In this week's Off The Cuff podcast, Chris and Charles Hugh Smith discuss:

• Driving Blind
  • The data we are depending on is uselessly distorted..
• Underestimated Risk
  • …so we can't see how tenuous things are right now
• Setting Up For A Fall
  • …allowing valuations to get waayy ahead of fundamentals
• A System Waiting For A Trigger
  • …all that's needed is a reason for the system to implode on itself

This week Charles Hugh Smith returns to talk with Chris about the dangerous degree of distortion in today's world. Overvalued assets, ecological overshoot, over-leveraged economies, and increasingly antagonistic geopolitics — these and other other imminent threats should have our leaders and our markets girding against risk. But instead, the dominant narrative being put forth is that all is great and getting better. Complacency is being sold to us — even though, mathematically, the systems we depend on will experience tremendous shocks in the coming future.

When that happens, Charles predicts the current set of rules we live by will quickly be changed by the central state "for the public good". These changes, however, will protect those at the top — the ones whose profligacy has run things of the rails — while stripmining the wealth of the 99%.

In this week's Off The Cuff podcast, Chris and Charles Hugh Smith discuss:

• The Approaching Energy Crisis
  • It's not a matter of if, but when
• The Approaching Debt Crisis
  • There's no escaping it
• The Unfolding Resource Crisis
  • Scarcity is growing in nearly every system
• The Inevitability of DeGrowth
  • We're going to have to transition, whether we want to or not

This week's podcast is a particularly sobering one. Chris and Charles discuss the inevitable arrival of several approaching crises: declining net energy, too much debt, and depleting key natural resources.

What this mean is that "DeGrowth" in our near-term future. As a global population, we are simply going to have to learn to do more with less: either on our terms or Mother Nature's.