The elephant in the room isn’t hiding. Nobody trusts fiat money anymore. You can see it everywhere if you stop listening to the TV. Cash allocations for institutional investors are down to 3.8 percent, the lowest in 12 years. That is not random. That is a signal. Everyone is moving, shifting. Stocks at record highs, gold piling up, crypto wallets swelling. People are scrambling to anything that actually holds value.
The Fed isn’t in control. They never were, maybe. Independence is just a story we tell ourselves. Rate cuts are coming while stagflation eats budgets alive. Global debt jumped $14 trillion in one quarter, $337.7 trillion now. Every single one percent in rates adds three point $3 trillion in interest. That is insane. That is enough to break cities if they try to pay it with normal budgets. And yet they talk about “volatility” like it is a weather report.
Pensions are a mess. One point $2 trillion funding gap in the US. One mistake, one slow quarter, and retirees are the ones left with empty plates. This is structural. Cash yields five percent on paper, but real returns are negative once you factor in debt and credit stress. Every dollar you keep in the bank is quietly shrinking. Liquidity is no longer real savings. It is credit pretending to be money.
Look at AI. Corporations pouring hundreds of billions into it. Governments lining up to join the arms race. That money has to come from somewhere. Printed money. Endless. People who get this are moving into assets. Gold, crypto, AI equities. These aren’t bets. They are survival. Collateral migration. People abandoning faith in fiat and moving to things that actually hold up.
We are past inflation, past deflation. This is entropy. Money decays because trust decays. That is the only yield left. Policy is reactive, not proactive. Bonds are the real central bank now. The Fed is absorbed into fiscal dominance. Capital votes with its feet and it is walking out of cash. The system reacts too late, every rate cut just makes the cracks wider.
Most people act like nothing is happening. Like the system is solid. Economists nod and smile. Talking heads repeat the same phrases. They don’t get it. They never did. While the media distracts, the real moves are in vaults, wallets, and data centers. Every policy, every fiscal handout, every rate change is reshaping trust, not money.
This is human. Numbers tell one story but the real impact hits in kitchens and offices and empty bank accounts. Your paycheck buys less, pensions are underfunded, savings accounts are relics. And still, people pretend stability is normal. They are wrong. Trust is the only currency that matters now, and it is slipping through our fingers faster than anyone will admit.