Bubbles
In this week's Off The Cuff podcast, Chris and Charles Hugh Smith discuss:
- The Crashing Treasury Curve
- Interest rates are on the move
- Get Ready For Interest Rates To Start Rising
- The end of a 30-year downtrend
- When Rates Rise, Prices Will Fall
- Bonds, stocks, housing — nearly everything
- What's Next For Bitcoin?
- We're witnessing a historical moment
Charles and Chris discuss the implications to anticipate should interest rates indeed start rising. The quick summary? It will change everything…
Off The Cuff: A World Of Rising Interest Rates
PREVIEW by Adam TaggartIn this week's Off The Cuff podcast, Chris and Charles Hugh Smith discuss:
- The Crashing Treasury Curve
- Interest rates are on the move
- Get Ready For Interest Rates To Start Rising
- The end of a 30-year downtrend
- When Rates Rise, Prices Will Fall
- Bonds, stocks, housing — nearly everything
- What's Next For Bitcoin?
- We're witnessing a historical moment
Charles and Chris discuss the implications to anticipate should interest rates indeed start rising. The quick summary? It will change everything…
Executive Summary
- Why conventional analysis may not be our best guide anymore
- The critical importance of scarcity and value-production
- Making the most of your time and capital
- How to best prepare for the popping of the 'Everything' Bubble
If you have not yet read Part 1: What Could Pop the Everything Bubble? available free to all readers, please click here to read it first.
In Part 1, we surveyed the economic and socio-political dynamics that will pop the credit/asset bubbles that have created an illusion of normalcy, continuity and prosperity for the past eight years. So how do we non-elites prepare for the end of the everything bubble and the rise of economic, socio-political disorder?
The Conventional Approach
The conventional approach is to seek out assets that will survive either a deflationary implosion (i.e. an implosive collapse of collateral and debt) or high inflation fueled by massive helicopter money distributions to keep the “growth” machine chugging forward.
The Usual Suspects are real-world tangible assets such as precious metals, real estate, orchards, oil fields, solar panels, etc. These are touted as survivable assets because their utility value remains intact regardless of whether their price in currencies drops or soars.
Another Usual Suspect is intrinsically scarce collectibles such as fine art, early 1960s-era Fender guitars, etc.
A newcomer is bitcoin and the other leading cryptocurrencies, which are seen by many as holding scarcity value due to their limited issuance.
This approach is commonsensical and sound, as far as it goes. But it is ultimately a financial approach, not much different than any other form of sell high, buy low, sell high advice of switching out of overvalued asset classes into undervalued asset classes, and then riding the uptrend in the undervalued asset until it too is overvalued.
This approach assumes the larger socio-political-economic system will sort itself out in due time, i.e. it assumes continuity based on self-correcting mechanisms built into the financial status quo.
I’m not so sure that the financial system has any self-correcting mechanisms left, or that they will function as expected in a phase shift or supernova implosion.
Put another way…
What To Invest In When The Everything Bubble Bursts
PREVIEW by charleshughsmithExecutive Summary
- Why conventional analysis may not be our best guide anymore
- The critical importance of scarcity and value-production
- Making the most of your time and capital
- How to best prepare for the popping of the 'Everything' Bubble
If you have not yet read Part 1: What Could Pop the Everything Bubble? available free to all readers, please click here to read it first.
In Part 1, we surveyed the economic and socio-political dynamics that will pop the credit/asset bubbles that have created an illusion of normalcy, continuity and prosperity for the past eight years. So how do we non-elites prepare for the end of the everything bubble and the rise of economic, socio-political disorder?
The Conventional Approach
The conventional approach is to seek out assets that will survive either a deflationary implosion (i.e. an implosive collapse of collateral and debt) or high inflation fueled by massive helicopter money distributions to keep the “growth” machine chugging forward.
The Usual Suspects are real-world tangible assets such as precious metals, real estate, orchards, oil fields, solar panels, etc. These are touted as survivable assets because their utility value remains intact regardless of whether their price in currencies drops or soars.
Another Usual Suspect is intrinsically scarce collectibles such as fine art, early 1960s-era Fender guitars, etc.
A newcomer is bitcoin and the other leading cryptocurrencies, which are seen by many as holding scarcity value due to their limited issuance.
This approach is commonsensical and sound, as far as it goes. But it is ultimately a financial approach, not much different than any other form of sell high, buy low, sell high advice of switching out of overvalued asset classes into undervalued asset classes, and then riding the uptrend in the undervalued asset until it too is overvalued.
This approach assumes the larger socio-political-economic system will sort itself out in due time, i.e. it assumes continuity based on self-correcting mechanisms built into the financial status quo.
I’m not so sure that the financial system has any self-correcting mechanisms left, or that they will function as expected in a phase shift or supernova implosion.
Put another way…
This report marks the end of a series of three big trains of thought. The first explained how we’re living through the Mother Of All Financial Bubbles. The next detailed the Great Wealth Transfer that is now underway, siphoning our wealth into the pockets of an elite few.
This concluding report predicts how these deleterious and unsustainable trends will inevitably ‘resolve’ (which is a pleasant way of saying ‘blow up’.)
When This All Blows Up…
by Chris MartensonThis report marks the end of a series of three big trains of thought. The first explained how we’re living through the Mother Of All Financial Bubbles. The next detailed the Great Wealth Transfer that is now underway, siphoning our wealth into the pockets of an elite few.
This concluding report predicts how these deleterious and unsustainable trends will inevitably ‘resolve’ (which is a pleasant way of saying ‘blow up’.)
It's impossible to predict with certainty how much more insane our financial markets will get before an inevitable correction, but my personal bet is “a lot!”
For my reasons why, take a few minutes to watch the chapter on bubbles below from The Crash Course. For those who haven't seen it before, the takeaway is this: bubbles pop only when greed in the market has been exhausted.
It’s Bubble Time!
by Chris MartensonIt's impossible to predict with certainty how much more insane our financial markets will get before an inevitable correction, but my personal bet is “a lot!”
For my reasons why, take a few minutes to watch the chapter on bubbles below from The Crash Course. For those who haven't seen it before, the takeaway is this: bubbles pop only when greed in the market has been exhausted.
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