Bill Bonner

An hour of a robot’s time — even with a coffee break — should be about as expensive in the US as it is in Vietnam. What matters now is capital, not labor. It takes massive investment to develop.

It looks like the administration is doing everything it can — including whimsical tariff threats — to make the value of the US dollar and US bonds go down.

Major cycles — from boom to bubble to bust…from consensual democracy to Big Man rule…from a dynamic, growing empire to a fearful degenerate one — are well underway

The S&P and the Dow are hitting new highs…with the S&P recording 32 new highs so far in 2025. The S&P has seen earnings grow 156% over the last decade. But stock prices have gone up 248%.

There’s a corruption cycle too…roughly corresponding to the shift away from the ‘rule of law’ to the ‘rule of men.’ This appears to be a part of the life cycle of democracy.

We are all part of these patterns, not the architects or controllers of them. When a child is born, you might as well alert the funeral parlor. There is no doubt where this will lead.

Sooner or later, the stock market bubble has to deflate. It can develop a slow leak, with rising inflation gradually undermining real values. Or, it can just go ‘pop.’

Sometime in the future, the stockholders’ good luck is likely to vanish. Stocks have real value. That real worth — the present value of future earnings — must ultimately be expressed in prices.

There’s a big difference between having the best growth rates and having the worst. And if you don’t know which you have, you’re probably headed to trouble. Which is exactly where the US is headed.

Both the stock market and the economy are now growing — but only because of a whirligig of ‘capex’ spending on AI…which is most likely money down the drain.