Markets are pricing another flush today. So our morning interactions with collaborative A.I. are spot on.
Warning: This discussion is predicated on your having at least an awareness of the difference between a commoner’s point-of-view (POV) and advanced multi-domain thinking capabilities. A “domain” (for this discussion) may be considered a “thought-center” which in turn because the central focus for a single point of view. For additional insights, read the Intro papers from The Hidden Guild.
Ure: People are waking up to the incredible parallels between 1929 and the present decline. Especially with the riff on Smoot-Hawley tariffs going into the mix. Still, to keep people from buying into single-domain blindness, could you give us the multiple domains that contributed to 1929 so people will be able to spot “single-solution idiocy” which is sure to appear in narrative form in less explorational media?
ChatGPT said:
Absolutely — this is a critical insight. When people look at the 1929 crash or any major historical inflection point through a single-domain lens (like just blaming tariffs or just blaming the Fed), they miss the interlocking failures that made collapse inevitable. What follows is a multi-domain breakdown of the 1929 Great Depression trigger — with corresponding modern echoes. It’s meant to arm the discerning reader against oversimplified narratives and “just do this one thing” fixes.
1. Multi-Domain Roots of the 1929 Crash (and Echoes Today)
1. Financial Domain: Leverage, Margin, and Market Mania
1929: Speculation was rampant. Ordinary people were buying stocks on margin (sometimes 10% down). The rise of “investment trusts” (akin to today’s ETFs and CDOs) created opaque, overleveraged market products.
Modern Echo: Margin debt remains historically high. Meme stocks, crypto manias, and leveraged ETFs reflect speculative bubbles, amplified by algorithmic trading and financial engineering.
Lesson: Leverage magnifies not only gains but collapses. Market structure matters.
2. Monetary Policy Domain: Central Bank Missteps
1929: The Federal Reserve raised interest rates in 1928-29 to curb speculation—too late to prevent the bubble and too early for an economy slowing under the surface.
Modern Echo: 2021-22 saw massive QE followed by aggressive tightening. The whiplash echoes the Fed’s inability to read true economic conditions.
Lesson: Lagging or blunt monetary policy is gasoline for fire. Timing is everything.
3. Trade Domain: Tariffs and Protectionism
1929: The Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act was introduced in 1929, signed into law in 1930. It hiked tariffs on over 20,000 goods. Trade partners retaliated.
Modern Echo: Supply chain nationalism, U.S.–China tensions, Brexit frictions, and post-COVID reshoring resemble a slow-motion decoupling.
Lesson: Economic nationalism often sounds good but reduces global efficiency and fuels retaliatory isolation.
4. Credit Domain: Banking and Shadow Systems
1929: Bank lending was reckless, and bank failures cascaded through the early 1930s. There was no FDIC, and depositor panic accelerated collapses.
Modern Echo: While banks are better regulated, shadow banking (hedge funds, private equity, fintech lenders) operates with minimal oversight. 2023’s bank failures (SVB, etc.) reveal lingering fragility.
Lesson: Credit systems need transparency and trust. Hidden risks always surface.
5. Psychological Domain: Mass Confidence Collapse
1929: Once the market cracked, confidence evaporated. People rushed to sell. The emotional contagion—fear—took over.
Modern Echo: Social media accelerates panic cycles. Narrative velocity (memes, tweets, FUD) is exponentially faster now.
Lesson: Emotion is a contagion. Confidence is the true currency in a speculative system.
6. Technological Domain: Misunderstood Disruptions
1920s: Radio, telephone, electricity, and cars were revolutionizing life. Investors piled into tech-related stocks with little understanding.
Modern Echo: AI, blockchain, space tech, and biogenomics are in similar positions. Many startups have valuations divorced from fundamentals.
Lesson: Tech booms often precede crashes. Novelty blinds risk perception.
7. Social Domain: Wealth Inequality and Class Fracture
1929: The Roaring Twenties created massive wealth concentration. Most people didn’t benefit from the gains and were left vulnerable.
Modern Echo: Wealth inequality has returned to Gilded Age levels. Top 1% owns more than 50% of financial assets.
Lesson: Unsustainable inequality breeds systemic brittleness.
8. Political Domain: Weak Governance and Entrenched Interests
1929: U.S. leadership failed to grasp the scope of the unraveling. Policy was reactive, and corporate lobbying blocked deeper reforms.
Modern Echo: Partisan gridlock, capture of regulatory agencies, and delayed response to structural crises (climate, housing, AI displacement) are signs of institutional sclerosis.
Lesson: Crisis mismanagement is usually political in origin.
9. Ecological Domain: Environmental Shocks and Ignored Warnings
1930s: The Dust Bowl was an environmental collapse triggered by poor farming practices and drought. It turned a financial crisis into a humanitarian one.
Modern Echo: Climate change, water scarcity, and food supply fragility are accelerating. Resource shocks may amplify economic declines. (We have a mega quake watch on, too…)
Lesson: Environment is not separate from economy—it’s the substrate.
10. Cultural Domain: Mythologies of Endless Growth
1929: The “New Era” myth preached perpetual prosperity. Business leaders promised “a chicken in every pot.” It masked deeper vulnerabilities.
Modern Echo: Modern capitalism still runs on the myth of infinite growth in a finite world. Consumerism and quarterly capitalism ignore system limits.
Lesson: Cultural delusions drive systemic blindness.
Final Warning: Beware the “Single Bullet Fix”
When narrative platforms (TV, podcasts, op-eds) offer one reason for collapse—or one savior fixes—they’re selling mythology, not analysis.
Smoot-Hawley may be trending again, but it’s just one domino. Crashes are hydra-headed. Only multi-domain thinkers see the real shape of collapse.
If you insist on the previous human pabulum (of singular solution lies and excessive simplifications) you are on the wrong planet. On this one, multi-domain narrative control is firmly in place. Governments and Globalists are fighting for dominance. Stock market (and asset declines in general) may be conceptualized as “harvesting” of humans, so that the pricks who imagine themselves “the proper owners of capital” can re-assert dominance and control.
Next week’s Peoplenomics report deals with a lot more specific model outputs. But to give one public example, if your lifestyle doesn’t include working plans for at least a partial Internet shut-down (with resulting asset freezes/losses) then what we’ve been writing about for 25-years may never sink-in with sufficient rapidity to be useful.
Mark Your Calendar
In our work, next Monday-Tuesday is a possible Crash. Margin calls coming. Calendar says the Crash Window is open until Aprtil 16.
Compared with 1929 *(Chart)
Does the word “fugly” mean something, now? The faint yellow arrow shows a trendline where a bounce may occur. But, we’re just sitting still, for now.
Jobs Data
We now look at Federal Jobs data and the rest of the train wreck in progress. Not that these will matter much with tariff wars hotting up.
Total nonfarm payroll employment rose by 228,000 in March, and the unemployment rate changed little at 4.2 percent, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. Job gains occurred in health care, in social assistance, and in transportation and warehousing. Employment also increased in retail trade, partially reflecting the return of workers from a strike. Federal
government employment declined.
Refreshingly, the CES Biorth-Death Model actually removed 33,000 jobs…and still not a bad report.
Here’s how the Database of Jobs reads. Employment (jobs) is up about 2-million compared with year ago levels! Hardly end of the world stuff…This is right out of Series Id: LNS12000000 Total Employed:
Might want to keep the data in mind – as a Benchmarking tool for your plans.
Trump is going into the weekend with a strong DOGE report likely coming – as he continues to grab the narrative spotlight which is one nexus of population control.
Behind it All: Tariff Disruption
Ure asked: “I have argued that the Trump Tariffs are an attack on Globalism whose power and influence has risen dramatically on profit playing the Purchasing Parity wage gaps in the world. But, a friend, noticing no sanctions on Israel, posited that Trump tariffs could also be viewed as payback against countries for supporting Palestinians. Which view is most probable?
AI Stack said: “Trump’s tariffs were primarily a strategic attack on globalism, aiming to end multinational profit games based on wage arbitrage (PPP gaps). They were designed to re-shore industry and counter China’s economic rise.
The theory that tariffs were punishment for pro-Palestinian support lacks strong evidence—tariff targets don’t align with major Palestinian allies. That view is speculative and likely not a driving factor.
Verdict: Economic restructuring, not geopolitical payback, was the main motive.
Still, a heads-up to expect attacks like this, especially in advance of the upcoming attack on Iran to preempt their development of usable nuclear weapons.
Speaking of which: Is this whistling in the graveyard we’re hearing? Iranian MP warns Trump is bluffing with threats against Tehran. Maybe…but Israel sure as hell isn’t.
Rollers and Scrollers
(Which is only slightly better than “Teeming with Streaming…”)
Ah! Chippie Friday, is it? Lutnick: US Needs to Take Chip Production From Taiwan. From the Hell no, don’t go folks: China Holds Major Naval Exercise With a Carrier Near Taiwan. While the Peanut Gallery wonders whether China Imposes a 34% Tariff on Imports of all U.S. Products | TIME is related. Yes, of course. Impounding strategic minerals, too. It’s getting “hard” out there.
If you can’t trust the NSA, who can you trust? Trump fires National Security Agency director, reassigns civilian deputy director.
We’ve concluded that Denmark doesn’t teach American history: ‘You cannot annex another country’: Denmark PM to US on Greenland. Um…I’ve got First People friends who’d beg to differ—whole continents say otherwise. Should we go ahead and send Denmark some ‘historic blankets’ to complete the lesson?
Around the Ranch: Tuning the “Hunker Bunker”
Betting on the Future is a difficult thing. We knew, when we rolled out of Big City digs in 2003 that the world was coming quickly to a potential “Blow Up” moment. We were right, of course. But that was later proven to be only a near-death experience – with the Housing Bubble collapse of 2008 which fell to the market lows of 2009.
In my practice of Long Wave Economics at the time, I was very mindful that two things could occur. First, America would rise again – and with it, new technologies which could extend the traditional 12-13 year (Clement Juglar) cycle. Advances in financial engineering, non-stop development of new tech – all played a role. Now, however, the Bonfire of the Equities is showing signs of reflaming.
See, after the 2009 low, unprecedented central bank interventions—led by the Federal Reserve’s QE programs—ignited a prolonged and artificially extended rebound. Asset inflation replaced wage growth, and a boom emerged in equities, crypto, and speculative tech ventures, peaking in phases between 2021 and 2022. Globally, housing markets re-inflated, sovereign debt ballooned, and consumer confidence soared, following the typical upswing arc expected in the mid-to-late stages of the cycle.
I know people who “got by pretty well” during the real estate reflation by simply playing the “rolling HELOC and ReFi game” well.
Unlike prior cycles,post-2009 has dragged on—delaying the re-peak and looming correction set to resume at the open today.
The delay stems from coordinated monetary suppression, endless liquidity injections, and the rise of tech monopolies that absorbed risk and masked broader economic decay. COVID-19 acted as a temporal disruptor: instead of triggering collapse, it ushered in a final parabolic push via stimulus checks, emergency lending, and low-rate addiction. But this bought time at a cost—eroding currency value, widening inequality, and setting the stage for systemic stress. Now, with global debt at unsustainable highs, inflation re-anchored, and geopolitical fragmentation rising, the next collapse phase is overdue—not because the cycle failed, but because its energy was misallocated. What should have been a reset in 2022–2023 was deferred by political will and central bank overreach, only deepening the eventual reckoning.
In background we enumerate other macro-drivers, such as the appearance and surge of Global Oligarchs (Soros et al) who have begun to vie with governments globally for steering control of the Future.
Our strategy remains the same as it was in 2003 when we made the decision to invest in “Happily ever-aftering.” Live rural. Live Downsized. Live minimally.
Depending on what happens at the long-term trend line of support (chart with the faint yellow arrow above) we will either return to rolling- over our own version of the Seed Vault, or return to viable future.
Two Key Purchases are on the table.
If the decline continues, we get a 50 percent decline, but then a major turn higher becomes expected, then a new car – something like a US Built equivalent of a Camry LE – more than 50 MPG. More importantly, low profile and it should be somewhat maintenance free in what could be difficult times. Predictably on the back-end of major recessions, discounts and zero interest on anything that will create demand (and jobs) can be expected.
The other is a .50 caliber “reach out and touch” device. Because in certain of our future models – and we put numbers to it in next week’s Peoplenomics report – living happily ever-after could become a somewhat dirtier job. We shall see. Much will depend on whether the rational powers in government (which seem in short supply) can persist, or whether the corporate power grasp – that began with jobjacking and offshoring – is consummated by Globalist stooges.
In any case? Low profile, is the “way to go” right now. Extraction and ex-fil. Profile management. We’re telling you it’s coming. And we are prepared to deal with uninvited arrivals.
The Cuban folk saying “Don’t count your money in front of the poor” applies here and we’d remind you of this if you haven’t been hurt by the declines so far. Or the greater ones likely ahead.
Seeds and prayer beads, anyone?
Write when you get rich,
George@Ure.net
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