“When an entire economy starts sounding like a late-night infomercial, it’s probably time to count the silverware.”
Let’s take a moment to appreciate one of the greatest magic tricks ever performed in broad daylight.
Not Houdini.
Not David Copperfield.
Not the guy who convinced America that kale was food.
I’m talking about Elon Reeves Musk and what critics describe as the creation of the world’s first overnight trillionaire.
And here’s the fun part.
You paid for a ticket.
Maybe you didn’t mean to.
Maybe you were simply putting a few dollars into an IRA, pension fund, retirement account, index fund, or whatever financial sock drawer currently contains your hopes for old age.
Doesn’t matter.
You’re in the audience now.
While Washington spent years stomping around the federal government with chainsaws, flamethrowers, PowerPoint presentations, and solemn speeches about waste, fraud, and efficiency, the national debt kept swelling like a tick at an all-you-can-eat blood buffet.
Trillions upon trillions of dollars. We're talking an increase of 36% over the last two years. That means you now owe $112,000.
Numbers so large they stop being mathematics and start becoming weather patterns.
The kind of numbers that cause economists to speak in tongues and cause ordinary citizens to stare blankly into the distance like golden retrievers being introduced to quantum physics.
Here’s the basic game:
Washington spends more than it collects.
Washington borrows.
Washington sells debt.
Someone eventually owns that debt.
Someone eventually pays for it.
Spoiler alert.
It’s rarely the billionaire arriving in a private jet carrying enough accountants to invade Belgium.
Your share of government debt may contain:
✓ Interest payments
✓ Future taxes
✓ Inflation
✓ Politicians explaining why none of this is their fault
Every generation invents a fresh way to separate ordinary people from their money while assuring them they’re participating in the dawn of a glorious new civilization.
The Dutch had tulips.
The Roaring Twenties had stocks.
The dot-com crowd bought companies whose primary assets consisted of a logo, a website, and a receptionist named Tiffany.
Now we’ve got Artificial Intelligence.
Silicon Valley, Wall Street, and Washington have squeezed themselves into the same clown car and are racing down the highway screaming “AI!” like they’ve discovered immortality, cold fusion, and a cure for baldness on the same weekend.
The sales pitch is magnificent.
AI will replace workers.
Transform medicine.
Rewrite education.
Drive your car.
Write your screenplay.
Walk your dog.
Raise your children.
Balance your budget.
And eventually, if the marketing departments are to be believed, tuck you into bed while reading motivational affirmations generated by another chatbot.
The only problem?
Reality keeps showing up drunk.
Reality kicks over the projector.
Reality throws up in the punch bowl.
Reality asks rude questions.
Questions like:
“Where’s the profit?”
“Who’s actually making money?”
And the most dangerous question in modern finance:
“Is this thing worth what you’re saying it’s worth?”
“A bubble is what happens when optimism gets drunk and steals a calculator.”
Meanwhile corporations are building data centers so large they look like somebody dropped a shopping mall on top of a nuclear power plant.
Investors are throwing cash around like drunken sailors who just discovered cocaine and inheritance money during the same afternoon.
Analysts are producing projections that read less like financial research and more like fan fiction written by a twelve-year-old locked overnight inside a Tesla showroom.
And still the machine demands more.
More money.
More headlines.
More excitement.
More believers.
Not investors.
Believers.
Digital pilgrims.
Spreadsheet shamans.
Tech cultists.
People willing to watch a chatbot confidently invent facts, fabricate court cases, and hallucinate like a three-toed lemur trapped inside a pharmacy, then conclude they’ve witnessed the birth of a silicon messiah.
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And then we arrive at SpaceX.
The crown jewel.
The golden goose.
The rocket-powered cash cannon.
The financial equivalent of a monster truck fueled entirely by venture capital and Red Bull.
According to critics, SpaceX has become the ultimate symbol of our age: a company valued not merely for what it earns today but for every dream, projection, fantasy, science-fiction screenplay, and Mars colony investors can imagine over the next twenty years.
The numbers are cartoonishly large.
Valuations measured in trillions.
Capital raises measured in tens of billions.
Numbers so absurd that calculators should come bundled with emotional-support animals.
Maybe the company grows into every penny.
Maybe Mars becomes Miami with fewer beaches.
Maybe your grandchildren commute to Jupiter.
Anything’s possible.
But skeptics look at today’s valuations and see a lemonade stand being valued like an interplanetary empire because one day it might sell lemonade on the Moon.
Normal Business
Makes lemonade.
Sells lemonade.
Earns profit.
Worth money.
Modern Speculative Business
Loses money on lemonade.
Promises Moon lemonade.
Receives trillion-dollar valuation.
Wins CNBC interview.
Here’s where things get weird.
Retirement funds.
Pensions.
Index funds.
Banks.
Brokerages.
Fund managers.
Technology companies.
Consultants.
Regulators.
Everyone increasingly tied together like contestants in the world’s largest three-legged race being held on an active volcano.
The technology may prove revolutionary.
Some companies may thrive.
Some innovations may genuinely change lives.
But the hype has become so grotesquely overfed that it now waddles across the economy like a six-thousand-pound prize hog wearing designer sneakers, a TED Talk headset, and a badge identifying itself as a “thought leader.”
And Washington?
Washington looked at this carnival ride held together with duct tape, caffeine, ambition, and investment-bank nostalgia and apparently decided the safest course of action was to sell more tickets.
Because if there’s one lesson government never fails to learn, it’s that when a roller coaster starts rattling violently, the correct response is obviously to load another bus full of retirees into the front seat.
THE ROCKET WASN’T THE PRODUCT.
YOU WERE.
Meanwhile debt piles higher.
Wars simmer.
Markets wobble.
And the people allegedly steering the bus appear less interested in driving than in arguing over who gets naming rights to the crater.
Maybe the boom continues.
Maybe it explodes next month.
Maybe it survives another decade.
History is filled with speculative manias that lasted far longer than common sense suggested they should.
But one lesson never changes.
When the entire economy starts sounding like a late-night infomercial hosted by a man selling miracle testosterone powder from the trunk of a rented Lamborghini, it’s probably worth checking whether your retirement account has quietly wandered onto the stage.
Because every bubble has visionaries.
Every bubble has prophets.
Every bubble has geniuses.
And every bubble eventually discovers who was left holding the bag.
The only remaining question is whether it’ll be a hedge fund manager, a pension fund, or the guy eating gas-station nachos at two in the morning wondering why every economic miracle somehow ends with the public picking up the tab.
Are we witnessing:
☐ The next industrial revolution
☐ The next dot-com bubble
☐ The largest game of financial hot potato in modern history
☐ Something even stranger
Choose wisely.
History will grade on a curve.
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The Cary Harrison Files — KPFK 90.7 FM Los Angeles/ Pacifica Radio Network. More at caryharrison.com, Instagram: RealCaryHarrison or youtube: @CaryHarrison · Text or message us any time: 310-737-TALK
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