Those with the money to invest are now gambling. The rest, and an ever growing majority are trying to find the cash to eat.

Clocks ticking, and the ruling class know this.

Greed and corruption are the final signals, those these aren't typically as easy to quantify and therefore don't make traditional markers.

Corruption is growing in Europe, as per Corruption Perceptions Index.

Meanwhile the S&P 500 grew another 20 points last year.

The other markers:

- High unemployment: that seems to be coming if it isn't already here according to Politico.

- Business spending: huge investment into AI yes, but is consumer appetite there? Doubt

- Inflation: recently at record levels

The more traditional markers are there too: US treasury bonds are beginning to invert.

This is when short-term bond yields grow faster than longer-term ones.

An inverted yield curve has preceded every major economic crash in history.

This is big.

That banks are in a new wave of buying it up is even more concerning.

This is the CDO moment of 2008: they've juiced the lemon to it's pips and made billions on the lemonade.

Only problem? There's no lemons left and the lemonade is just too sweet to stop.

But yet buy into it with the hope that it's their turn next.

This can only last so long.

The rise of shitcoins - and the millions being made and lost on garbage like HawkTuah coin - are emblematic of a crumbling social fabric: people gambling their earnings on non-existent entities.

Typically the death days of the economy are spent with the glass not just full, but overflowing.

Bubbles build through bullish investing. They burst with ignorance and ego.

Which takes us to story 3: crypto.

The crypto rally is an emblem of modern finance consumption: a product few understand

US and UK employment data is being propped up by the gig-economy.

If job cuts continue apace, it's hard to see how this doesn't end in economic turmoil.

What are the markers for a financial and economic crash? Well...

Public confidence in the economy is often as important as what Govt data says, given its impact on spending, investing recruiting etc.

Trump's election was predicated on very real fears of a US in decline.

New Politico analysis shows the public sentiment seems sound.

This excerpt will shock:

Little surprise that with low/no growth Britain, job losses are coming.

But I think the reality is much, much worse than where the current sentiment is at.

Job demand is at 5 year low... since the pandemic. Where America goes, Britain soon follows, which begs the question. Where is the US at now?

I think beneath the wider capital consolidation that explains why Zuck, Pichai, Bezos have shifted so quickly to Trump and the far right is recession-proofing.

They know their empires are flimsier than meets the eye, so getting within Trump's strangle grip on the New America may save them

Meta layoffs are curious. Feels as much ideological as it is strategic.

Musk set a blueprint for the Technogarchs when he fired most Twitter employees: slash and still survive.

Given what we've seen from Meta, Google etc and their shifts toward final form fascism recently, it might be. BUT...

Ignoring the top story - another Musk move to buy, not build something he hopes will make him look cool to biggest losers on the planet - though it remains vitally prescient to the current climate.

The rest are the Western economies' champagne flutes cracking under the weight of their emptiness