Authored by Charles Hugh Smith via OfTwoMinds blog,
It didn’t have to be this way, but this is the reality we must now face: truth is fatal to fraud, and our entire financial-political system is a fraud.
The stock market has just been punctured by the thin blades of truth. It is fatally wounded but nobody dares notice. The wounds are barely visible, but the internal damage is mortal. The stock market is already stumbling and will soon crash.
The banquet’s participants ignore the faltering market because the rules are we never reveal the truth, or acknowledge it, or discuss it, no matter how obvious, because truth is fatal to fraud. So the stock market’s vital signs are in freefall but the conversation remains upbeat and light: stimulus, rapid growth in the second half, etc., all the patter of a carefully constructed illusion that fraud is forever as long as the truth never comes out.
Alas, the truth has emerged from the shadows, despite the silence of the insiders and the financial media. Here are the truths that have emerged like karmic genies:
1. The stock market is nothing but one giant fraud. The entire market is corrupt and rigged from the ground up. The fraud is systemic, designed into every tendril of the market. It was a useful deception to blame it all on “bad players,” but now the truth has been revealed: the market is nothing but a rigged game enriching insiders.
2. The Fed is a fraud. All the Federal Reserve has accomplished in 13 years of goosing the stock market is unprecedented wealth and income inequality as the fraud of the Fed has boosted the fraud of the market, which has fatally undermined America’s social and economic orders. Please read this short paragraph and let it sink in. Monopoly Versus Democracy (Foreign Affairs):
Ten percent of Americans now control 97 percent of all capital income in the country. Nearly half of the new income generated since the global financial crisis of 2008 has gone to the wealthiest one percent of U.S. citizens. The richest three Americans collectively have more wealth than the poorest 160 million Americans.
Thanks to the tightly bound frauds of the Fed and markets, the bottom 90% of Americans own essentially zero capital that produces income and the vast majority of all income gains since 2008 has been siphoned off by the top 0.1% (see chart below from the New York Times.) Three monopolists own more wealth than half the nation’s citizens.
Yet the fraudsters in the Fed laughably insist their policies haven’t created inequality on such a vast scale that is has destabilized the nation. The Fed’s credibility is zero, yet the financial media tiptoes around, proclaiming the glory of the Emperor’s illusory clothing.
3. America’s system of governance is a fraud. What can we say when powerful politicians are worth over $100 million and are active participants in the most speculative excesses of the stock market, Buying More Than $1 Million In Tesla, Disney And Apple Calls In December? Do we even need to ask where their interests lie?
What can we say about a regulatory system that immediately bails out the most corrupt and destructive financiers / speculators but stands aside when the public loses trillions of dollars? The financial regulatory system is a complete fraud, devoted to bailing out the biggest insiders while ignoring the losses of the bottom 99.9%. America’s financial regulations protect the corrupt, not the citizenry.
4. The wealth effect is a fraud. The Fed’s entire fraudulent policy holds that if the stock market is goosed higher by Fed rigging, the phantom wealth handed to the top 0.1% will magically trickle down and benefit the bottom 90% who own no productive capital.
There is no magic; the wealth effect is a fraud. If one $5 stock (GameStop) can be pushed up to $400 in a week, why not push every $5 stock to $400? This is the essence of the wealth effect: all capital is phantom capital, a fraud balloon awaiting a pin.
The wealth effect failed, the Fed failed, regulations failed, politics failed. But thanks to the Fed and the self-serving political class, the entire U.S. economy is now utterly dependent on this completely corrupt and destabilizing fraud–the stock market. If the stock market stumbles and collapses, the economy–now totally dependent on phantom capital –also stumbles and collapses.
It didn’t have to be this way, but this is the reality we must now face: truth is fatal to fraud, and our entire financial-political system is a fraud. The stock market is pale, and blood is seeping through the tuxedo, but the insiders, politicos and their toadies and apologists are nervously averting their gaze.
The market’s bleeding but it can’t possibly die, can it? Yes it can, and yes it will: truth is fatal to fraud, and the truth has escaped and is now free. We can’t unsee what’s behind the curtain.
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Well, that was uplifting. sarc off
Wow! Too bad we can’t get off this carnival ride.
Actually, the exit will likely be akin to the scene in Final Destination 3……enjoy the ride:
I hope Charles is right, but I fear the elites will find a way to survive and prosper while the commoners all get screwed again.
The market breaking is all part of the Great Reset and new economic model that the elite will offer, “you won’t own anything and you’ll be happy!”
The paradox is that all the wealth is owned by the few and pension plans.
Where does the liquidation go?
If the distribution were more uniform. I would agree. There would be more sellers. And the market would crash.
No reason to give a shit now !
Tried warning the potential gloom & doom in the early 80’s when it became ok to bash high union wages in big factories and steel mills and shop out those jobs to cheap labor outside the US ! The asswipes are still making money of that era as the bubble boom & bust their way to oblivion !
That blue collar industrial tax base that built schools paid teachers was wiped out but the government paychecks kept going out sending debt to the moon as the printing press rolled out cash to the connected average Americans are tossed under the bus . Soon there is nothing left for average Americans well : FUCK YOU PAY US NOW AND JUMP YOU FUCKERS !
Yes.
Anarchyst?
So, the market was wobbly to begin with, a Potemkin village of fraud and false fronts all designed to maintain the illusion of stability. In the past the PPT was there to keep it all afloat, will it come to rescue again or will this be used as the excuse for the great crash and reset? I await whatever happens with a jaundiced eye.
The Big Picture looks mighty bleak.
I can’t help but wonder what all this money and energy could’ve accomplished on a political scale. Pollyannish of me?
Perhaps I’ve become too light hearted after finally getting my knee off the mat, my back off the ropes and minimalizing on my best terms rather than screaming as its taken away in the forthcoming situation.
But let’s be upset that a mother steals food to feed her children.
Aim small, shoot small.
The idea is to not find reasons to justify our bad behavior. You think the people at the top don’t have their own byzantine reasoning for doing what they do?
It all starts somewhere, the idea is for us to get back to a place where our best instincts are followed regardless of our rationale.
If things continue apace, stealing will be all that is left. I believe without fighting fire with fire you cannot win. Look at all the countries around the world that live under tyranny.
Even when the plebes beat them at their own games, it’s called cheating/stealing and it gets shut down.
And just as many countries have risen up and tossed it off, it is a human seasonality that rules the tides of man.
Risen up how? By fighting.
Go be Gandhi. Let me know how it works out.
In sixty years India went from being under British control to owning most of the hotels and 7-11s type stores in the USA. Combined they pay more taxes(property, FICA, and so forth) here in a year than all the blacks have paid in 150 years. They have been trained to take your own jobs, all without the cost of a single bullet.
Gandhi was a man of sacrifice, more so than all the US politicans for the last hundred years that have died also. What is the difference between a bullet in the head and to die from a life of booze and pleasure?
Cry away. And relish in your victimhood.
Uh huh, and how long did that take? I want to be free. I don’t only want my great grandkids to be free.
How is it that the Fed is used by the 1% to goose the stock market ? the covert transfer of funds is performed by the FRBNY’s exclusive control of disbursements of funds from auctions of Treasury securities. Ref. 31 CFR 375.3. The accounts handle >$13 trillion annually and have never been audited. TreasuryDirect tabulations of ‘new cash’ [from auctioned Treasury securities] are destined for TBTF bankers Ref.
Federal Reserve for Dummies.
Oh stop whining and go get your ass swabbed for coronavirus. Just hang your ass out the car window. Easy Peasy.
Idiocracy 2021
It most certainly did not need to be this way. Private individuals investing in the long-term growth of companies, allowing their expansion in return for a share of the profits in the form of higher share value or regular payments (dividends), is one of the many ways in which those who defer present moment spending for future spending, should be able to use their money. Fundamentally the mechanism is not the problem….the system surrounding it, with all of its monopoly protection, government protection, bankster ownership (and their government protection), is the problem.
People talk about a black swan. Did anyone ever mention a “silver swan?” Get the popcorn ready.
Regulators always protect those who are regulated, usually by limiting competition.
How do you think the “Big Three” automakers became such? ;0
The enemy is making huge mistakes, which ensure their defeat. Never interrupt your enemy when they are rushing into ruin. Just do all you can to avoid the debris field.
What are those mistakes? Can you list them please?
1. Robin Hood to the rescue! Rob the rich to give to the poor (after eating of it heartily).
2. Being so unconcerned with election fraud that it was videotaped and the complicit media couldn’t have cared less to be seen as liars.
3. By maligning Trump to the point of kicking a dog in the ribs in front of people of good intent.
4. Closing down small business and offering a pittance in compensation as if that were magnanimous.
5. In other words, insult upon insult while laughing it up in broad daylight, e.g. Shultz, Davos, Paris Accords, Wall building stoppage as thousands approach, Dementia Joe for prez, along with Deep Throat as the next one up. And more, like the extant process of making criminals of followers of the Constitution.
This can’t end well for TPTB.
Washington State’s pols are facing a bill that would split Eastern Washington from Seattle and environs. The new state would be called, “Liberty.” Sure, unlikely, but the wind has changed into something a little more destructive to the eaters of the flesh of patriots.
It is no mistake if there are no consequences.
I’m hearing the word Texit more and more frequently. I like it.
“This can’t end well for TPTB”.
Bigfoot, I like your explained 5 pointed pentagram …just remember at the top they are the TLPTB (L=Luciferian)…demonic order out of chaos evil…the more spit in your eye chaos…the more NWO/Great Reset order they intend to bring.
But, I believe you are right about how it ends…eventually.
Now you just need to put the other pieces together.
The Holy Pontiff, the Holy See, the Vicar of Christ…Da Pope?
Benedict’s getting pretty old. Need a conclave soon….
Don’t tease me! Few things would be Moar healthy than the Treasury Departments PPT being deep-sixed, along with all the gov’t pension plans.
“There will be growth in the spring”—-Chauncy Gardener
“I like to watch.” Chauncy Gardener
Chauncy Gardener….A congenital idiot for President….I daresay we have a Chauncy currently haunting the White House, God help us all.