Posted originally on Jan 26, 2026 by Martin Armstrong |
A report cited by VICEsays the U.S. death rate is expected to surpass the birth rate by 2030, meaning population growth would be driven primarily by immigration rather than natural increase. This is exactly the kind of story the press will sensationalize while completely ignoring the real cause: the collapse in economic confidence and the destruction of incentives to build a future.
This is consistent with the Congressional Budget Office’s projection that without immigration, the U.S. would begin shrinking around 2030 because deaths exceed births. It is an economic issue. You do not have children when you do not believe the system has a future. You do not create a family when you cannot buy a home, when taxes rise, when healthcare becomes out of reach, and childcare costs exceed disposable income.
The entire Western world is staring at the same demographic wall. Japan is already there. Europe is racing toward it. Now the United States is moving into that same trap because the cost of living has outpaced wages, the future has been mortgaged to pay for endless government promises, and the younger generation is being told to “save the planet” while the politicians fly private jets and demand you eat bugs.
An aging population means fewer workers supporting more retirees. That puts enormous strain on Social Security and Medicare, which are already unstable mathematically. The Associated Press has also covered this aging trend, noting the demographic pressure building as baby boomers move deeper into retirement and birth rates remain below replacement.
The government’s answer will not be reform. The government’s answer will be to tax whoever is still productive and import labor to keep the machine running. This is also why immigration becomes such a political weapon. Both sides need a continual flow of taxable bodies to maintain the government’s Ponzi scheme. That’s why you see the push for wealth taxes, unrealized gains taxes, digital IDs, CBDCs, bank reporting rules, and restrictions — it’s all about controlling capital as confidence fades.
Deaths surpassing births by 2030 will not mark the end of America. Every advanced nation is facing the same predicament. It is the Economic Confidence Model unfolding—why procreate when you have no confidence in the future of your offspring?
Posted originally on Jan 25, 2026 by Martin Armstrong |
QUESTION: Mr. Armstrong, I am new to Socrates. Everyone told me you have done more research and have real-world experience unmatched in the finance world. Your post on silver and the long-term blew my mind. Nobody has ever explained the real history of silver and confiscations. Is this why you have been saying ‘by silver dollars and coins’ rather than ‘by silver bars’?
OP
ANSWER: Yes. I look to see what governments have done before because they inevitably will repeat the same actions. But what is even more important is that 99% of the analysis and economic theories are always domestically oriented. They never seem to look at the world as a whole. This is why these theories like Keynesianism are failing today. History REPEATS because governments will always act in their own self-interest today as they did in ancient times.
Posted originally on Jan 25, 2026 by Martin Armstrong |
The single most dangerous lie in modern economics is the Random Walk Theory. It’s taught in every major university to support government intervention and manipulation of society. It’s the foundation of the Efficient Market Hypothesis. Nobel Prizes have been awarded for proving that markets are unpredictable, random, and impossible to forecast.
Random Walk Theory persists because it justifies the existence of central government manipulation, academic economists, and financial intermediaries who would be threatened by predictable markets. If the markets are NOT random, then government cannot intervene and manipulate them.
It’s also completely, demonstrably, mathematically that Random Walk Theory is WRONG. Let me be clear about what the Random Walk Theory claims: that market prices move randomly, that past movements cannot predict future movements, that forecasting is impossible because each price change is independent of the last. This theory holds that predicting markets is like predicting a coin flip—pure chance.
Eugene Fama (born 1939) won a Nobel Prize in 2013 for the Efficient Market Hypothesis, which holds that markets instantly incorporate all available information, rendering prediction impossible. Yet here’s the problem: If markets were truly random, civilization couldn’t exist.
Civilization requires predictability and cooperation — If everything, including markets, were truly random, planning, investment, agriculture, trade, and long-term projects would be impossible. Society expects that effort leads to reasonably predictable outcomes.
The 1987 Crash proved the Efficient Market Hypothesis completely wrong.These theories have been proposed by people who were never traders. Markets sometimes moves on anticipation and rumor that can be completely erroneous. Julius Caesar was correct. People will believe what they want to believe. That is NOT related to fact. As I have stated before, I was called into the Presidential Commission because we had not only forecast the Crash to the day, but that the market would make new highs by 1989.
Indeed, that forecast not only forecast the crash to the day which was the ECM turning point precisely, but as you can see, the forecast that the low was in place and new highs would be made by 1989 proved to be absolutely correct.
The forecasts followed the ECM wave perfectly. The 1989.95 turning point then picked the high in the Japanese market and the subsequent crash. But it also forecast the end of Communism.
Following the 1987 Crash, 99% of the analysts were predicting a Great Depression. A group of 33 eminent economists from various nations met in Washington, D.C. in December 1987, and concluded “the next few years could be the most troubled since the 1930s”, as reported by the New York Times; “Group of 7, Meet the Group of 33” (12/26/1987). Nonetheless, because this was currency driven, it was clearly not a domestic event as most analysts and economists predicted. That proved to be the actual low and from there the market based, then began to rise to new highs. Our model beat all the economic and market forecasters.
I kept the staff late that night because I was requested to get a report on the President’s desk FORTHWITH with advice was this going to be a Great Depression. The popular theme was blaming computer trading for the ’87 Crash. Others blamed the futures markets which just began trading the S&P 500 in 1985. Economists claimed the internal reasons included innovations with index futures, hedging using portfolio insurance, and program trading. But many of the computers were correct and said sell. The portfolio managers however did not sell assuming there had to be a rebound.
Clearly, the selling began overseas and that contradicts the argument that program trading was to blame as was the fact that Efficient Market Hypothesis was nonsense. The evidence that surfaced from interviewing fund managers who were all selling was revealing. When they called the floor and asked why were people selling, nobody knew because there were no domestic number or events that took place. Even during the Great Depression, there was an assumption the market went down because of short-selling.
They hauled everyone before the Senate and interrogated them. They never found that mythical huge short seller. Likewise, they never found any program trading strategies that were used primarily in the United States that set anything in motion in 1987. This boiled down to the simple fact that when everyone is long, scare them and you flip the herd into a stampede of all sellers with no bid.
Sorry, but any programmer knows it is impossible to create a random number generator. This is the daily closing of the Dow between 1918-1991. This is by no means random. It forms diistinct patterns.
Indeed, the 20th century will be remembered for four scientific revolutions–Relativity, Quantum Mechanics, Chaos and Fractal Geometry. The Father of Chaos Theory is Edward Norton Lorenz (1917–2008) who was an American mathematician and meteorologist. Lorenz was certainly THE pioneer in Chaos Theory. A professor at MIT, Lorenz was the first to recognize what is now called chaotic behavior in the mathematical modeling of weather systems.
During the 1950s, Lorenz observed that there was a cyclical non-linear nature to weather yet the field relied upon linear statistical models in meteorology to do weather forecasting. It was like trying to measure the circumference of a circle with a straight edge ruler. His work on the topic culminated in the publication of his 1963 paper Deterministic Non-periodic Flow in the Journal of the Atmospheric Sciences, and with it, the foundation of chaos theory. During the early 1960s, Lorenz had access to early computers. He was running what he thought would be random numbers and began to observe there was a duality of a hidden repetitive nature. He graphed the numbers that were derived from his study of convection rolls in the atmosphere. What emerged has been perhaps one of the most important discoveries in modern time.
This illustration of the Lorenz Strange Attractor, is incredibly important and was first reported in 1963. Lorenz’s discovery of a strange attractor was made during an attempt to create a model of weather patterns. The actual experiment was an attempt to model atmospheric dynamics of the planet. It involved a truncated model of the Navier-Stokes equations. It is a visual example of a non-linear dynamic system corresponding to the long-term behavior in a cyclical manner revealing a hidden order we cannot otherwise observe.
The Lorenz Strange Attractor is a 3-dimensional dynamical system that exhibits chaotic flow, noted for its interesting shape revolving around two invisible strange points in space-time we call Strange Attractors. The map shows how the state of a dynamical system with three variables of a three-dimensional system evolves over the fourth dimension time in a complex, yet non-repeating pattern. In other words, here is a visualization of duality – what appears to be randomness (chaos) yet simultaneously there is a broader clear pattern of order. The same identical structure appears in light where it is both a wave form and particle, as we see in the economy where we retain our individuality yet at the same time we are part of a broader collective pattern. This is the very essence of the Invisible Hand – or in Lorenz terms, a Strange Attractor.
Therefore, Chaos theory is a field of study in mathematics, with applications in several disciplines including meteorology, physics, engineering, economics, biology, and philosophy. Chaos theory investigates the behavior of dynamical systems that are highly sensitive to initial conditions and subtle changes in the input can created drastic alternative in the outcome. This has been explained as the “effect” which is popularly referred to as the butterfly effect. Slight differences in initial conditions yield widely diverging outcomes for such dynamical systems, rendering long-term prediction impossible in general without comprehending dynamic analysis that is cyclical based.
This chaos that appears is complex, yet it masks a hidden order beneath. The complexity of variables creates the illusion that these systems are unpredictable yet they can be extremely deterministic when viewed correctly. The future behavior of such systems is entirely determined by their initial conditions, with no random elements involved whatsoever. In other words, the deterministic nature of these systems allows them to be predictable when approached objectively by a computer eliminating the randomness of human judgment. This type of behavior is best described as Deterministic Chaos.
This fascinating dimension was summarized by Edward Lorenz as follows:
“Chaos: When the present determines the future, but the approximate present does not approximately determine the future.”
This extraordinary complexity of that created the surface impression of chaos, hides amazing order hidden below. This Chaotic Behavior can be observed in many natural systems, from such things as weather to economics. Our problem has been mankind’s attempt to reduce everything he sees to simple minded one-dimensional cause and effect. This type of explanation of such behavior has restrained our ability to move forward in many fields, the least of which is not social-science that includes economics.
Deterministic Chaos may be the key to everything for within both nature and our social world, we are surrounded with complexity yet we try to rationalize everything to a single dimension unable to cope with the dynamics of the world in which we live. Sorry, just sometimes there are more than one variable.
COMMENT: Marty, you are not the only one who can’t beat Socrates. Every time I swore the high was in place, Socrates said no, he won, I lost. A close friend of mine who works at one of the major investment banks told me that Wall Street has tried to fight you, and you usually win. Socrates is the only model that can adapt to a parabolic move that nobody has ever seen. Thank you for opening Socrates to the world. That has been your greatest revenge.
Darrell
REPLY: Even a former employee said that when he inquired about me with Goldman Sachs. Look, first of all, I spent tens of millions in gathering data. I had a team at the Royal Newspaper Library in London recording all the foreign exchange data that nobody has.
Here is the British pound against the US dollar from 1789. The computer has a database that is UNPARALLELED. I have recreated the entire world monetary system going back thousands of years.
To understand the Panic of 1899 who most people never heard of, US interest rates nearly hit 200% on the NYSE. To comprehend that, it required a global database because the Panic was the result of actions by the Bank of England.
The reason 99.9% of the standard economic theories are failing is because they are ALL domestic oriented. That is because academics promote government intervention to eliminate the business cycle. Wesley Mitchell and Karl Marx both agreed that capitalism was indeed inherently unstable. They both did not like the business cycle. Keynes provided the theoretical justification for aggressive, discretionary fiscal policy (deficit spending) to directly manage aggregate demand during a economic recession/slump. It was a powerful macroeconomic lever, not just gradual reform. It justified socialism.
The explosive move in precious metals we are witnessing is not merely another bull market rally. Gold reaching $4991.4 and silver clearing $103.53 represents a fundamental breakdown in confidence in the world monetary system that has been building since the 2008 financial crisis. This is the market screaming that the debt spiral has reached terminal velocity intermixed with war that is likely to push the euro off the edge and we see the signs of stress in Japan as well.
We are entering this first quarter of 2026 as a Perfect Financial Storm. Those in power will only act in their own self-interest. They are not interested in their own countries no less even considering reform.
I assume that readers have been writing to Trump and other heads of state because this just came in the mail and I did NOT write to Trump recently. Trump should invoke Article 5 and compel NATO to come protect the US border and see if they show up. NATO is a one-sided arrangement. Nevertheless, the computer DOES NOT like what it sees into early February. I will be doing an extensive update on the precious metals for the private blog tomorrow.
Posted originally on Jan 24, 2026 by Martin Armstrong |
The United States Withdrawal from the World Health Organization: A Cyclical Analysis of Sovereignty and Global Health Governance
January 23, 2026
The Trump administration’s decision to withdraw the United States from the World Health Organization represents far more than a simple policy shift. This marks a critical inflection point in the post-World War II international order, one that follows predictable cyclical patterns we have observed throughout history when nations reassert sovereignty against supranational institutions that have overreached their original mandates.
The Historical Context
The WHO was established in 1948 during the reconstruction period following World War II, part of the broader Bretton Woods architecture designed to prevent future global conflicts through international cooperation. For 76 years, the United States served as the organization’s largest financial contributor, providing approximately 16% of its total budget when combining assessed contributions and voluntary funding. This amounts to roughly $1.3 billion annually in recent years.
However, the relationship has deteriorated along a predictable timeline. The first withdrawal announcement came during Trump’s initial term in 2020, following the COVID-19 pandemic’s emergence. That was 51.6-years conclusion from its birth April 7th, 1948. That decision was reversed by the Biden administration in 2021. The current withdrawal, formalized through executive action in January 2025, follows the same 51.6-year cycle we observe in shifts between nationalist and globalist governance models.
The WHO declared COVID-19 a global pandemic. This was a call to action, not a declaration for lockdowns. In March 2020, the WHO advised countries to take urgent and aggressive action. A key phrase used by WHO officials was that countries should go on a “war footing” and that the goal was to “flatten the curve.”
The WHO’s primary recommendation was for a comprehensive package of public health measures, including testing, contact tracing, and isolating cases. Physical distancing, a term they preferred over “social distancing,” to reduce transmission where the virus was spreading uncontrollably. That was absurd and void of science. They claimed this would protect health systems from being overwhelmed.
Crucially, the WHO often framed widespread “lockdowns” (stay-at-home orders, business closures) for when transmission was out of control and other measures failed. They emphasized that lockdowns should be used to buy time to set up stronger testing, tracing, and healthcare systems. The specific decision to implement a full lockdown, including its timing and severity, was made entirely by national and local governments. This is what caused massive economic destruction.
On Mass Vaccination, December 31, 2020 was the key date. The WHO issued its first Emergency Use Listing (EUL) for the Pfizer/BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine. This was a regulatory step to validate the vaccine’s safety and efficacy for global use, enabling distribution to countries without strong regulatory agencies. The was total BS and nobody has looked at bribery now that we know the vaccines were neither safe nor effective.
The WHO, along with partners like Gavi and CEPI, set up the COVAX Facility, which was their Strategic Goal (Late 2020/Early 2021):. Its goal was to ensure global, equitable access to vaccines, with an initial target of vaccinating the most vulnerable 20% of every country’s population at tremendous profit to Bill Gate, et el.
The WHO strongly advocated for the rapid and equitable rollout of vaccines as the primary tool to end the acute phase of the pandemic. They issued guidance on prioritization (health workers and high-risk groups first) and later on booster doses.
The Sovereignty Cycle
What we are witnessing aligns with historical patterns of nations reclaiming authority from international bodies when those institutions are perceived to have exceeded their technical mandates and entered political domains. The WHO’s handling of the COVID-19 pandemic, particularly its initial deference to Chinese government narratives in early 2020, created a crisis of confidence that has proven insurmountable.
The core grievances driving this withdrawal include:
The United States contributed disproportionately while possessing voting power equivalent to smaller nations. This economic reality became politically untenable when Americans questioned the return on investment during a crisis that originated in Wuhan.
The organization’s relationship with Beijing, including praise for China’s pandemic response despite evidence of initial cover-ups, damaged credibility among Western powers. This follows the pattern we see whenever international institutions become captured by specific national interests.
Proposed pandemic treaty provisions that would have granted WHO officials greater authority during health emergencies rising to the level of a dictatorship triggered constitutional concerns about delegating emergency powers to unelected international bureaucrats.
The Economic Implications
The immediate financial impact on WHO will be severe. Losing 16% of operational funding creates an organizational crisis that will force prioritization of core functions over peripheral programs. This will likely accelerate a shift toward programs funded primarily by China and European nations, fundamentally altering the institution’s character.
For the United States, the $1.3 billion in annual savings represents a trivial fraction of the $6.8 trillion federal budget, but the symbolic value is enormous. This money will theoretically be redirected toward bilateral health partnerships and domestic public health infrastructure, though government efficiency rarely works so cleanly.
The Geopolitical Realignment
This withdrawal accelerates the bifurcation of global health governance into competing spheres of influence. China will inevitably expand its role within WHO, using health diplomacy as another tool of influence across developing nations, particularly in Africa and Southeast Asia. The Belt and Road Initiative already incorporates health infrastructure; WHO alignment provides multilateral legitimacy to these bilateral arrangements.
Europe faces an uncomfortable choice. France and Germany have criticized the American withdrawal while simultaneously acknowledging WHO’s structural problems. They lack the financial capacity to replace American contributions without politically difficult budget reallocations. This forces European powers to either accept diminished WHO capabilities or increase contributions at a time when domestic budgets face unprecedented pressures.
The power vacuum in global health governance will not remain empty. Nature abhors a vacuum, and so does geopolitics. Regional health organizations will gain prominence—the African CDC, Pan American Health Organization, and similar bodies. This fragmentation may actually improve responsiveness to regional needs, though it complicates coordination during truly global health emergencies.
The Pandemic Preparedness Question
The central question is whether centralized global health governance actually improves pandemic outcomes. The evidence from COVID-19 is mixed at best. Nations that ignored WHO guidance initially—Taiwan, for instance—often fared better than those that followed it religiously. This suggests that rigid international protocols can become obstacles rather than solutions during rapidly evolving crises.
Decentralization creates redundancy, which engineers recognize as essential for system resilience. If one node fails, others continue functioning. Multiple competing approaches to pandemic preparedness may seem inefficient compared to unified global standards, but they provide the adaptive diversity necessary for responding to unknown future threats.
The American withdrawal will likely spur domestic investment in disease surveillance and rapid response capabilities. Whether this proves more effective than WHO-coordinated efforts depends on execution, but the incentive structure changes dramatically when you cannot externalize responsibility to international bureaucracies.
The Turning Point
We are at a major turning point in international relations that extends far beyond health policy. The post-1945 architecture of international institutions was built on American willingness to fund and participate in organizations that constrained American sovereignty in exchange for rules-based international order. That bargain is being renegotiated in real time.
The WHO withdrawal follows the broader pattern of questioning whether these institutions serve their original purposes or have become self-perpetuating bureaucracies resistant to reform. The United Nations, International Criminal Court, and various trade organizations face similar credibility challenges. When institutions designed to solve collective action problems become forums for political positioning, their utility diminishes.
The timing aligns with our models showing increased sovereign assertion occurring in 2024-2028 across multiple domains. This is not isolated American policy but part of a global trend toward nationalism and away from multilateral consensus. Britain’s exit from the European Union, the rise of sovereignty-focused governments across Europe, and increasing skepticism toward international climate agreements all reflect the same underlying cycle.
Reality
The American exit from WHO represents a calculated rejection of the post-war globalist model in favor of bilateral relationships and domestic capacity building. Whether this proves strategically wise depends on factors that will not become clear for years. Pandemics, by their nature, do not respect borders or political preferences. The problem is sovereignty and the attempt by the WHO for global Dictatorial Powers is incompatible with a democratic/represented form of government. Yet, that is the ultimate goal of the globalists – a one-world power with absolute unelected control.
What is certain is that global health governance will be fundamentally restructured around this decision for the better. The WHO will either reform dramatically to retain relevance with remaining members, or it will become a vehicle for Chinese influence over developing nations’ health policies. Neither outcome serves the original mission of coordinating global disease prevention and response.
The cycle suggests this is not the end of international health cooperation, but rather a transition period before new arrangements emerge. History shows us that international institutions must evolve or become obsolete. The WHO’s failure to adapt to changing geopolitical realities made this outcome inevitable. The question now is whether what replaces it will be more effective or simply more fragmented.
The United States has made its choice. The rest of the world must now decide whether to reform the institution, replace American funding, or accept a diminished role for multilateral health governance. These decisions will shape pandemic preparedness for the next generation, for better or worse. From an economic viewpoint, this is a fantastic decisions when the WHO has lost all credibility and then had the audacity to see g;lobal dictatorial power without even medical personel.
Meanwhile, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus is the head of the World Health Organization. Tedros is the first person in the 72-year history of the WHO who is NOT even a medical doctor, just like Bill Gates. It was Schwab who supported him for that post, just as he recommended Legarde for the IMF and then for the European Central Bank. He has also put in the head of the IMF from his board of the WEF as well. Schwab also has the WHO in his back pocket. To put someone who is not a medical doctor at the head of the World Health Organization would be like putting Jeffrey Epstein as the head of a monastery. There have been long-standing concerns about Tedros as well as calls for his resignation which go unanswered.
Schwab is not evil. He is just an academic who believes that government has the power to alter the economy and the future. He has created his Young Global Leaders and his Global Shapers all to be indoctrinated with his philosophy that we are not individuals but mere worker bees in a hive destined to serve the queen or, in this case, the government.
Many academics look down upon society with disgust – we are the great unwashed. They fail to see that all innovation comes only from the freedom to think. They are repulsed by the thought that we are of any value to society. They believe they are far more intelligent than the workers below, so why bother to even speak to us? Julian Huxley was part of the establishment of the United Nations setting out the goals of UNESCO where he outright stated that “unrestricted individualism is equally erroneous.” He saw the individual as meaningless.
Posted originally on Jan 23, 2026 by Martin Armstrong |
Newly released emails show that Anthony Fauci KNEW that natural immunity was more effectivethan the COVID vaccine. If you want to understand how the modern world is collapsing, you have to stop pretending this was ever purely about “health.” COVID was not simply a virus. It was a stress test on society to see how quickly governments could suspend freedom, destroy commerce, and demand submission with the justification that they were “protecting the people.”
The emails obtained through the Freedom of Information Act by Protect the Public’s Trust show top Biden-era officials discussing an Israeli study on natural immunity from August 2021, which not so coincidentally was the same month that “the science” rolled our a federal vaccine mandate. Fauci called the Israeli study “rather impressive,” acknowledging that natural immunity was the informed choice over an experimental vaccine. But Fauci could not have gained power or wealth through natural immunity.
V
“This is the evidence right here showing that our nation’s scientific leaders were not acting scientifically, and there needs to be accountability,” said Stephanie Edewaard Weidle, executive director of Feds For Freedom, to the DCNF. “We in the medical freedom fighting world, we already knew this, but to see it spelled out in these FOIA documents just makes it worse. People lost their jobs and their lives were turned upside down based on the argument that natural immunity was not enough.”
The coronavirus scam was a trial run for the elitists’ attempts to forge their ‘Green New World Order’ through the clandestine operations of the United Nations, both by usurping its climate control recommendations and by merging them with the health recommendations of the World Health Organization (WHO). Bill Gates dominates both of these entities. You cannot call this “conspiracy theory” when the pattern repeats throughout history. The tactic is always the same: scare the population, demand emergency powers, then never give them back. COVID was the excuse. The objective was submission.
If natural immunity was admitted, then the mandates fall apart. If the mandates fall apart, the entire political structure of enforcement collapses. As I explained in my book, The Cycle of War and the Coronavirus, the legal mechanism they are relying upon is Jacobson v. Massachusetts (1905), which opened the door to forced vaccination. The Supreme Court held that vaccines could be mandated, and that is the precedent Gates and the public health dictatorship leaned on.
Under the pretense of battling a lethal virus, Fauci was able to build the threat into a psychological terrorist attack whereby people believe they will die unless they accept home imprisonment.
COVID became the excuse to accelerate a broader agenda: climate controls, digital ID, and a restructuring of society where freedom of movement is treated as a privilege granted by the state.
This is why the narrative was so rigid. They demonized anyone who questioned the lockdowns. They silenced doctors. They censored dissent. They turned neighbors against each other. Why? Because the lockdowns were not a “health measure.” They were a compliance measure. That is the real scandal. Not merely what Fauci said privately versus publicly, but the fact that the entire structure of Western society was taken hostage by bureaucrats who were never elected and could not be removed.
Posted originally on Jan 23, 2026 by Martin Armstrong |
Donald Trump declared at Davos that America would not become a nation of renters, much to the dismay of the “you will own nothing and be happy” audience. Trump is now talking about banning large institutional investors from buying more single-family homes, claiming this is about restoring the American Dream and ending the insanity where “people live in homes, not corporations.”
Axios reported that investors bought roughly 1 in 3 single-family homes in Q2 2025 (using BatchData), and the entire debate now comes down to how they define “institutional investor” and whether Congress will actually codify it into law.
I understand the motivation, and I agree with the public anger. The question is whether this actually fixes the problem or just creates the next one. The real estate market did not become unaffordable because a few Wall Street firms bought houses. It became unaffordable because government destroyed purchasing power, drove up the cost of living, and then pretended the cure was more regulation.
Institutional investors did not wake up one day and decide to “ruin homeownership.” They responded to incentives. The system pushed capital into assets because people no longer trust paper promises. The moment confidence in government declines, capital moves.
Now, do I like the idea of hedge funds and giant landlords buying entire neighborhoods? No. But the real problem is supply and cost. If you don’t address zoning, property taxes, regulation, insurance, building costs, and the fact that mortgage rates have trapped millions of people in place, you’re not addressing the root issue. If they define “institutional” too broadly, you will end up crushing the small investor and the private builder who actually supplies rentals in markets where people cannot buy. Demand vanished because the monthly payment exploded.
Hence why there are over 37% more sellers than buyers in America’s real estate market. Institutional investors are merely on facet of a multi-layered problem.
Posted originally on Jan 23, 2026 by Martin Armstrong |
This 92 year-old war disabled veteran, survived two world wars, parachuted onto the beaches of France to fight the Nazis, evaded constant enemy machine gun fire, escaped a prison camp or two……
Only in the end to be captured by his own British government .
Governments do not honor their veterans—period. It is absolutely shameful to see how governments treat the men and women who risk their lives to defend their nation. A disabled war veteran in the UK was arrested last year for protesting in favor of Palestine. Police lifted this man out of his wheelchair and sent him to jail on a stretcher.
The Bonus Army episode is one of the clearest historical warnings about what happens when governments make promises they cannot honor and then respond to economic stress with force instead of reform. In 1932, tens of thousands of World War I veterans marched on Washington to demand early payment of bonuses that had been promised to them for their service. These were not radicals or revolutionaries. These men were former soldiers who believed the government would keep its word. Instead, they were treated as a threat. President Hoover ordered troops to attack the veterans, forcing them to flee. We saw the same with the Coxley’s Army, which was the march on Washington following the Panic of 1893 and massive unemployment.
Governments always fear veterans because they expose the lie. These are the people who were told there was honor, duty, and reward in service. When they return home to broken promises, inadequate care, or economic hardship, they become living proof that the social contract was fraudulent. Rather than admit failure, the state chooses censorship, intimidation, or character assassination. It is far easier to silence the messenger than to confront the insolvency of the promises made.
When governments begin silencing veterans, you are no longer dealing with a free society — you are witnessing the unmistakable decline phase of the state. Veterans are the last group any rational government should attempt to suppress. They are not activists looking for power; they are people who once believed in the system strongly enough to risk their lives for it. When even they are treated as enemies, confidence has already collapsed.
Posted originally on Jan 22, 2026 by Martin Armstrong |
Redfin estimates there were 37.2% more home sellers than buyers in November, which is the largest gap since 2013 outside of last summer. The computer warned that the US would experience a buyer’s market until 2028. The imbalance does not translate into some 2008 era real estate crisis, but it highlights the confidence cycle we are in.
When you get a large seller/buyer gap, the press assumes demand is gone, and prices must plunge. What they are missing is that we have created a market that is trapped by interest rates.
The real story is that the seller is anchored mentally to 2021 pricing while the buyer is trapped in 2026 financing. Millions of homeowners refinanced into ultra-low mortgage rates. People with a 2.5% or 3% mortgage are not rushing to sell and then borrow at 6%+ again. They will sit tight unless forced by job relocation, divorce, death, pregnancy, taxes, or financial stress. Buyers are scarce because affordability is terrible, and sellers increase anyway because life events still happen.
Redfin points out that markets like Austin were showing the strongest buyer’s-market conditions, while places like Nassau County, NY were still strong seller’s markets. There is no “one housing market.” There are 50 different markets, each with different taxes, job conditions, migration patterns, and political climate. Furthermore, there are markets within those state markets as people flock to the most desirable cities and school districts.
The buyer base has been destroyed by the combination of high prices, high rates, and rising cost of living. People do not buy houses when they feel trapped and insecure. That is why housing turns down with a decline in confidence.
The Obama Administration ramped up the race war by dividing the public into “us” vs “them.” The Biden Administration took it a step further by creating new categories of people and genders, juxtaposing them against the general public. Convincing the people to turn on one another is a tried and true method to distract the masses from the real problem—the government. Michelle Obama chimed in to enhance the elite-driven race wars by asking the public to be “mindful” when shopping, and in particular, to avoid white-owned brands.
Imagine if a Republican stated that they preferred to shop at stores owned by Christians or Caucasians? Melania would be crucified if she casually mentioned that she needed to verify the race of a business owner before making a purchase. Obama’s rhetoric is blatantly racist discrimination that the mainstream permits because it serves a purpose.
Barack Obama was the first to label his political opponents as an “enemy,” as reported by the Washington Examiner. “Those extreme views were not in my White House,” Obama claimed in remarks to the Jefferson Society regarding the assassination of Charlie Kirk. “I wasn’t empowering them. I wasn’t putting the weight of the United States government behind them. When we have the weight of the United States government behind extremist views, we’ve got a problem.”
Economic woes were blamed on the “top 1%,” a phrase that derived from Obama’s presidency following the 2008 financial crisis. “The gap between the wealthiest and the rest of us has never been wider,” he stated in 2011. He contrasted the struggles of “working families” with the “special interests” and “wealthy few” who benefited from tax loopholes and deregulation. “I believe in an America where opportunity is open to everyone—not just those at the top,” he preached during his first campaign against Mitt Romney. The Obama Administration was touted as the defender of ordinary “folks” who were suffering due to the greed of the “wealthy few,” a class that Obama himself is within.
I’ll never forget Michelle Obama complaining about wealth while she and her husband enjoy homes on Martha’s Vineyard, multimillion dollar book deals, six figure speaking fees, and a net worth of $70 million.pic.twitter.com/Kyck5hWFIb
His wife has been peddling race division, receiving a nod of approval from her husband and the Democratic establishment. The former First Lady insists that Donald Trump is “racist” and “morally wrong,” supporting the demonize Trump narrative. Barack uses his platform to divide the public based on class, while his wife highlights the racial element. The Obamas are sticking to the script of pinning people against one another to protect the establishment. Civil unrest has grown into street riots and ongoing tensions. It is extremely dangerous for a public figure with a large following to promote segregation and division. Alas, the great divide in America is underway as states and individuals move further into their respective ideological opposites. Will the lights turn out on this American experiment in 2034?
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This is a library of News Events not reported by the Main Stream Media documenting & connecting the dots on How the Obama Marxist Liberal agenda is destroying America
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