The Plutonomy—AI Edition—and the Coming Crisis
Driven by speculative finance, stagnant wages, and AI hype, today’s tech-heavy economy mirrors the fragile plutonomy that collapsed into the Great Crash of 1929.
US Consumer Confidence surges above 50 in August; considerably fewer say jobs "hard to get." Go figure.
In a closely-watched non-indicator reading, the June Case-Shiller index of single-family home purchases in selected cities (chosen to be nationally-representative) rose to a level three times May's reading. The fact that prime mortgage foreclosures are displacing subprime as a percentage of homes foreclosed upon, and that continued high joblessness may mean that a rising percentage of these new sales may end up in foreclosure, must be taken into consideration when viewing this number.
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