“The rich rules over the poor, and the borrower is the slave of the lender.” — Proverbs 22:7 Wealth is not a number. It is not a currency. It is not a claim on someone else’s promise. Wealth is energy captured in physical form—human effort stored across time, transformed into…
The 1694 inversion and the Ponzi geometry of the American retirement system “It should be clear that modern fractional reserve banking is a shell game, a Ponzi scheme, a fraud in which fake warehouse receipts are issued and circulate as equivalent to the cash supposedly represented by the receipts.” —…
“There is no means of avoiding the final collapse of a boom brought about by credit expansion.” — Ludwig von Mises A mortgage is a claim on your future labor. A government bond is a claim on future tax revenue. A corporate bond is a claim on future profits. The…
How Financial Extraction Was Invented—and Why We Mistook It for Reality “If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around them will deprive the people of all property until…
How the Fed Bails Out the World With Your Savings “How did you go bankrupt? Two ways. Gradually, then suddenly.” — Ernest Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises The Man Who Downgraded America In August 2011, Deven Sharma did something unprecedented. As president of Standard & Poor’s—one of the three major…
Wars. Waste. Wall Street. Welfare. “The economy doesn’t work for you — it works to extract from you.” —Michael Hudson Financialization is a word you have probably heard in economic news, but its true meaning is rarely explained. The popular media treats it as the natural growth of finance in…
The passive tipping point that could break both stocks and housing “The pessimist complains about the wind; the optimist expects it to change; the fantasist pretends the sea isn’t there; the realist adjusts the sails.” —Adapted from William Arthur Ward What happens when markets stop asking, “Is this a good…
Three Forces & the 1983 Pattern That Explain It All “Those who fail to learn from history are condemned to repeat it.” — Winston Churchill If you follow markets, you’ve probably seen the headlines: Gold down nearly 20% in two months. Bombs are falling in the Middle East. Oil is above $100 a…
How a Trip to Uruguay Changed the Way I Think About Money “Abram was very rich in cattle, in silver, and in gold.” —Genesis 13:2 Three weeks ago, I stepped off a plane in Montevideo and spent two weeks exploring Uruguay—endless empty beaches, rolling green hills dotted with cattle, gauchos…
Parallels Between 1929 and Today’s Financial Fragility “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” – Franklin D. Roosevelt, 1933 In the final months of 1929, America looked unstoppable. Cities glowed with electric light. Streets swarmed with automobiles. Radios carried jazz, ball scores, and a steady stream of…