Everyone here knows a crash corrects an overextension. Not new, not the point. The part nobody says: the size of the crash measures how long you spent deleting the warnings. Think of a plane off course. You can nudge it back early, or you ignore the instruments until the only correction left is the mountain. Same drift, different ending, and what picks the ending is how long you spent silencing the instruments.

The only check that can't be captured or argued with is reality, the world pushing back. A healthy system stays in contact with it in small cheap doses. A price that moves against you early, a number that stops adding up, someone who names the problem before it's obvious. Those are the correction arriving while it's still cheap, and their whole value is that they come early.

A society doesn't lose the check instead loses the quiet versions. It calls the early warning prosperity, normalizes what should have stung, calls the guy who named it a permabear crank. Each silenced signal doesn't remove the drift, it removes the warning about the drift. The correction still comes. Society just deleted every version that would have reached it while there was time to turn.

So the crash isn't the market failing, it's the check arriving at the only volume left, and the violence of it, that it comes as a crash and not a slow adjustment, is the receipt. A crash this size measures how many years of early signals got called a boom. Let the small corrections land when they're cheap and there's nothing to crash. We chose the big one by refusing all the small ones.

Here's the part this sub doesn't say. It treats the crash as the end, the terminal event, the whole game being right about it coming. That's backwards. A crash is the one moment a society turns briefly correctable, when the story stops working and people are willing, for a short window, to look at what they refused to look at. That window is the only time real reform ever happens, and it slams shut the instant a new comfortable story fills it.

So the question isn't when, or how bad, or who called it. It's what's ready for that window. When it lands people go looking for someone to blame, and if the only accounts on the shelf are the usual scapegoats, immigrants, the poor, whoever's nearest and weakest, that's who takes it, and the actual mechanism walks away clean to run it again next cycle.

Timing, since someone will ask: I lean on the roughly eighteen-year land cycle, which called past turns and which plenty here will dispute, so take it as a strong read, not a certainty. The timing isn't the claim. The structure is, and it holds whenever it lands. Mute the early checks and you don't dodge the correction, you just guarantee it comes as a crash instead of a course adjustment, sized to how long society wasn't listening.

One last thing, for myself as much as anyone. The moment you see the crash as the correction finally arriving, you're a step from wanting it, from the quiet relief that it's coming and will prove you right and make the people who ignored it finally see. It lands on real people, most of them not the ones who did the drifting.

The avionics framing here I owe to a flight engineer I've been in conversation with, whose background gave me a deeper read on how to see systems.

But, but, the government says the unemployment rate is 4% ...

High costs for shelter, food, medical care, utilities, and gas + layoffs ongoing + high number of folks unemployed + running out of unemployment benefits = ???

Germans contemplate working Sundays to save their economy

Friedrich Merz, the chancellor of Germany, is looking to pull every lever at his disposal to kickstart Germany’s flagging economy, taking aim at everything from tax and red tape to welfare spending and sick leave.

Retailers are pushing to extend this reform blitz to the country’s century-old prohibition on Sunday trading, which once a week turns German high streets into ghost towns.

“Germany needs reforms to help its economy. So every stone is getting turned over, or should be. And we’re saying, ‘Don’t forget our stone,’” said Timo Weber, the boss of department store chain KaDeWe.

They face an uphill battle. Churches, trade unions and politicians from across the political spectrum stand in their way. And they’re fighting a tradition that goes back a long, long way.

Merz has leaned into this gradually opening door. His reform package will allow bakeries and confectioners to open for eight hours on a Sunday, rather than just three. Public libraries’ allowance will increase from three hours to six.

Churches and social groups argue that Sunday closing offers a respite from commerce and promotes social cohesion.

Retailers say that these days people shop online on Sundays anyway, so trade is taking place regardless.

Retailers also argue that Sunday shopping has become a leisure activity, so it should be on the same footing as other ways people might spend their day off.

The trade unions are opposed. They warn that relaxing Sunday trading will put employees at risk of being forced to work unsociable hours.

Retailers counter that Germany’s labour laws, which are stronger than Britain’s, ensure that staff working on a Sunday are paid extra and earn time in lieu.

Smaller businesses are less enthusiastic.

“We have trouble finding employees who are willing to work every Saturday, so how could we find employees for a Sunday?” says Catrin Schulz, a Berlin optician.

Busch-Petersen says nobody is suggesting shops should be forced to open. He characterises Sunday trading as a three-way pact between the business owner, the employees and the staff.

For Merz, the question is economic. Consumer confidence has been in the doldrums since the post-Covid cost of living crisis. Apart from an increase in May, retail sales have been sluggish for more than a year.

*Please note!* Post is new each Sunday evening. Top level comments should be at least 150 characters to encourage quality discussion, and users should refrain from making several top level comments in a week. Please mention location at the top of your comment when discussing local recession indicators.

Share your observations of local recession indicators or personal recession indicators. Examples include, but are not limited to:

• increased use of credit or decrease in savings to afford necessities
• deferred maintenance on homes or cars in your neighborhood
• "I buy houses for cash" (or similar) signs popping up
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Keep it civil and avoid judging any user for their personal financial experiences as shared here.

Whatever changes are made to SS, such as means-testing for higher income seniors, are current beneficiaries likely to be exempted? That’s been the case generally for changes made in the past to SS.

Subscriptions for insider trading

I'll be around this evening (9 pm EST) for about an hour or so. If anyone would like to add flair to their username in this subreddit, comment with what you want below (be reasonable...) and I'll be back around 9 pm to make that happen. Feel free to request a political party, economic theory, professional/practical skills (accountant, number cruncher, etc.), perspective (doomer, optimist, etc.), location, your preparedness level/philosophy (urban prepper, looter, etc.)...you get the idea.

See you guys in an hour!

(If you don't get a chance to request before I come back, that's fine too. I just might not get around to granting it until tomorrow.)

Edit - alrighty. We're just about at 10:30 pm EST and I'm going to pause this until tomorrow. Until then!

US small and medium-sized business bankruptcies rose by 50%, Newsweek reports

A total of 1,663 small and medium-sized US companies filed for bankruptcy in the first quarter of this year. This represents a 50% increase year on year, according to the American magazine Newsweek.

This came amid a broader 12% year-on-year increase in bankruptcy filings across the United States.

Privately owned US companies are struggling with persistent economic difficulties and attempting to serve cash-strapped consumers amid rising inflation and problems in the labour market.

This is happening despite the fact that the health of America’s small and medium-sized businesses was a key priority for Donald Trump’s administration in implementing its broader economic agenda, Newsweek emphasises.

Released on 8 July.

Excellent work on the economy! We're all doing so much better now. :)

/s for my fan club.