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Getting Our Story Straight is a Matter of Life & Death (Literally)

The stories we tell ourselves have great influence over our destiny. These narratives shape our belief system and thus, in turn, the decisions we make.

Find yourself making poor choices? That's likely due to a fallacy in one or more of the beliefs you hold.

Psychology and social science has re-discovered this key learning: We can improve our odds of success in life by improving the stories we tell ourselves.

Getting Our Story Straight is a Matter of Life & Death (Literally)

by Adam Taggart

The stories we tell ourselves have great influence over our destiny. These narratives shape our belief system and thus, in turn, the decisions we make.

Find yourself making poor choices? That's likely due to a fallacy in one or more of the beliefs you hold.

Psychology and social science has re-discovered this key learning: We can improve our odds of success in life by improving the stories we tell ourselves.

Let’s Stop Fooling Ourselves: Americans Can’t Afford the Future

by Adam Taggart

The truth is: The three adult generations in the U.S. are suffering, and their burdens are likely to increase with time. Each is experiencing a squeeze that is making it harder to create value, save capital, and pursue happiness than at any point since WWII. At that point, we were a creditor nation with an economy exploding into dominance on the world stage. Now, however, the U.S. is the largest debtor nation and our economic hegemony is increasingly at seige across a number of fronts.

A continuation of the status quo is a decision to sleepwalk face-first into the constraints hurtling towards us.

Instead, shouldn't we stop fooling ourselves and ask: What should we be doing differently?

Let’s Stop Fooling Ourselves: Americans Can’t Afford the Future

by Adam Taggart

A continuation of the status quo is a decision to sleepwalk face-first into the constraints hurtling towards us.

Instead, shouldn't we stop fooling ourselves and ask: What should we be doing differently?

Off the Cuff: Out of Order

PREVIEW

by Adam Taggart

In this week's Off the Cuff with Mish & Chris podcast, Mish and Chris discuss:

Fiscal Cliff Follies
- Whatever 'solution' is enacted won't solve much
The Broken U.S. Education Model
- We are graduating a generation of debt slaves
Dangerously Optmistic Stock Prices
- Assuming elevated earnings in perpetuity
Pension Fund Posion
- No way these funds will meet their actuarial targets

While there are no guarantees that any progress will emerge from the Obama-Boehner showdown, what is clear is that the impact of any agreements (higher taxes and spending cuts) struck on the "Fiscal Cliff" will be GDP-negative. So plan for the headwinds on our economy to strengthen in force next year.

Despite this certainty, as Chris and Mish look across the markets today, they see way too much 'pricing for perfection.' For example, corporate profits are far above their historical norm due to a number of extraordinary events over the past few years. But their underlying stocks are priced as if these elevated earnings levels will continue unabated far into the future.

Off the Cuff: Out of Order

PREVIEW by Adam Taggart

In this week's Off the Cuff with Mish & Chris podcast, Mish and Chris discuss:

Fiscal Cliff Follies
- Whatever 'solution' is enacted won't solve much
The Broken U.S. Education Model
- We are graduating a generation of debt slaves
Dangerously Optmistic Stock Prices
- Assuming elevated earnings in perpetuity
Pension Fund Posion
- No way these funds will meet their actuarial targets

The Trouble with Money

by Chris Martenson

A Broken Narrative

Recently I was asked by a high school teacher if I had any ideas about why students today seem so apathetic when it comes to engaging with the world around them. I waggishly responded, "Probably because they're smart."

In my opinion, we're asking our young adults to step into a story that doesn't make any sense.

Sure, we can grow the earth's population to 9 billion (and probably will), and sure, we can extract our natural gas and oil resources as fast as possible, and sure, we can continue to pile on official debts at a staggering pace — but why are we doing all this? Even more troubling, what do we say to our youth when they ask what role they should play in this story — a story with a plot line they didn't get to write?

So far, the narrative we're asking them to step into sounds a lot like this: Study hard, go to college, maybe graduate school. And when you get out, not only will you be indebted to your education loans and your mortgage, but you'll be asked to help pay back trillions and trillions of debt to cover the decisions of those who came before you. All while operating within a crumbling, substandard infrastructure. Oh, and by the way, the government and corporate sector appear to have no real interest in your long-term future; you're on your own there.