This Is The Turning Point

The comments above & below is an edited and abridged synopsis of an article by Charles Hugh Smith

The people have finally turned against the privileged elites, who have benefited greatly from globalization, corruption, central bank stimulus and the profiteering of state-enforced cartels. It doesn’t matter whether they are turning left or right; the important thing is that the powerless have finally started challenging their privileged overlords.

Though the powers-that-be will attempt to suppress the revolt, the genies of political disunity and social disorder cannot be put back in the bottle. It took a generation of rising inequality, corruption and the erosion of opportunity to create a society of the protected (the haves) and the unprotected (the have-nots), and rubber-stamping more regulations and distributing Universal Basic Income will not rebalance a system that is irrevocably out of balance.

But the rise of resistance is only half the story: Economic trends and cycles are turning as well, and these reversals will disrupt the status quo. The dominant narrative—the rightness, goodness and sustainability of endless growth of consumption and debt—will unravel, and the internal contradictions of this New Gilded Age (widening wealth/income/power inequality) will burst through the thin façade of stability that’s been patched together over the past nine years of recovery.

Smith discusses eight key trends/cycles that are turning; central bank distortion and manipulation of markets; the business cycle of credit expansion and contraction; the yield/interest rate cycle; the commodity cycle; the stock market cycle; regulation; globalization; demographics; and taking action.