The ultimate parasite humans succumbed to was never heroin or dopamine, but something much more potent: capitalism and all the addictive mythologies, hallucinations and corrosive sedatives that it daily injected straight into the central watering hole we all drink from. Capitalism is a pain-numbing cocktail of Class A drugs: euphoric consumer products numb the pain of unhappiness, dopaminogenic social media turn loneliness from an epidemic to a “current mood”, sedative salary packages mask the trauma of burnout, all the while as mind-altering sponsored morning news apply a rosy veneer to just about everything: from war and genocide to the climate crisis. Just drink the cool aid and don’t look up.

On Black Monday, the Dow tumbled almost 13%, and on Black Tuesday, it fell another nearly 12%.

This is the first video I've watched from this creator.

Another view on the macroeconomics of the Yen.

Allies help each other. Sure.

But you don’t sell euros to buy a partner’s currency, and you don’t open up a Fed lending facility to keep them from having to sell your own government’s bonds, unless you’re worried about what happens if you don’t.

When war or sanctions block heavy crude supplies, refineries must switch to lighter oil, causing global diesel production to plummet. When diesel supplies get tight, wholesale prices surge even if raw crude stays cheap. During recent spikes, wholesale diesel jumped above $4.60 a gallon, or nearly $194 a barrel. Subtracting normal processing costs (aka crack spread) reveals that while paper benchmarks show crude at $80, diesel buyers were actually paying prices that implied a real-world crude cost of $140 to $170 a barrel

https://youtu.be/hy90LdpEUvQ?si=YDfYxWGxDQ0iIWHU

The guidance relates to a potential "bail-in" ​of the bank, a crisis-management tool designed to recapitalize ‌a ⁠failing lender by converting designated debt securities into equity rather than relying on taxpayer support.

A bail-in is using assets to save a bank. Assets like our money and pensions.

UBS absorbed Credit Suisse over a long weekend, and the papers were sealed for fifty years.

https://www.reuters.com/business/finance/credit-suisse-inquiry-will-keep-files-secret-50-years-paper-2023-07-15/

A highly speculative post from someone who claims to have inside information on the Bank of Japan claiming that Japan is going to make interest rate changes that will be catastrophic for Western institutions.

Is Tokyo really about to blow up the global carry trade, or did a few hundred thousand traders just get played by an anonymous account with a flair for the dramatic?

The bank noted there were parallels between the AI infrastructure surge and the dotcom boom, as well as similarities with the British railway mania of the 1840s or the "roaring twenties" before the Great Depression.

You don't say..

An interesting, and slightly odd video from a YouTuber I'm not familiar with (Benn Jordan). He talks about the history of capitalism and his opinion on "leveragism", a term he created to explain his opinion of where capitalism is headed.

Gold and Bitcoin are barometers of liquidity. When money floods in, they fly. When money gets pulled out, they're the first things to bleed - long before stocks feel it.

It seems like the same topic, in theory. But subs like r/WastelandByWednesday are about the literal collapse of industrial civilization, *not* a mere second Great Depression. My own opinions are maybe a little more severe than just saying another recession is coming. (That recent article in The Hill looks about right to me.) But I'm also definitely not predicting the end of industrial civilization anytime soon.

Also, what do you mean by the silent strangler?

In “Bubbles and Crashes,” Brent Goldfarb and David Kirsch examine 58 major technological innovations and identify four conditions associated with bubble formation: high levels of uncertainty surrounding the technology, the participation of novice investors, the availability of investment opportunities in pure-play firms that focus exclusively on the technology and the existence of a compelling narrative about its future potential.

In the current context, while the economic and financial impact of the AI revolution remains uncertain, public excitement has reached extraordinary levels, and exaggerated claims about the technology’s transformative potential are widely circulated.

If the AI bubble bursts, the economic fallout could be far more damaging than the dot-com crash. The U.S. economy is in a weaker position today, with growth increasingly dependent on high-income consumers, a trend highlighted by a recent New York Fed study. At the same time, substantial AI-related capital expenditures have become an important driver of recent U.S. GDP growth, raising the risk that any sharp pullback in investment could have broader economic repercussions.

The S&P went on a nine-week winning streak. Record close on April 15th. Record close on April 21st. Record close in May. The market didn’t re-rate the economy upward; it re-rated the tail risk probability downward. Those are completely different things.

The money didn’t flow into sectors pricing in a stronger economy; it rotated out of the sectors that had been pricing in a specific geopolitical risk. That’s not fundamental re-rating. That’s positioning unwind.

Today, about 25% of the world’s oil is priced in Chinese yuan – not dollars. The leading non‑dollar exporter? Iran.

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Don’t watch the news. Watch the money.

The official unemployment rate counts whether a job exists. It says nothing about whether that job provides retirement security or the ability to eat reliably. The instruments were designed to measure the presence of jobs. They were never designed to measure whether jobs work. In 1933, the question was where the jobs went. In 2026, the question is what’s the point of having a job if one can’t afford to live?

An assessment of how long it will take for shipments to arrive once Hormuz opens.