapable of resolving it.

I covered all these dynamics in depth in my book A (Revolutionary) Grand Strategy for the United States which predated the Ukraine War by four months.

Napier sees governments replacing central banks as the primary force in creating credit and guiding policies / incentives.

He explains that governments don't have to rely on central banks to create money or credit, or on issuing Treasury bonds that are purchased by investors. Governments are guaranteeing commercial bank loans issued by private-sector banks, in effect expanding credit without creating more government debt.

These guarantees backstop commercial bank loans made in accordance with government directives and goals.

If a borrower defaults, the government will cover the losses so the lender is made whole. It's riskless lending for banks and keeps the expanding credit off the government balance sheet.

Napier calls this "the politicization of credit."

Napier explains why inflation will be maintained in a range of 4% to 6% for years to come: inflation is the only way to reduce the debt burden which has reached $300 trillion globally, and about 250% of GDP of many nations. (This is the total of both government and private-sector debt.)

Napier refers to this as "financial repression" because inflation that's higher than bond yields robs savers and benefits debtors, whose earnings rise with inflation while their debt service remained fixed. (This assumes fixed-rate loans, of course.)

This will also restore the purchasing power of younger workers as wages rise, at the expense of older (and wealthier) generations.

The net result of governments taking control of investment and credit creation "will mean a huge homeshoring or friendshoring boom, capital investment on a massive scale into the reindustrialization of our own economies."

Governments will have to create enough credit to fund both this massive capital investment (known as CapEx, capital expenditures) and maintain consumption.

Napier points to the 1946-1979 period as an example of governments guiding the economy more than central banks guiding the economy.

All this makes excellent sense, but Napier overlooks three consequential dynamics:

1. The energy cliff, as hydrocarbon production declines faster than new sources can be brought on line to replace them.

2. The demographic cliff as workforces decline and the cohort of retirees to be supported balloons.

3. The impossibility of funding massive new CapEx and infrastructure spending, supporting the ballooning cohort of retirees and consumer spending to keep the "waste is growth / Landfill Economy" humming while keeping inflation tamed to 5%.

In other words, there will be tradeoffs. If you want moderate inflation (politically necessary, as high inflation loses elections) and massive increases in CapEx, consumer spending has to take a hit.

Furthermore, inflation will be driven by two forces: scarcities of essentials like food and energy, which are basically the same thing in industrialized fertilizer-dependent agriculture, and the expansion of credit in excess of increases in productivity.

If $1 invested in CapEx generates more value in terms of goods and services, that means productivity is increasing. If CapEx doesn't generate more goods and services, productivity is stagnant.

As I've explained, this is what happened in the 1970s: massive CapEx was invested in retooling the U.S. industrial base to reduce pollution and improve efficiency.

The reduction in pollution greatly improved well-being but didn't increase GDP or productivity. We only manage what we measure, and since we don't measure well-being, the real gains of this CapEx were not even measured.

Like well-being, we don't measure National Security economically, so improvements in the security of our production of essentials will not even be recognized.

The real gains of homeshoring won't even be recognized or understood unless we throw out the current methodology of economic measurements and replace it with a modernized set of measurements that aren't limited to production and consumption (i.e. "growth".).

As for energy, what most people miss is Jevon's Paradox: adding sustainable energy (however you define that) doesn't replace our consumption of hydrocarbons, it simply increases our total consumption of energy.

Another factor most people miss is the scale of the hydrocarbon complex everyone is hoping to replace, and the timeline of that replacement.

Despite decades of investment, alternative energy supplies only 5% or so of global energy. Those pounding the table for nuclear energy rarely mention the timeline for constructing enough plants at scale to make a difference: decades, not years.

Since the cheap-to-get oil has been extracted, what's left costs more. Yes, technology improves, but physics wins in the end; more energy must be expended to get the hard-to-get oil out of the ground.

These realities dictate an Energy Cliff in which oil production declines faster than new sources can be brought online. And rather than consume more energy as new sources are brought online, we'll consume less and it will cost more, for all the reasons I explained in my book.

The demographic cliff is equally baked in. The workforce of the next decade can't be expanded, it's already here, along with the soaring cohort of retirees.

If sacrifices must be made in consumption due to higher costs of essentials and the need for massive CapEx, the consumer economy will shrink.

Since the system is optimized for expansion, that contraction will upend the entire global economy as it is currently configured.

On top of these three factors, there's the soaring healthcare costs generated by lifestyle diseases (diabesity, etc.), high levels of pollution in developing nations and the aging populace.

Profiteering doesn't generate health, and profiteering has been the name of the game so long few can imagine any other way of living.

The mainstream assumption is the status quo will continue on much as before. This isn't just unlikely, it's impossible if total energy produced and consumed declines.

As energy analyst Vaclav Smil put it: "I'm not an optimist or a pessimist. I'm a scientist." Rather than waste time arguing about optimism and pessimism, let's focus on physics, costs and timelines, i.e. realistic assessments, and on the trade-offs needed to reach our goal of a sustainable, open-to-all, fair economy.

This essay was first published as a weekly Musings Report sent exclusively to subscribers and patrons at the $5/month ($50/year) and higher level. Thank you, patrons and subscribers, for supporting my work and free website.

My new book is now available at a 10% discount ($8.95 ebook, $18 print): Self-Reliance in the 21st Century.

Read the first chapter for free (PDF)

Read excerpts of all three chapters

NOTE: Contributions/subscriptions are acknowledged in the order received. Your name and email remain confidential and will not be given to any other individual, company or agency.

Thank you, Sebastian S. ($50), for your marvelously generous contribution to this site -- I am greatly honored by your steadfast support and readership.

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Wednesday, December 21, 2022

What's Your Line in the Sand? The $25 Burger?

The gag reflex kicks in at some point and we walk away because it is no longer worth the price.

Everyone has a line in the sand when it comes to inflated prices they refuse to pay. For one Walmart shopper I observed, it was a carton of eggs for close to $10. She announced her line in the sand verbally, with great force and sincerity.

What's your line in the sand, the point at which you simply refuse to pay the asking price? Is it the $25 burger? Or is it the $50 for two burritos and two beverages?

Each person's line in the sand reflects their income, wealth, budget, social status and value system--what's important to them. For some higher income folks, it might be the ridiculous "resort fee" that's tacked onto the already overpriced resort room, hotel tax, excise tax, parking fees and the extra-special charge for Internet service.

For others, it might be the outrageous estimate for repairing a system failure in a nearly-new vehicle that is (surprise!) no longer covered by the manufacturer's warranty. Hundreds of dollars for what?

How about $25 for a few ounces of specialty coffee beans?

Or is it $38 a pound for chocolate-covered nuts or some other confection?

Is it being stripmined to buy a hot dog and beer at a sporting event, or the "service charge" to buy a grossly overpriced ticket to a concert?

Or is it having to take out a second mortgage to cover the entrance fees to an amusement park?

Maybe it's the shockingly high cost of what used to be dirt-cheap--a camping permit in a state or national park. (When camping becomes an expensive outing, the Revolutionary Clock is getting close to midnight.)

Could it be the absurdly inflated cost of cable TV service, or the total cost of all those subscriptions for marginal content/entertainment spew?

Or perhaps you finally had enough of paying over $5 for a box of cereal that's now so narrow and tall (to mask the shrinking contents) that the box doesn't even stand up on its own? (You can make your own much healthier granola for a fraction of the cost of packaged mostly-air cereals.)

Or maybe it's paying extra to get a seat reservation after you've already bought the airline ticket. (Interesting, isn't it, that buying an airline ticket doesn't necessarily mean you have a seat reservation--that's extra.)

Perhaps it's the rental car fee that not that long ago was $25 a day that's now $100 a day.

How about $2,400 a month for an ugly little flat in a new cookie-cutter apartment complex?

The gag reflex kicks in at some point and we walk away because it is no longer worth the price. Since price is set on the margins of supply and demand, all these lines in the sand will eventually become consequential.

My new book is now available at a 10% discount ($8.95 ebook, $18 print): Self-Reliance in the 21st Century.

Read the first chapter for free (PDF)

Read excerpts of all three chapters

NOTE: Contributions/subscriptions are acknowledged in the order received. Your name and email remain confidential and will not be given to any other individual, company or agency.

Thank you, Sebastian S. ($50), for your marvelously generous contribution to this site -- I am greatly honored by your steadfast support and readership.

Thank you, Jerzy S. ($50), for your supremely generous contribution to this site -- I am greatly honored by your steadfast support and readership.

Tuesday, December 20, 2022

Time to Get Out of Dodge?

In my analysis, this is a fatally flawed misreading of structural trends and cycles.

Is it time to get out of the stock market? It depends on the time frame of reference, of course. The market excels at throwing Bulls and Bears alike off the bus with counter-trend rallies and cliff-dives, so the short-term answer may be different from the weekly answer or the monthly answer.

So let's stipulate a longer time frame of quarters or even years: is it time to get out of the stock market?

There's a solid case for the answer being "yes." There are two primary dynamics in play: 1) the end of hyper-financialization and hyper-globalization, both of which drove speculation and goosed profits for decades, and 2) the end of central-bank free money for financiers, i.e. ZIRP (zero interest rate policy) a.k.a. historically low cost of capital.

The bullish case for stocks and bonds boils down to this one claim: the Federal Reserve will have to "pivot" from raising rates and reducing financial liquidity free money for financiers to reducing rates and "printing" money again (increasing liquidity).

This claim is based on two assumptions:

1) inflation was driven solely by Covid-lockdown stimulus and supply-chain disruptions, and these are dissipating. Inflation will drop dramatically going forward, so the Fed can "pivot" away from fighting inflation.

2) The 2020s are a continuation of the Bull Market that started in 1981, a multi-decade era in which Big Tech leads the market ever higher, and low interest rates, low inflation, low commodity prices, hyper-financialization and hyper-globalization drive stable growth of credit, consumption and profits.

In my view, both assumptions are false.

The trend / cycle has turned, and inflation is systemic due to structural scarcities / depletion, the higher costs of reshoring, friend-shoring, re-industrializing, etc., and the decline of globalization's deflationary impulse: there are no more pools of cheap labor and materials that can be readily exploited.

The Fed has very little control of these structural sources of systemically higher costs. Their only lever of control is to increase the cost of capital / credit, which adds an inflationary source to the other structural sources.

As I've endeavored to explain, no cycle or trend lasts forever, and the 40-year uptrend has ended. Now a different cycle and trend is developing.

The basic reason is diminishing returns: a little credit injected into a credit-starved economy can have a dramatic impact on growth and prosperity.

But shoving more credit into a debt-saturated economy will have no positive effect at all. Rather, since all debt accrues interest, it has a negative effect by reducing disposable income via bigger interest payments.

Introducing some globalization (competition and new products) into a stagnant, sclerotic economy can boost growth and prosperity, but pushing hyper-globalization in an economy already hollowed out by globalization won't have any positive effect at all.

That's where we are: the status quo "solutions" remain financialization (The Fed Will Save Us) and globalization (find a cheaper pool of labor to exploit and a no-environmental-standards place to stripmine the Earth).

Due to diminishing returns, financialization and globalization are now problems, not solutions. We can't indebt / exploit our way out of the holes dug by financialization and globalization.

The Bear case is based on the fundamentals of a slowing global economy that can't be saved by increasing financialization and globalization and the impacts of higher costs due to scarcities, depletion, higher costs of capital and de-globalization / reshoring.

The 40-year long Bull market was based on costs continually dropping due to technology, financialization (declining interest rates and ever-expanding credit and money supply), globalization, and expanding workforces, production and consumption.

These trends have reversed. Costs are rising, technology is no longer leading growth, globalization is ebbing, workforces are shrinking and consumption is constrained by scarcities, depletion and higher costs.

The status quo (growth at any cost) has no solutions. Its "solutions" (doing more of what's failed) only exacerbate The End of Growth. (But trading carbon credits will save us by skimming billions in profits from a shrinking economy! Uh, yeah, sure.)

The Bear case also has a technical-analysis facet.

Many analysts have noted discrepancies in various financial indicators. For example, the VIX is the "fear indicator," and it hasn't spiked to levels that reflect capitulation / liquidation--i.e., a tradeable bottom.

Sentiment is supposedly bearish but few have actually sold.

Speculative fever is still running hot. As a friend pointed out, when speculations such as dogecoin (with no utility other than speculation) are still worth billions of dollars, the collapse of speculative frenzy that marks market bottoms is nowhere in sight.

Consumers have borrowed money to fund their spending as inflation chewed up the purchasing power of their earnings, and this eventually forces a reduction in spending when they run out of credit and/or more of their income is devoted to higher interest payments.

The "money creation machine" of the housing bubble has popped due to the return of mortgage rates to historic norms (6.5% to 7.5%).

Labor shortages due to demographics are pushing wages and benefits higher.

How can companies increase profits as sales slow, costs soar and consumers are tapped out? The short answer is they can't.

Their only response is to lay off workers to reduce costs or in the case of small business, close their doors. This reduces earnings and consumption.

Other that bloated Big Tech, corporations have already cut their staffing to the bone and hollowed out their training. There's very little left to trim without eroding functionality and utility. Once those decay, the rot spreads quickly to revenues and then to profits.

A factor that I see as woefully under-appreciated is the End of Speculative Fever. Much of the stock market gains of the past two decades have flowed not to real improvements in productivity but speculations founded on the recruitment of a "greater fool" to pay more for an asset than the current owner.

Speculation dependent on extreme leverage and mismatches of duration, liquidity and risk are just as prone to collapse as fraudulent leverage (cough, FTX, cough).

Once the herd mood shifts from greed / complacency to fear, liquidity dries up and sellers can no longer find buyers.

This was Alan Greenspan's mea culpa after the 2008 Global Financial Meltdown. He admitted the Fed assumed markets would always remain liquid. But in panics, few are willing to buy on the way down, and those who try are quickly wiped out.

Once buyers get skittish, they vanish. With liquidity gone, markets crash.

Complacency and speculative fever remain firmly in place. The classic signals of a tradeable bottom--a spike in VIX to 90 or 100, a capitulation that reflects speculative fever has downshifted into fearful caution--have not happened.

That's the fundamental case for exiting the stock market.

The Bullish case rests entirely on the assumption that the Fed can flip a switch and the 40+-year Bull market will resume.

In my analysis, this is a fatally flawed misreading of structural trends and cycles.

This essay was first published as a weekly Musings Report sent exclusively to subscribers and patrons at the $5/month ($50/year) and higher level. Thank you, patrons and subscribers, for supporting my work and free website.

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Sunday, December 18, 2022

A Great Madness Sweeps the Land

Those who see the madness for what it is have only one escape: go to ground, fade from public view, become self-reliant and weather the coming storm in the nooks and crannies.

A great madness sweeps the land. There are no limits on extremes in greed, credulity, convictions, inequality, bombast, recklessness, fraud, corruption, arrogance, hubris, pride, over-reach, self-righteousness and confidence in the rightness of one's opinions. Extremes only become more extreme even as the folly of previous extremes wearies rationality.

Imaginary sins are conjured out of thin air to convict the innocent while those guilty of the most egregious fraud and corruption are lauded as saviors.

The national mood is aggrieved and bitter. The luxuries of self-righteousness, indignation, entitlement and resentment have impoverished the national spirit. Bankrupted by these excesses, what little treasure remains is squandered on plots of petty revenge.

Blindness to the late hour is cheered as optimism, confidence in the false gods of technology is sanctified while doubters of the technocratic theocracy are crucified as irredeemable infidels.

Witch-hunts and show trials are the order of the day as those who cannot stomach the party line are obsessively purged, as healthy skepticism is condemned as a mortal sin by brittle true believers who secretly fear the failure of their cult.

Mired in a putrid sewer of suspected subversion and disloyalty to The One True Cause, heretics are everywhere to those caught up in the mass hysteria.

In this choking atmosphere of toxic hubris, self-righteousness, indignation, entitlement and resentment, humility is for losers, prudence is for losers, caution is for losers, skeptical inquiry is for losers.

Completely untethered from cause and effect, those confident in the inevitability of a glorious future of unlimited expansion cling to past glory as proof of future glory, even as their hubris leads only to a treacherous path of decay and decline. As they stumble into the abyss, their final cries are of surprise that confidence alone is not enough.

Those who see the madness for what it is have only one escape: go to ground, fade from public view, become self-reliant and weather the coming storm in the nooks and crannies where cause and effect, skeptical inquiry, humility, prudence and thrift can still be nurtured.

My new book is now available at a 10% discount ($8.95 ebook, $18 print): Self-Reliance in the 21st Century.

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Tuesday, December 13, 2022

Monopolies and Cartels Are "Communism for the Rich"

What's unfettered in America is "Communism for the Rich" and the normalization of corruption that results from the auctioning of political power to protect monopolies and cartels.

The irony of constantly being accused of being a communist is rather rich. When I point out that "free market capitalism" in America is neither a real market nor real capitalism, those who equate any criticism of "capitalism" as proof of communist leanings are triggered.

Noting that Marx got monopoly capitalism and alienation right triggers another group who equate any favorable mention of Marx as proof of communist leanings.

There are two ironies in these accusations of being a communist. One is that I've spent 17 years tirelessly critiquing centralized wealth and power--the acme of communism--as the source of our moral, social and economic decay.

The other irony is that Communism is absolutely thriving in America in broad daylight: the monopolies, quasi-monopolies and cartels that dominate the American economy and governance are Communism for the Rich.

The core goals and functions of communism and monopolies/cartels are identical: snuff out unfettered markets (competition, transparent price information for all participants, etc.) and take control of all market functions, restricting supply and controlling all regulation with the sole goals of further concentrating centralized power and maximizing steady profits (i.e. maximum greed) to benefit those who own/control the concentrated wealth and power.

And of course both pump out an endless spew of propaganda about the wonderfulness of the system that benefits the few at the expense of the many.

This centralized power to benefit the few at the expense of the many characterizes both Communism and monopolies / cartels. There is no difference between the two other than the structures of control that eliminate competitors, regulates supply and keeps prices high enough to further enrich the already-rich.

Those operating monopolies and cartels in America are in effect a private-public Politburo, a concentration of wealth that buys whatever political power is needed to increase profits and protect the monopoly from threats.

What's unfettered in America is Communism for the Rich and the normalization of corruption that results from the auctioning of political power to protect monopolies and cartels. "Markets" and "capitalism" only exist on the fringes of the economy, but the myth that America is the home of "unfettered capitalism" is extremely useful cover for the actual system, which is Communism for the Rich.

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Sunday, December 11, 2022

How Things Fall Apart

That's how things fall apart: insiders know but keep their mouths shut, outsiders are clueless, and the decay that started slowly gathers momentum as the last of the experienced and competent workforce burns out, quits or retires.

Outsiders are shocked when things fall apart. Insiders are amazed the duct-tape held this long. The erosion of critical skills and institutional knowledge is invisible to outsiders, while everyone inside who saw the unstoppable decay either left or burned out.

Those who remain are the ambitious who lack the experience to reverse the decline and the self-awareness to realize they're way over their head. They're ambitious enough to want the managerial title and power but don't have the necessary experience and competence to lead a brutally difficult and painful turnaround.

So they either "stay the course" doing more of what's failed or they flail around, trying one reorganization-fad-of-the-day after another, pushing the few remaining competent staffers to leave and thus steepening the decline.

Everyone who cared and was competent in the support staff either left or burned out trying to doing three jobs at once. The most prescient and experienced staffers noted the decline in managerial competence and the decay of the operational skills needed to keep the ship afloat, and so they found a better position elsewhere or retired early.

The less prescient but competent then tried to compensate for failing management and poorly trained staff by doing more of the work themselves. First they do the work of one-and-half less competent employees, then of two and after that, three for a brief time until their health is destroyed and they burn out. They either go on medical leave, retire or quit as the sole means of retaining whatever health they still possess.

In this manner, those who care are weeded out, leaving only those who don't care whose sole ambition is to do as little as possible to get by and cling on long enough to vest stock options or retirement benefits.

Since training fell apart long ago, when the old timers retire their replacements don't know enough to keep things operational. The replacements think they know enough from studying textbooks and sitting through training videos, but once something happens that isn't entirely routine, the holes in their experience become visible, and they are soon calling the retired workers begging for advice.

Those who care soon realize the hopelessness of keeping the ship afloat and they leave to avoid the misery of collapse. Those who are left are those who don't care: when the whole mess stops functioning, they'll walk with whatever they can salvage and move on.

Should a competent manager be appointed, it's too late. The middle managers and operationally critical staffers needed to reverse the decay have already left, leaving only those who over-estimate their experience and competence and those who pretend to care and pretend to work.

As the last best leadership hope burns out and quits in disgust, the last die-hards who held out hope for a turn-around finally accept that it's hopeless, and they finally quit, go free-lance, transfer to another location or retire early.

That's how things fall apart: insiders know but keep their mouths shut, outsiders are clueless, and the decay that started slowly gathers momentum as the last of the experienced and competent workforce burns out, quits or retires.

As noted above, outsiders are shocked when the enterprise / institution collapses, while the insiders who got out while the getting was good marvel it lasted as long as it did.

My new book is now available at a 10% discount ($8.95 ebook, $18 print): Self-Reliance in the 21st Century.

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NOTE: Contributions/subscriptions are acknowledged in the order received. Your name and email remain confidential and will not be given to any other individual, company or agency.

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