In this week's Off the Cuff podcast, Chris and Charles discuss:
- The anxiety gap
- Stress is building even though we're being told "everything is getting better"
- The difference between money & capital
- We have too much of one and not enough of the other
- Rudderless leadership
- Poor decisions abound everywhere
Freshly back from Europe, Charles Hugh Smith joins Chris this week to tackle the growing loss of faith and optimism that society is demonstrating. Despite markets being at all-time highs and media reports of "return to recovery," there are a growing number of data points indicating that the human experience does not match the PR.
Chris notes his observations of social stress, incivility, and decreasing consumer confidence, which Charles matches with reports of large swaths of idled workers that he recently saw in Europe. In Chris' eyes, these are the dangerous signs of a bubble in its last stages, where the on-the-ground reality does not match the mania of the media and the marketplace. And when things reach the point where the public perception shifts from positive to negative, the pendulum can swing suddenly and violently.
The purchasing power of our money is visibly lessening, our tax burdens and key costs of living ("affordable" health care, anyone?) march higher, and yet banks still have perfect trading quarters (JP Morgan has not yet had a single day of trading losses in 2013) and the technorati get enriched IPO'ing unprofitable companies (e.g., Twitter) to institutions speculating with retail investors' net eggs.
Meanwhile, our central
by charleshughsmith 
