Travesty of a Mockery of a Sham

When Does It End? Were you forwarded this email? [Sign-up to The Daily Reckoning here.]( [Unsubscribe]( [Daily Reckoning] Travesty of a Mockery of a Sham - Questions that demand answers… - The tail end of an economic cycle… - Four long-wave cycles you should understand… Recommended Link [“Warning! The Fed is rigging markets”]( [Read more here...]( You need to see this urgent warning about the Fed. This warning is NOT a best guess about things to come… It’s not a prediction about what the Fed may or may not do in the near future. It’s a warning about what the Fed is doing… right now! You only have a few hours left to see what’s going on. [See The Full Warning Now]( San Francisco, California March 6, 2021 Editor’s note: Economies run in cycles. What are they? What part of the cycle is the United States in? Today, Charles Hugh Smith breaks them down. [Charles Hugh Smith] Dear Reader, How many more times do we have to watch Jay Powell claim his speculative bubble isn't a bubble? And that his massive expansion of billionaires' fortunes will magically create jobs for all those living in the real world he's created of stagnation, social depression and inequality? In other words, when will this travesty of a mockery of a sham finally implode? When will the Universe tire of the lies, fraud, embezzlement and corruption and bring the whole rotten charade down? When will we tire of the stale tale of reflation, told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing? We all know the Status Quo's response to the global financial meltdown of 2008 has been a travesty of a mockery of a sham — smoke and mirrors, phony facades of "recovery," phony "reforms," serial bubble-blowing and politically expedient can-kicking. It’s all based on borrowing and printing trillions of dollars, yen, euros and yuan, quatloos, etc. and funneling them to financiers, corporations, monopolies, cronies and billionaires. When will the travesty of a mockery of a sham finally come to an end? How many more "saves" does the Ponzi Scheme of central banking possess? Recommended Link [Coming to America: A New Federal “Digital Dollar”?]( [Read more here...]( It’s finally here… Starbucks, Subway – and 16 other major businesses – are set to test a new state-mandated digital currency. [Here's How To Prepare]( Cycles Wall Street and its vast army of apologists, lackeys, toadies, schemers, scammers, con-artists and profiteers will have us believe that the Everything Bubble is permanent and its continued expansion will hide all the systemic rot hollowing out America. On the other hand, maybe manipulation, lies and artifice can no longer keep the Everything Bubble from popping. The confluence of crises we’ve been facing are no longer in the future — they're here now. Cycles are not laws of Nature, of course; they are only records of previous periods of growth/excess/depletion/collapse, not predictions per se. Nonetheless their repetition reflects the systemic dynamic of growth, crisis and collapse, and so the study of cycles is instructive even though we stipulate they are not predictive. What is predictable is the way systems tend to follow an S-curve of rapid growth which then tops out in excess, stagnates in depletion and then devolves or implodes. We can see all sorts of things topping out and entering depletion/collapse: financialization, the Savior State, Chinese credit expansion, oil production, student loan debt and so on. [IMG 1] Since each mechanism that burns out or implodes tends to be replaced with some other mechanism, this creates the recurring cycle of expansion/excess/depletion/collapse. Four Long-wave Cycles You can imagine four long-wave cycles: 1. The credit expansion/renunciation cycle. a.k.a. the Kondratieff cycle. Credit expands when credit is costly and invested in productive assets. Credit reaches excess when it is cheap and it's malinvested in speculation and stock buybacks, and as collateral vanishes then credit is renunciated/written off. This is inexact, but obviously the organic postwar cycle of expansion has been extended by the central bank money-printing/credit orgy. 2. The generational cycle of four generations/80 years described in the seminal book The Fourth Turning. American history uncannily tracks an 80-year cycle of crises and profound transformation: 1860 (Civil War), 1940 (world war and global Empire) and next up to bat, 2020, the implosion of the debt-based Savior State and the financialized economy. 3. The 100-year cycle of inflation-deflation described in the masterful book The Great Wave: Price Revolutions and the Rhythm of History. The price of bread remained almost constant in Britain throughout the 19th century. In contrast, the 20th century has been characterized by inflation — the U.S. dollar has lost approximately 96% of its value since the early 20th century. Recommended Link [America’s FINAL Wealth Transfer]( [Read more here...]( Thanks to a recent drastic decision made behind closed doors in this building on March 23rd, 2020 at 8 A.M… …Millions of Americans will likely fall into poverty in the coming months… In what historians will call the end of America’s middle class. See the 5-steps to take immediately to protect & grow your wealth. [Click Here To Learn More]( Another characteristic of this cycle is wage stagnation: people earn less even as costs of essentials rise, a dynamic that inevitably leads to political crisis and upheaval. The federal agencies have been tasked with masking the decline of the purchasing power of wages with heavily gamed statistics, but here's how to detect wage stagnation in the real world: Calculate how many hours the average wage-earner had to work in 1975, 1985, 1995 and 2005 to pay for essentials and common non-essentials. If you kept records of your expenses, you'd probably find, as I have, that my wages bought far more goods and services in 1975, 1985 and 1995 than they do now, even though the nominal wage was much lower. Ask yourself how it is that jobs that paid $12 in 1985 still pay $12 an hour. How much does that $12 buy now compared to what it could buy in 1985? Precious little. Jay Powell, you and the rest of your Wall Street lapdogs have failed the American wage earner. You've enriched the top 0.1% and impoverished the bottom 90%. As this RAND Corporation report documents, ( Trends in Income From 1975 to 2018) $50 trillion in earnings has been transferred to the Financial Aristocracy from the bottom 90% of American households over the past 45 years. 4. There's a problem with oil, and it isn't the price or how much is left in the ground. The price isn't the issue, or the supply: it's how much energy wage-earners can buy out of their dwindling discretionary income, i.e. what's left after they pay higher prices for essentials. The mutually reinforcing crises aren't in the future, they're here now, and Jay Powell's shuck-and-jive has lost its magical powers to cloak the rot with speculative bubbles. The billionaires thank you, Jay, as they've been selling for months, leaving all the fools you conned holding the bag when your con-artist powers fade and your bubble pops. Regards, Charles Hugh Smith for The Daily Reckoning Editor’s note: Take a look at the big V on this chart. [Click here for more...]( On March 16, exactly one week BEFORE this V began to take form… [An extraordinary decision was made behind closed doors to rig markets higher.]( Most Americans still have no idea how or what caused stocks to rally 66% of their lows. I’m telling you this is why. It’s why [every American needs to see what’s really going on behind the scenes.]( This urgent message is now available to the public and you can see it by [clicking here.]( --------------------------------------------------------------- Thank you for reading The Daily Reckoning! We greatly value your questions and comments. Please send all feedback to [feedback@dailyreckoning.com.](mailto:dr@dailyreckoning.com) [Charles Hugh Smith][Charles Hugh Smith]( is an American writer and blogger, and serves as the chief writer for the blog "Of Two Minds". 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