Charles Hugh Smith has been an independent journalist for 22 years. His weblog, www.oftwominds.com, draws two million visits a year with unique analyses of global finance, stocks and political economy. He has written six novels and Weblogs & New Media: Marketing in Crisis and just released Survival+: Structuring Prosperity for Yourself and the Nation.
The reasons for oil to keep rising are well known--perhaps too well known. Let's look at some charts to illustrate the swirling currents in the…
It's pretty easy to sum up America's role in the global market for oil: We need it, they got it. Here are the numbers, via…
Below are a series of charts that take a look at the current situation of alternative energy, oil and other fossil fuels and the importance…
Conventional wisdom is that the Fed wants the U.S. dollar lower, so it must drop. But the dollar seems to be lacking proper obedience to…
The top 20% are prospering and spending money; the bottom 80% are not, but thanks to vast wealth disparity, the top slice of households can…
The Great Game is afoot and no matter how we may disapprove of the Global Empire, we would be wise not to discount the cards…
The Mainstream Media in the U.S. has presented two basic approaches to understanding China's real estate bubble: 1. There is no bubble in Chinese real…
Nobody knows the future, so the best we can do is strive for an open mind and flexibility in our thinking and responses. In 1904,…
China's "nuclear option"--selling its vast stash of U.S. Treasuries to wreak havoc on the U.S. economy and interest rates--has been downgraded by the flood of…
Despite the legislative churn that produced thousands of pages of new laws and regulations and much self-congratulatory PR, nothing of any importance has changed. All…
Advocates of a smooth transition away from petroleum may be surprised by the consequences of huge swings in the cost of oil. I first proposed…
China's strengths get relentless coverage, its headwinds less so. We all know China's strengths: hard-working populace, high savings rate, a so-far wildly successful marriage of…
Any system, organization or device is only as strong as its weakest component. What are the weakest links in the U.S. culture and economy? The…
Teasing apart the various forces acting on the price of gold reveals the complex financial character of the yellow metal. That gold is in a…
The explosion of Deepwater Horizon and the collapse of Lehman Brothers share similar characteristics of risk, denial and coverup. My good friend G.F.B. recently observed…
A slow-growth real economy has been replaced with a credit-based speculative financial economy dependent on low interest rates and systemic fraud to survive. It is…
Does the Chinese stock market presage the U.S. market's direction? If so, the U.S. market is set for a fall. The economies of China and…
Something profound has happened, obscured by all the concerns about economic details and speculation about whether we are in a “deep recession” or a “depression,”…
With the world teetering on the edge of another global financial meltdown, it's a good time to revisit my May 2008 Oil "Head-Fake" Scenario. In…
The foundation of the American lifestyle and economy is cheap oil. Remove that prop and every aspect of that lifestyle becomes questionable. Not to sound…
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