Is the US really experiencing growth right now ? We’re witnessing record highs across almost every market, yet real prosperity keeps eroding for most Americans. What does this contradiction reveal ? Debt has exploded by $10 trillion in less than five years, while the Fed’s reserves have collapsed to historic lows. The economy looks exuberant only because the measuring stick (the dollar) is shrinking faster than the economy itself. To see through this illusion, look at the SPX/WTI ratio. It compares our ability to transform present energy (oil, the cost of energy) into future energy (stocks, a claim on future production). Each time this ratio falls, an economic contraction follows. It’s falling again. In other words, we’re becoming less efficient at turning energy into wealth. At its core, an economy is nothing more than the transformation of energy into useful output. We extract, process, and build by converting energy (through people or machines) into something of higher value. Growth means increasing that efficiency : producing more with the same energy. But when asset prices rise simply because the currency loses value, we aren’t growing, we’re just inflating. That’s why comparing stocks to oil, rather than dollars, matters. The S&P 500 priced in USD will always drift upward if the currency is debased. But measured against oil, the truth surfaces : despite record valuations, the economy is deteriorating in its capacity to produce real output per unit of energy consumed. And notice what drives this so-called boom : 10 companies now account for more than 40% of the S&P’s weight. These firms feed off each other’s valuations : Nvidia finances OpenAI, OpenAI buys Nvidia chips, Oracle rents them servers, AMD supplies GPUs. Each announces billions in new “investment,” but little tangible value emerges. It’s an echo chamber of capital recycling dressed as growth, typical of the late-stage theatre of an economy that can no longer support its hubris. As I wrote in The Inflation Guillotine (open.substack.com/pub/macrom…), the US today isn’t expanding, it’s cannibalising its future to sustain the illusion of strength. The numbers rise because the foundation weakens.

What an excellent way to use AI! We forget that before Henry Ford brought the Model T to market in 1908 well over 500 car companies had sprung up in America alone, making somewhere in the range of 2000 to 3000 distinct models of vehicles. It was the Wild West days of the automotive industry and it was anyone's guess who would come out on top. It's exactly the same today in robotics. Seemingly every day a new robotics company is announced with a promise or with a prototype. The variety is huge and the field is wide open. I believe that the Steel Bot robot has just the right mix of features and performance specifications to be widely useful and to dominate in the market. I'm working with all my being to bring it to fruition.

Many will misinterpret this chart. It doesn't show a decline in the dollar amount in reserves. What it shows is that gold reserves have increased so much in value (bc of the gold price) that the relative share of dollar declined.

Migrating this into a full fledged website with live updating data, analysis and much more. This means I won't make it public by the end of the month since it will take more time to build. Nonetheless, I'll post a light notion version with a couple of FX analysis for July.