Peak Prosperity

For any problems they face, governments all over the world are now conditioned to simply deficit spend or issue new $trillions in ‘thin air’ currency. So how in danger are we of that recklessness leading to a breakdown of the entire system? Respected financial analyst Michael Every suspects we’re closer than most realize.

Chapwood Index calculates the true cost of living is 5x what the government reports. Do you feel like no matter how hard you work, it’s harder and harder to get ahead? There’s a good explanation for that. And it’s maddening. The government intentionally and dramatically underreports the true cost of living, and that fake low number is what most employers use when they set the wages they pay. So your paycheck isn’t growing nearly as fast as it needs to in order to stay ahead of inflation.

Market researcher Luke Gromen is confident he has the answer. Highly-respected market researcher Luke Gromen concludes that we’re living in a unique period of history given that we currently facing three massive threats.

Whether or not you’ve already enjoyed reading David Collum’s encyclopedic Year In Review — a particularly impressive tour de force this year given the craziness of 2020 — you’re sure to love this live exposition of its highlights. Chris sits down here with Dave to dig more deeply into several of the more significant and salacious themes, as well as wander down a few entirely new avenues of thought.

Several factors are conspiring to weaken the reliability of our food production systems, warns Christian Westbrook, publisher of the website IceAgeFarmer.com We are seeing a shortening of the growing season for important crops due to weather trends and changes in the solar cycle. Our food production system, which is highly dependent on chemical inputs and fossil fuels, is becoming increasingly brittle.

If you’re concerned about the overreach of government in juicing asset prices to dangerous levels, picking economic winner and losers, and constraining our personal freedoms — you have very good right to be. So says lifelong champion of free markets, sound money and civil liberty, former US Congressman Dr Ron Paul.

If you feel you can’t trust the news anymore, you have good reason. Award-winning — and newly independent — journalist Matt Taibbi (of -vampire squid- fame) returns to Peak Prosperity to break down for us how the news media industry became corrupted by the profit motive and now intentionally produces content to “entertain” rather than “inform”. The five media behemoths who own more than 90% of all US media outlets (Comcast, Viacom, Disney, Time Warner, Newscorp) have discovered that it’s much more profitable to focus on discrete audience segments and give them the information they want to hear. Which is why the time-honored approach of “just the facts” reporting to a general audience has practically disappeared. There’s less money in it, so it’s just not pursued anymore. To understand just how broken our news media is and to learn how to navigate your way to the few reporters and channels remaining dedicate to sourced, factual journalism, play this interview with Matt Taibbi.

Writer, philosopher and long-time contributor to PeakProsperity.com, Charles Hugh Smith, returns to the podcast to explain the new socio-economic model he has just introduced to the world through his new book A Hacker’s Teleology: Sharing the Wealth of Our Shrinking Planet. The main mission behind Peak Prosperity is to focus on new, more regenerative and sustainable models that will better serve humanity than the old models which are currently falling apart. Charles posits a new way of living that is a) achievable with existing resources and technology, and b) much more equitable and resistant to abuse. We very much need new alternatives like this at this time. Because, once the system breaks in earnest, our ‘leaders’ will be desperate — and as Jared Diamond wisely observed “Nations in crisis borrow and adapt solutions already devised”. So getting good ideas on the table now, so that they’re available to be adopted when needed, is critical.

The crazy stock market rally since the March lows has received all the media headlines, but what about real estate? What impact is the coronavirus having on that market? One of the most successful real estate investors we know, Ken McElroy, says that covid-19 is accelerating and exacerbating a bust cycle that was already in the making. He predicts massive upheaval in 2021.

Since covid-19 first emerged, one of our continued recommendations has been to start a garden. The pandemic has exposed the fragility of our food supply chains, as well as the shortcomings of our global and national health authorities. So having more self-sufficiency when it comes to calories, as well as better nutrition to boost your immune system, just make good sense. Hence: start a garden. In this podcast, we welcome back Joel Salatin. Labeled by The Washington Post as the most famous farmer in America, Joel has spent his career advocating for sustainable farming practices and pioneering models that show how food can be grown and raised in ways that are regenerative to our topsoils, more humane to livestock, produce much healthier and tastier food, and contribute profitably to the local economy.

How much do things around you need to change before you start changing your behavior? Dr. Peter Sandman has made a career out of analyzing people’s “adjustment reaction” process. And it turns out, people are wired differently. Some watch the world intently, looking for early indicators of change and reacting swiftly to them. Others prefer not to get distracted by the “small stuff” and only pay attention once change is forced on them.

Unsustainable systems, by definition, eventually break down. That’s been a key warning we at Peak Prosperity have been delivering for over a decade regarding the over-indebted global economy, society’s addiction to depleting fossil fuels, and accelerating ecological destruction. The coronavirus pandemic has placed such intense and unexpected strain on this unstable house of cards that its odds of toppling sooner have increased substantially. Few people understand this better — from the historic job destruction impacting tens of millions to the social anger starting to boil over — than James Howard Kunstler.

Neil Howe, demographer and co-authour of the book The Fourth Turning, returns to the podcast this week. In our prior interviews with him, we've explored his study of generational cycles ("turnings") in America which reveal predictable social trends that recur throughout history and invariably result in transformational crisis (a "fourth turning").

Are the pessimists wrong to bet against human ingenuity? To explore that question head-on, Chris sits down this week with Sergey Young, founder of the Longevity Vision Fund and “right hand man” to Peter Diamandis of Singularity and XPRIZE fame.

In this video, Chris interviews expert virologist Dr. Angela Rasmussen, of the Center for Infection and Immunity at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health. Chris and Dr. Rasmussen dive deep into the science of the covid-19 virus, what it does once in the body and what potential treatments show promise.