And in this video, I’m going to show you the one chart that we’re looking at that proves this market has disconnected from reality and what we’re doing about it. And so should you. So let’s go. The economy is crashing, but the markets all-time highs, right? You feel it everywhere. Friends are getting laid off, groceries are costing more every week, credit cards are being maxed out. People are just trying to make it to the end of the month. And meanwhile, Wall Street celebrating new highs, record profits, CNBC is talking about, you know, like everything’s fine.

It doesn’t add up. Every economist out there keeps calling for a crash. Some say worse than 2008. And when you look around, it’s hard not to agree. Because the real economy, the one you and I actually live in, it is breaking apart. You’re watching the middle class get squeezed, harder than ever. And somehow the market keeps celebrating like everything’s fine. And all of the experts keep saying, don’t worry, it’s just noise, but it’s not just noise. It’s the sound of a system splitting into. Here’s what’s really going on. There’s the physical economy.

That’s the world you and I actually live in. And then there’s the financial economy, the world that runs on liquidity, on algorithms and belief. Now, those two used to move together. They used to work together, but now they’re breaking apart. And that disconnect between Main Street and Wall Street, it’s not just a glitch in the system. That’s the final phase of the system. Okay, so let’s start with the world that you actually live in, right? Not the one that CNBC lives in. Because in your world, things feel light. Groceries, right? They cost more credit cards, they are going up, maybe getting maxed out.

It seems like every week, another big company announces layoffs. And yet somehow, as I said earlier, the markets are still at all time highs. Let’s break all this down, because the real economy, the one that you and I live in, is quietly falling apart underneath it, right? You can see it in companies that are supposed to be bulletproof. The ones that make the stuff you buy every week, we call them consumer staples, because they’re staples, because we need them. But look, Clorox is down nearly 40% from its 2022 peak. Kraft Heinz is down 30% just this year.

Procter & Gamble, the definition of a boring, reliable company is down 20%. General Mills has lost more than one third of its value just this year. Now, these aren’t luxury brands, right? They’re not tech companies. They sell soap, cereal, they sell cleaning supplies, like the most essential stuff in your pantry. And if they’re collapsing, it tells you something must be breaking something at the foundation. Now, meanwhile, the American consumer, that’s the engine, the engine that powers the economy, that’s powered the economy for 80 years, they’re completely tapped out. Credit card balances hit a record whopping $1.3 trillion this year.

I mean, that’s not spending on vacations or upgrades. That’s people using plastic just to get by. Now, the average interest rate, over 24%. It’s the highest in history. Delinquencies, they’re now the worst that we’ve seen since 2012. The median checking balance is now down about 40% since 2021. That means savings are gone. That means people are floating their lives on revolving debt. Now, we see the same story with cars. Auto loan delinquencies just hit their highest level since the 2008-2009 crisis. Repossessions, they’re up 20% year over year. The average new car payment is now over $740 a month.

I mean, that’s insane for a car. And when you can’t borrow anymore, what happens? Well, when there’s no more buyers, demand collapses, things go down, right? That’s why we’re seeing layoffs. That’s why we’re seeing it spread everywhere, not just in tech. UPS cut nearly 50,000 jobs. Ford and GM let go of thousands. Starbucks axed 5,000 corporate rules. Target shut down stores. They cut management. Even Amazon. Even Nike are back to efficiency rounds. Now, when companies that depend on everyday spending, when they start cutting workers, it’s because people have stopped buying. Now, real wages, they’re also flat.

The savings rate, it’s near record lows. Mortgage delinquencies are up 20% year over year. Nearly half of renters are now spending over 30% of their income just to keep a roof over their head. I mean, this is part that people on Wall Street don’t want to talk about, right? They don’t want to talk about the physical economy and how it’s actually seizing up. The middle class, they’re the group that used to fuel growth through the spending. They’re now running on fumes. The model that worked from 1950 to 2020, growth through consumption and credit, it’s all breaking down.

The system can’t expand anymore because people holding it up, they’re broke. But yet the markets, they don’t notice. The markets keep going up. So how is this possible? Well, because there’s now two economies. There’s the one that you live in and the one that Wall Street trades on. And only one of them still matters to the system. And this is where the story splits in two. We have the real economy that’s clearly breaking down. And then we have the second economy that looks unstoppable, right? The old rule was, don’t fight the Fed.

The new rule is, don’t fight the narrative. Because that’s exactly what’s running the markets right now. It’s all running on belief. If you just watch the headlines, the S&P 500 looks like it’s booming. But if you pull up the equal weighted version, where each company counts the same, you’re going to see that it’s barely even moved. It’s not 500 companies that are rallying, it’s five. Reuters said it straight. They said, quote, a relatively small number of large stocks are propelling the market, end quote. And those are the AI giants. We’re talking Nvidia, we’re talking Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, Google, Meta, Tesla.

By October, 2023, just seven companies made up about one third of the entire S&P 500. Nvidia alone was close to 8% of the whole index. The largest weight of any company that we’ve ever seen. That means that when Nvidia moves, just say 1%, it can move your entire retirement account. That’s how narrow this really is. And it’s all built around a single idea, artificial intelligence. AI has become the lifeline of the entire market. Every earnings call, every headline, every valuation, every story ties back to AI. Now, at one point this year, roughly half of all S&P 500 gains came from a handful of AI linked names.

Half, not 75, not 60, half. I mean, that’s massive for an index that size. And here’s the wild part. AI isn’t just a story. It’s becoming the new stimulus. Total capital spending for S&P companies hit around 1.2 trillion this year. The highest since records began back in the 90s. Almost a third of that is coming from the same nine companies building AI infrastructure. So even when consumer demand is flat, corporate investment in AI keeps GDP expectations alive. That’s why valuations stay up. Not because of today’s profits, but because of tomorrow’s hope.

You see, Wall Street isn’t trading reality anymore. It’s trading belief. The index isn’t pricing current demand. It’s pricing a story about future productivity. Capital doesn’t need consumers right now. It needs conviction. It needs belief. As long as investors believe that AI is the future, then money’s going to keep flowing in, even while the real economy struggles to breathe. That’s the synthetic economy. It’s not driven by spending. It’s not driven by production anymore. It’s driven by story. And for now, that story’s powerful. It’s powerful enough to keep the whole illusion alive, but stories can only sustain belief for so long.

But what happens when that belief turns into policy? What happens when markets stop being free and become fully fiat? Well, for 80 years, the formula was simple. You go to work, you earn money, you spend it, and that spending drives the production, which then creates profits and markets, consumption powered growth. But now the whole sequence has completely flipped. Just in October, the Fed didn’t just cut rates again. They also hit pause on quantitative tightening. That’s central bank code for we’re not going to drain liquidity anymore. And liquidity is what lifts the asset prices.

The BIS even said that global financial conditions eased this summer because equities went up and credit spreads tightened. In other words, the markets themselves become the stimulus. We’re now in a loop where bad news means more cuts, more liquidity, and then higher prices. So bad news is kind of good news. Weak jobs data, market rallies, slowing economy, more easing. Every data miss just feeds the next leg higher. That’s the inversion that we’re seeing. The economy used to drive the markets, now the markets drive the economy. Today, corporations are the biggest buyer of their own stock.

About a trillion dollars in buybacks just this year alone. Not consumers, not foreign investors, companies using cheap capital to push their own stock prices higher. Now, the Fed provides the liquidity. Wall Street channels it through corporate balance sheets and stock prices keep going up. Even the central bank’s researchers admitted the programs like the bank term funding program lowered perceived bank risk. It was never about fixing the system. It was never about fixing the fundamentals. It was about protecting consumer confidence in the story, in the belief, because belief itself is now the policy tool.

Today, just seven companies control more than 30% of the entire S&P 500. And analysts keep raising their year end targets because of AI enthusiasm and easing Fed policy. Again, it’s not earnings doing this. It’s narrative. This is the new model. Belief, liquidity, markets, and production. That’s why I call it a fiat market. Because just like our money, it’s backed by confidence, not collateral. As long as the story holds, the system stays alive, which is why I’ve been making video after video for the last at least several years warning. The danger now isn’t a crash down.

It’s not a deflationary crash that most people are thinking of, but rather it’s a crash up. Too much liquidity, chasing too little substance. We have basically capital flooding in into the last narrative standing. And while everyone keeps waiting for the crash, the crash down, what we’re getting is the crash up. It’s the grand finale of the belief era. Because when you look at what’s actually happening right now, the Fed’s cutting rates, they’re halting QT. Liquidity is flooding back in, and we have trillions of dollars and buybacks happening. So it’s hard enough to see where this goes next.

The same forces that inflated the bubble, they’re now trying to keep the bubble alive. And when a system runs on belief and liquidity, the end never comes as a crash down. But this isn’t some magical fairy tale ending. Let’s be clear about this. This thing has two failure points. First, there’s a liquidity crisis that could potentially happen. If the Fed decides to pull the liquidity away, then the engine starts to sputter out. We just saw how fragile it is. The Fed had to pause its balance sheet runoff to stop liquidity from evaporating.

The BIS even said, the market itself has become the transmission mechanism. The second risk is the belief crisis. If the AI narrative cracks, capital will fall back to reality really fast. Now the Mag7, they control 30% of the S&P 500. That’s highly concentrated. We haven’t seen that since the dot com era. Analysts literally raised their 2025 targets to 6400, 6500, just on AI optimism alone. But if the story breaks, if AI earnings disappoint, or if productivity promise fades, doesn’t materialize, the entire layer of belief collapses. But before either of those failures hit, we’re likely to see at least one last surge, in my opinion.

Some may call it a melt up, I call it a crash up. Either way, we can see it right now. Liquidity is rushing back in, buybacks are running at 1.1 trillion, the risk appetite is completely exploding. We just saw nearly 6 billion pour into crypto ETFs in a single week. Right, this is how late cycles behave. Policy loosens, flows accelerate, the leaders drag the index higher, and everyone pretends it’s a new boom. This is the window of opportunity. And the thing is, the winners won’t be the ones that are fighting the system.

They’re going to be the ones who understand its fiat, and they’re going to position themselves outside of it. Because the fiat market runs on faith. Bitcoin, it runs on proof. Bitcoin supply, it doesn’t change because of a median in DC, right? It’s fixed. 21 million coins, locked by code. And the hash rate, the hash power, the mining power, real world energy securing it, and it’s at an all time record high, right? That’s why it matters. It’s not a story, it’s not a narrative, it’s backed by math. While the belief economy melts up, I’m looking towards the next system, right? The one that’s built on proof, not promises.

Because every time a fiat system ends, a new base layer rises from the ashes. And this time, the base layer is Bitcoin. Okay, so here’s where we’re at. The economy is weak, the markets detached, and the system’s running on fumes of belief and liquidity. That’s the bad news. The good news is that you know it, right? The good news is that you know it and it gives you a massive edge, right? You don’t have to guess when it ends. You just need to understand how it works. You have to position yourself outside of the fiat loop before it breaks.

Because what comes next isn’t another cycle, it’s the reset. And the people who prepare now are going to be the ones who own the next system. And because nobody knows exactly when this crash up ends, or how the reset actually plays out, it’s super important that you have a system that works in both directions. Crash up, crash down, you don’t have to care. That’s why I built something called the crash proof income map. It’s simple. It’s a 1040-4010 blueprint that shows you how to automate your money flows, how to protect your income, how to keep stacking real assets, even when the markets go crazy.

It’s an interactive guide. It’s completely free. It’s my gift to you. It takes about an hour to set up. And this is how you get off the roller coaster and build a wealth engine that runs on proof, not belief. So you can download it down below. I’ll put a link in the description down below or put a QR code up on the screen right here. Start building your crash proof system today because the next era, it won’t reward people who predict the markets. It’s going to reward the ones who are ready for anything.

And the crash proof income map will make sure you’re ready. And it’s my free gift to you. So go ahead and grab it right now. And if you want to see why I do believe there’s a once-in-a-lifetime crash coming worse than 2008, different than what most people think, watch this video right here. And I’ll
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See more of Mark Moss on their Public Channel and the MPN Mark Moss channel.