The Genie's Out of the Bottle: Eight Defining Trends Are Reversing

Though the Powers That Be will attempt to placate or suppress the Revolt of the Powerless, the genies of political disunity and social disorder cannot be put back in the bottle.

The saying "the worm has turned" refers to the moment when the downtrodden have finally had enough, and turn on their powerful oppressors.The worms have finally turned against the privileged elites -- who have benefited so greatly from globalization, corruption, central bank stimulus and the profiteering of state-enforced cartels. It doesn’t matter as much as the punditry assumes whether they are turning Left or Right; the important thing is that the powerless have finally started challenging their privileged overlords.

Though the Powers That Be will attempt to placate or suppress the Revolt of the Powerless, the genies of political disunity and social disorder cannot be put back in the bottle. It took a generation of rising inequality, corruption and the erosion of opportunity to create a society of the protected (the haves) and the unprotected (the have-nots), and rubber-stamping more regulations and distributing Universal Basic Income (UBI) will not rebalance a system that is irrevocably out of balance.

But the rise of resistance, as yet nascent, is only half the story: economic trends andcycles are turning as well, and even if the worms remain passively underground, these reversals will disrupt the status quo. The dominant narrative--the rightness, goodness and sustainability of endless growth of consumption and debt--will unravel, and the internal contradictions of this New Gilded Age (widening wealth/income/power inequality) will finally burst through the thin façade of stability that’s been patched together over the past nine years of “recovery.”

Eight Key Trends/Cycles Are Turning

Here’s the thing about trends and cycles: when they inevitably lose altitude or reverse, we rush around trying to identify the cause. All sorts of theories are put forth, but as a general rule, it rarely boils down to one dynamic.

Consider the decline and fall of the Western Roman Empire. Efforts to identify the cause go back hundreds of years, and include everything from barbarian invasions to the use of lead pipes to deliver water.

A new book, The Fate of Rome: Climate, Disease, and the End of an Empire, pins a significant part of the responsibility on climate change and pandemic diseases—system-wide dynamics that slowly sapped Rome’s vigor, food supplies, capital and labor force.  Not only that, but cooling weather patterns in Eurasia may have been behind the westward movement of the mobile tribes (the Huns and Mongolians) that pushed existing tribes on Rome’s borders into Roman territories—the so-called Barbarian Invasions.

The point here is that systemic trends and cycles are often causally connected and tend to reinforce each other. This is how a stable, wealthy and resilient society gets hollowed out: trends end and cycles reverse, and forces that added stability, capital and resilience when they were working together are slowly replaced by forces that erode the foundations of wealth and stability.

In the current era, eight interconnected trends/cycles are either reaching the end of their run or reversing:

-- Central bank distortion/manipulation of markets.

-- The business cycle of credit/debt expansion and contraction.

-- The yield/interest rate cycle.

-- The commodity cycle.

-- The stock market cycle.

-- Regulation.

-- Globalization.

-- Demographics.

Each of these would need a short book to do the topic even partial justice, but let’s summarize each trend/cycle.

Let’s stipulate that technology isn’t a cycle or a trend; its disruptions of existing sectors and institutions accelerate and decelerate over time, but it is woven inseparably into all the trends and cycles listed above.   That said, the emergence of some new technology doesn’t mean the business cycle will be repealed for all time; cycles and trends are influenced by Human Wetware V1.0, an OS developed between 100,000 and 160,000 years ago and still in Version One.

Resource depletion is another background to these trends and cycles: robots and drones will not restore depleted ground water or bring back ocean fisheries.

Central Bank Distortion / Manipulation of Markets

Minus the $21 trillion in central bank asset purchases and trillions more in liquidity/credit programs, would the global economy be growing and global markets be at nosebleed heights? We all know the answer is "no."

Central banks have engineered a "recovery" that looks real enough on the surface, but what are its foundations? Gamed statistics and manipulated markets—in other words, controlling not just the narrative but the information available to market participants.  To achieve the desired outcome—rising equity markets, near-zero bond yields and incentivizing the purchase of risk-on assets—central banks have distorted market information and mechanisms.

The returns on this coordinated distortion are diminishing.  The “buzz” from the initial injections has faded, and now that the monetary authorities are trying to wean the markets off of their drug, the markets have lost the ability to discover the price of assets, risk and capital on their own.

No wonder volatility is rising.

Flooding the economy with trillions in new stimulus worked wonders in the initial stage, but after 9 years, the unintended consequences are metastasizing.

Goosing asset valuations higher in service of “the wealth effect” has widened wealth/ income inequality, creating a New Gilded Age of a few haves and many have-nots. The benefits of the central bank punch bowl—near-zero interest rates, leverage and access to unlimited credit--are reserved for those few at the top of the wealth-power pyramid; very little of the stupendous wealth created out of thin air has trickled down to the bottom 95%.

The relentless rise in asset valuations has pushed homes out of reach of those living in desirable urban/suburban markets, and exposed buyers to the risks of an inevitable reversion to the mean, i.e. a collapse of bubble prices back to historical norms.

Capital is not incentivized to invest in productivity or communities for the long haul; the incentives are for stock buybacks and short-term leveraged speculative bets, forms of mal-investment that hollow out the productive real economy is favor of a momentum-driven financialization boom.

Much of the political resistance troubling the status quo can be traced directly to central bank policies that have exacerbated the New Gilded Age inequalities and excesses. If the central banks can’t find the will to reduce their distortions in service of the few, the political will of the many will do it for them.

The Business Cycle of Credit Expansion & Contraction

The business cycle is a basic structure of any economy based on credit and flows of capital seeking the highest available returns at the lowest available risk. In the expansion stage, households and enterprises borrow more money to boost production and satisfy unmet demand.  Speculators find opportunities in new enterprises and new markets.

In the contraction phase, all the inevitable excesses of freely available credit come home to roost. Marginal investments in new production fail to become profitable and go bust. Marginal household borrowers default, and speculators who bet the farm on momentum plays watch their capital evaporate like mist in Death Valley.

When too much income is being devoted to servicing existing debt, there’s no more net income available to support additional borrowing. Lenders facing losses due to defaults tighten lending standards, and credit—and thus the economy—contracts.

This cycle is an essential dynamic of capitalism.  Central banks have attempted to eliminate the contraction phase that acts as the immune system, washing out bad debt and marginal borrowers.  This has left the economy saddled with “zombie” corporations and debtors that would be liquidated if monetary policies weren’t enabling their feeble survival.

But even the most powerful central banks can’t force firms and individuals to borrow more money when it no longer makes sense to do so. And keeping zombie banks, corporations and households on life support weakens the financial system by piling up the equivalent of dead wood in the forest. When the inevitable conflagration of bad debt catches fire, many of the healthy trees will also be consumed in the flames.

The Yield / Interest Rate Cycle

Many observers are confident interest rates cannot rise due to the deflationary forces in play. Indeed, they predict a future decline in rates back to zero. Perhaps, but history suggests interest rates typically move in long cycles of roughly two or three decades. The current downtrend in rates dates back to 1981, which means the current trend is pushing 40 years. That’s stretching the historical boundaries.

As noted earlier, trends change and then we seek the causes. Interest rates are rising, and perhaps we need no explanation other than reversion to the mean.

The Commodity Cycle

Compared to the stock market (the S&P 500), commodities are at their cyclical lows. As to what happens next, we need only look at a single chart, courtesy of Incrementum AG:

The Stock Market Cycle

We’re implicitly being told that stock markets can loft higher forever, as long as central banks are pumping out the financial stimulus. But nothing goes up forever; valuations get stretched, marginal buyers disappear and doubts about the continuing efficacy of central bank distortions creep in.

The typical Bull Market has a leading sector.  Starting with the mass-market Industrial Revolution in the 19th century, leaders tend to be new industries: railroads, radio, computers, the Internet, etc., or existing industries that have been revolutionized by some innovation: for example, banks freed from regulatory oversight discovered subprime mortgages in the 2000s.

The current leaders—the so-called FAANG stocks—are getting tired.  The tech leaders have reached a scale where growth must slow; the expansion of Facebook from 100 million users to 1 billion was a 10-fold increase; the expansion from 1 billion to 2 billion, a double. Are there even another billion potential users with the bandwidth, devices and interest to join? How much additional revenue can be extracted by selling the data of increasingly marginal users?

The same issues of scale are sapping the growth of Apple, Google, et al.  What happens when Apple has already sold an iPhone to everyone with the means and interest to own one?

There is now political pushback against the quasi-monopolies of big tech. Politicians are being forced to “do something,” i.e. increase regulations, whether they accomplish the intended goal or not.

Valuations and profits are at the top of their respective cycles, the leaders are faltering, victims of their own dominance, and central banks are feeling pressured to reduce the punch bowl of free money for financiers.

Regulation

Democracy is no longer about solving real problems and being held accountable; it’s all about persuading the public that all is well, or distracting them with ginned up controversies. Incumbents get re-elected because they vacuum up enough campaign contributions to buy influence via the mass (corporate) media. They have little incentive to respond to voters, so they don’t.

What they can do is look like they’re doing something other than protecting the cartels and financiers that fund their permanent re-election campaigns. So they propose more regulations, most of which fail to achieve the desired results but succeed in burdening legitimate enterprises to the point of failure. Small enterprises simply fold up when the exhausted owners can no longer bear the burdens and corporations offshore everything that’s over-regulated.

The neoliberal ideology held that the many would benefit if regulations limiting enterprise were eased, and when done judiciously and with common sense, this has functioned as designed. But in the corrupt form of governance that dominates the global economy, regulatory capture means regulations protect cartels and insiders from competition.  Insiders have rigged the system so they can punish competitors and let their cronies off the hook.

The useful regulations protecting the many from the exploitation of the few are being buried by counter-productive “do something” regulations and regulatory moats that protect cartels and insiders.

Globalization

Global trade has a long history, stretching back to the Bronze Age (1500 B.C.). Like every other market, it expands and contracts as conditions change.  The emergence of China (and other nations) since the mid-1980s greatly expanded global trade and capital flows. This distributed new income and prosperity to hundreds of millions of people, and yet it also concentrated much of the newfound wealth in the hands of the few and left many behind.

Nothing goes up forever, not even globalization.  Those left behind are starting to wonder if the good of globalization outweighs the costs.

Demographics

If high-population-growth Africa is set aside, the world’s working age populace is perched on the precipice of decline while the populace of retirees is exploding, not just in the developed world but in the developing world.

Although many put their hopes on robots generating unlimited wealth that will support the elderly and free the working age populace from labor, the more likely prospect is an economy that cannot fulfill the promises made to retirees back when the worker-retiree ratio was 10-to-1 and not the present-day 2-to-1.

Chris Hamilton has written three excellent explorations of demographics that cover the basics. The bottom line is the trend of rapidly-expanding workforces and modest numbers of dependent retirees has reversed:

The Most Important Economic Charts...Aren't Economic Charts

China's Booming Middle Class Set To Bust?

Ultimate Indicator Suggests US Never Truly Recovered From the Great Financial Crisis

To underscore this point, chew on this sobering projection: in the US, for the first time ever, retirees will outnumber kids within just 20 years.

Time To Take Action

So as these 8 key trends and cycles change, what can we as individuals do?

In Part 2: 6 Essential Strategies For Prospering Through The Next Crisis, we detail specific steps to take with your money, your career, your lifestyle, your possessions and your mindset that will dramatically improve your odds of ending up on the winning side of these cycle reversals.

But time is of the essence. Preparation has value only if done in advance, and the turning point is upon us.

Click here to read Part 2 of this report (free executive summary, enrollment required for full access)

This essay was first published on peakprosperity.com, where I am a contributing writer.


My new book Money and Work Unchained is $9.95 for the Kindle ebook and $20 for the print edition.

Read the first section for free in PDF format.


If you found value in this content, please join me in seeking solutions by becoming a $1/month patron of my work via patreon.com.

---

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, Jose S. ($200), for your beyond outrageously generous contribution to this site -- I am greatly honored by your steadfast support and readership.

Thank you, Paul L. ($100), for your outrageously generous contribution to this site -- I am greatly honored by your steadfast support and readership.

Read more...

Were Trade Wars Inevitable?

Trade in which mobile capital is the comparative advantage is a system of Neocolonial exploitation of developing-world nations.

Were trade wars inevitable? The answer is yes, due to the imbalances and distortions generated by financialization and central bank stimulus. Gordon Long and I peel the trade-war onion in a new video program, Were Trade Wars Inevitable? (27:48)

Let's stipulate right off the bat that trade is not necessarily win-win--the winners (corporations, financiers and the financial sector) have skimmed the majority of the gains, leaving the losers with a few pennies of dubious value.

Consumers' got a nickel in savings and a disastrous decline in quality, while corporations reaped 95 cents of additional profits:

As I explained in Forget "Free Trade"--It's All About Capital Flows (March 9, 2018), the comparative advantage into today's global economy is mobile capital: i.e. access to low-cost credit in nearly unlimited sums.

Those with low-cost credit created by central banks issuing reserve currencies in nearly unlimited sums can outbid everyone else for productive assets.

In effect, trade in which mobile capital is the comparative advantage is a system of Neocolonial exploitation of developing-world nations which don't have reserve currencies they can create out of thin air. Trade is exploitation via cheap credit.

The winners are the few at the top of the wealth-power pyramids in both exporting and importing nations. I discussed this recently in There is No "Free Trade"--There Is Only the Darwinian Game of Trade (March 12, 2018).

Central bank policies don't just distort domestic economies, they distort global trade, which parallels domestic distributions of winners (a few at the top) and losers (everyone else).

Trade is intertwined with currencies. China has used its currency peg to the USD to avoid being exploited; China has followed a "Goldilocks" strategy that keeps its currency, the yuan/RMB, in a narrow range: not too costly, not too cheap.

Due to complexity of supply chains, we have a very distorted view of trade; you can't count an iPhone arriving at Long Beach as a $500 import from China; as little as $10 of the $500 price tag actually stays in China. The majority of the value (software, marketing, profits) flows to Apple HQ in Cupertino, CA.

Globalized, financialized trade flows are neither "free" nor "fair," and now as global growth slows, the major economies and their citizenry are finally facing the reality that trade is Darwinian, not win-win.

The imbalances, distortions and inequalities are manifesting in trade disputes and conflicts, manifestations made inevitable by central bank-driven financialization and perverse incentives to maximize short-term profits at the expense of the citizenry, the nation and the productive economy.

My new book Money and Work Unchained is $9.95 for the Kindle ebook and $20 for the print edition.

Read the first section for free in PDF format.


If you found value in this content, please join me in seeking solutions by becoming a $1/month patron of my work via patreon.com.

---

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, Michael M. ($70), for your outrageously generous contribution to this site -- I am greatly honored by your steadfast support and readership.

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

Read more...

Why Systems Fail

Since failing systems are incapable of structural reform, collapse is the only way forward.

Systems fail for a wide range of reasons, but I'd like to focus on two that are easy to understand but hard to pin down.

1. Systems are accretions of structures and modifications laid down over time.Each layer adds complexity which is viewed at the time as a solution.

This benefits insiders, as their job security arises from the need to manage the added complexity. The new layer may also benefit an outside constituency that quickly becomes dependent on the new layer for income. (Think defense contractors, consultants, non-profits, etc.)

In short order, insiders and outsiders alike habituate to the higher complexity, and everyone takes it for granted that "this is how things work." Few people can visualize alternatives, and any alternative that reduces the budget, payroll or power of the existing system is rejected as "unworkable."

In this set of incentives, the "solution" is always: we need more money. If only we had another $1 million, $1 billion or $1 trillion, we could fix what's broken.

But increasing the budget can't fix what's broken because it doesn't address the underlying sources of systemic failure.

Those benefiting from the status quo will fight tooth and nail to retain their jobs and benefits, and so deep reform is essentially impossible, as the insiders and constituencies of each layer resist any reform that might diminish their security/income.

As a result, new layers rarely replaces previous layers; the system becomes more and more inefficient and costly as every new layer must find work-arounds and kludgy fixes to function with the legacy layers.

Eventually, the system becomes unaffordable and/or too ineffective to fulfill its mission.

2. The organization is incapable of instituting deep reforms due to organizational sclerosis and leadership who only wants to hear "good news."Organizational sclerosis isn't just the result of insiders clinging to their job; the structure itself has lost the feedback loops and accountability needed to radically restructure a failing organization.

It's easy for leadership to start demanding what it wants to hear rather than the inconvenient and troublesome truth. Due to the tendency to "shoot the messenger bearing bad news," managers fudge their delivery dates and numbers. Lacking real data and metrics, management fails to recognize the gravity of the situation and makes catastrophically erroneous decisions based on false or massaged reports.

These dynamics can manifest in both private-sector corporations and public-sector agencies. Many public school districts have failed for these reasons despite ever-rising budgets, and the former leader of mobile telephony, Nokia, self-destructed in large part as a result of #2.

One of Steve Jobs' first actions when he took control of failing-fast Apple in 1997 was to slash product lines and strip out the corporate layers that had accumulated to service this ineffective complexity.

All of this contrasts with self-organizing networks which lack the hierarchy necessary for sclerosis, self-serving insiders and fatally blinded management. Since "this is the way the system works," we have a hard time imagining how public agencies and corporations might be obsoleted by self-organizing, opt-in, transparent rules-based networks.

Since failing systems are incapable of structural reform, collapse is the only way forward. Unfortunately collapse doesn't guarantee success; if the rot is deep enough, the wherewithal to assemble a new and more sustainable system may be lacking.

Three charts of system failure:

Of related interest:

When the System Thwarts Sincere, Hard-Working People, the System Has Failed (June 15, 2017)

America's Ruling Elite Has Failed and Deserves to Be Fired (November 7, 2016)

The System Has Failed (February 22, 2016)


My new book Money and Work Unchained is $9.95 for the Kindle ebook and $20 for the print edition.

Read the first section for free in PDF format.

---

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, Robb D. ($50), for your superbly generous contribution to this site -- I am greatly honored by your steadfast support and readership.

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

Read more...

Playing for All the Marbles

Global Plunge Protection Teams must be ordering take-out food; every night is a long one now.

The current stocks/bonds game is for all the marbles, by which I mean the status quo now depends on valuations and interest rates remaining near their current levels for the system to function.

If interest rates soar and/or stocks plummet, the game is over: pension funds collapse, tax revenues drop, debt based on high asset valuations defaults, employment craters and the much-lauded "wealth effect" reverses into a "negative wealth effect" (i.e. everyone looking at their IRA or 401K statement feels poorer every month).

Let's scan a few relevant charts to understand why this game is for all the marbles. Given the systemic fragility of the global economy, a crash in one asset class or a rise in interest rates trigger defaults, sell-offs, etc. that forcibly revalue other assets.

So the Powers That Be can't afford to let any asset crash, as a crash will bring down the entire system. Why is this so? The resiliency of the system has been eroded by permanent central bank/central state intervention/stimulus. Withdrawing the stimulus means markets have to go cold turkey, and they've lost the ability to do so.

Permanent stimulus creates dependencies and distortions, and both the distortions and the dependencies introduce a host of unintended consequences. What's the "market price" of assets? You must be joking: the "market" prices assets based on policies of permanent stimulus and asset purchases by central banks.

In effect, markets have been hijacked to function as signaling mechanisms (everything's great because your IRA account balance keeps going up) and as floors supporting pensions, insurance companies, IRAs/401Ks, etc.: all these financial promises are only plausible if asset valuations keep rising.

Fly in the ointment #1: equity valuations have lost touch with the real economy, as measured (imperfectly) by GDP:

Fly in the ointment #2: blow-off tops aren't sustainable:

Fly in the ointment #3: all the stimulus was borrowed, so global debt is rising to unprecedented levels (just extend the upward sloping lines to get current debt totals):

Fly in the ointment #4: wages for the top 5% have risen smartly, and this is the same slice of households that own the vast majority of financial assets; meanwhile, the bottom 95% are seeing declines in real wages or gains so modest that they barely register, and only if official inflation is distorted down to near-zero:

So debt levels are soaring everywhere,, asset valuations are at unsustainable levels, wages are stagnant for the majority of workers, and a revaluation of all financial assets is long overdue--but a revaluation might sweep all the marbles off the board.

Global Plunge Protection Teams must be ordering take-out food; every night is a long one now.


My new book Money and Work Unchained is $9.95 for the Kindle ebook and $20 for the print edition.

Read the first section for free in PDF format.


If you found value in this content, please join me in seeking solutions by becoming a $1/month patron of my work via patreon.com.

---

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, John D. ($5/month), for your superbly generous pledge to this site -- I am greatly honored by your support and readership.

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

Read more...

The Problem with a State-Cartel Economy: Prices Rise, Wages Don't

The vise will tighten until something breaks. It could be the currency, it could be the political status quo, it could be the credit/debt system--or all three.

The problem with an economy dominated by state-enforced cartels and quasi-monopolies is that prices rise (since cartels can push higher costs onto the consumer) but wages don't (since cartels can either dominate local labor markets or engage in global wage arbitrage: offshore jobs, move to lower-wage states, etc.)

Think about the major expenses of the typical household: Internet, telephony, cable and other digital services: cartels. Airlines: cartel. Healthcare insurance, providers and Big Pharma: cartels. Defense weaponry: cartel. Higher education and student loans: cartels. Mortgages: cartel. And so on.

The economy is now dominated by two consequences of state-enforced cartels:

1. High profits / high incomes for the owners and managers at the top who reap most of the gains of the cartel: high-income individuals pay most of the income taxes and fund most of the political class's campaign contributions. No wonder the political class insures that the state protects cartels from competition: it's called self-interest.

2. Debt. i.e. credit for consumers, so they can continue to borrow more to pay the ever-higher costs of living.

But debt has a cost, too, and even at low rates of interest, eventually the interest on ever-larger mountains of debt crimps households' spending and their ability to borrow more.

When consumers aren't earning more and can no longer borrow more to support additional consumption, consumption and the rate of new debt expansion both decline, guaranteeing recession.

Cartels don't really have competition, and so there is no pressure to lower costs; cartels have no incentives to innovate in ways that radically reduce costs and improve their services. Consumers see this most dramatically in healthcare and higher education, where costs just keep rising year after year.

If consumers can't borrow more to pay higher costs, then cartels lobby for the government to pay their rising costs via deficit spending, i.e. the government borrows more to fund the cartels.

Now that students are over-indebted, the higher education/lending cartels are demanding that the government pay the students' debts, so neither cartel suffers any decline in income/profits.

Since competition would threaten profits and higher prices, cartels buy political influence to protect their rackets. Politicos, always desperate to raise millions for their permanent campaigns for re-election, are happy to comply.

The only output of this system is higher public and private debt taken on to pay the rising prices imposed by cartels, and stagnation as wages no longer enable the bottom 80% of consumers to keep up with ever-higher prices.

The vise will tighten until something breaks. It could be the currency, it could be the political status quo, it could be the credit/debt system--or all three.

Here's a chart of the net result of a financialized state-cartel economy: the politicos skimming fortunes in campaign contributions love it, and the protected cartel insiders skimming the nation's wealth love it, too. Well let's see, that's all the important people, so what's not to like?

My new book Money and Work Unchained is $9.95 for the Kindle ebook and $20 for the print edition.

Read the first section for free in PDF format.


If you found value in this content, please join me in seeking solutions by becoming a $1/month patron of my work via patreon.com.

---

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, John R. ($5/month), for your marvelously generous pledge to this site -- I am greatly honored by your support and readership.

Thank you, Mike T. ($5/month), for your splendidly generous pledge to this site -- I am greatly honored by your support and readership.

Read more...