Category Blogger Martin Armstrong

Jan 8 2026

China Loses Access to Venezuelan Oil


Posted originally on Jan 8, 2026 by Martin Armstrong |  

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China became Venezuela’s largest oil purchaser through oil-for-debt deals. Socialism failed, and the nation was desperate for funds, especially after being ostracized from Western trade. Beijing supplied Venezuela with credit in exchange for heavily discounted crude. China’s access to cheap oil from Venezuela came to a sudden halt after the US takeover.

China was purchasing around 778,000 barrels a day before Maduro’s capture. Venezuela had borrowed up to $100 billion from China in loans since 2007, using PDVSA crude sales to ChinaOil as collateral. Venezuela agreed to ship fixed volumes of crude to Chinese buyers through small “teapot” refineries. While the average output was 778,000 bpd DAILY, exports reached 952,000 bpd at the end of 2025. These flows accounted for 4% of China’s total oil imports.

China is now looking to Iran and Russia for crude, furthering the disconnect between the East and West. Cargoes secured in Asian waters can cover two and a half months of China’s demand, easing any immediate shocks. Yet, Venezuela still owes China around $19 billion in outstanding debt that was largely secured by long-term crude imports.

China is enraged. Foreign Ministry spokespeople Mao Ning and Lin Jian demanded Venezuela retain “full and permanent sovereignty” over its natural resources and accused the US of “seriously breaching” international law. China’s “legitimate rights and interests in Venezuela must be protected,” according to state media. China’s United Nations representative reiterated this statement, demanding that the US  “cease its bullying and coercive practices.”

Russia stepped in to protect China’s short-term investments using a military submarine to protect an oil carrier from US forces. However, US forces successfully boarded and seized the cargo ship. There was no direct conflict between Russia and the US, but “direct” is key as Russia is showing its willingness to oppose Western influence.

Canada’s Carney chimed in to offer clean Canadian oil as an alternative. No one cares if the oil is clean; everyone wants the best deal.

Rest assured China will ensure it is repaid. Yet, the Trump Administration may not permit repayment in crude. The situation is unfolding and tensions are rapidly rising. The international community is split on America’s actions, with even America’s European allies condemning the move. Europe is now painting Trump with the same brush as Putin by insisting he will continue nation-building and expanding the great American Empire. The models pointed to geopolitical upheaval during the first week of January as we move toward the pinnacle of the panic cycle set to explode in 2026.

Jan 8 2026

ChatGPTHealth—AI to Collect Health Data


Posted originally on Jan 8, 2026 by Martin Armstrong |  

ChatGPT

The dawn of AI began years ago with data collection. Commercialism has become pinpointed. Inputting phone numbers during every commercial transaction, “free” search engines, social media platforms sending user information to companies—everything we buy is documented, everything we do is tracked and noted by governments and companies alike.

The announcement that AI platforms will now collect personal medical records under the banner of “helping people manage their health” is being sold as progress. But history shows us that every time information is centralized, it is eventually weaponized — either politically, financially, or legally.

“ChatGPT Health is another step toward turning ChatGPT into a personal super-assistant that can support you with information and tools to achieve your goals across any part of your life,” Fidji Simo, CEO of applications at OpenAI, wrote in a post on Substack. Smartwatches will now connect to larger centralized databases. Your every step is calculated and tracked.

The creators claim the data will not be used for training. They claim enhanced privacy and safeguards. Governments and institutions always make these claims at the beginning of every cycle, not the end. The real issue is not what they intend today, but what the system will demand tomorrow.

Health data is not merely personal information it is a source of leverage and power. Once digitized and centralized, it becomes subject to subpoenas, regulatory capture, political agendas, and social engineering. People forget that HIPAA does not protect you from the government. Every database has been hacked at some point in time. Health records are sensitive information that people would not willingly share. Accessing that information could wield tremendous power. The company stated that “hundreds of millions” of ChatGPT users ask health-related questions every week. What if those questions were publicized? The government demands backdoor access to every platform and will undoubtedly demand access to these records.

The danger here is not artificial intelligence. The danger is centralization without accountability. AI itself is neutral and has acted as more of a search engine, but one must wonder how they provide such a service for “free.” The problem is who controls the switch when political pressure inevitably arrives. No system remains voluntary once it becomes essential.

Jan 8 2026

The First ADP Report of 2026


Posted originally on Jan 8, 2026 by Martin Armstrong |  

Jobs

Unemployment will be a pivotal piece of economic information in the new year. The first ADP report of 2026 shows a modest increase of 41,000 jobs, beneath forecasts of 47,000. Yet, the report comes on the heels of an extremely weak November report with a revised loss of 32,000 jobs as hiring lagged in Q4.

Do not take these figures at face value or as proof of a recovering job market. A 41,000 uptick is far below the strong payroll growth seen earlier in the decade. We are witnessing a structural slowdown. Businesses are fragile and adjusting to higher costs in both rates and goods. Workers have become more expensive for businesses to retain in the once deemed “entry level” roles that have been adjusted to meet arbitrary price standards instead of productivity. Manufacturing remains weak despite every administration focusing on bringing production back to America. The most recent report showed a decline of 5,000 positions in manufacturing and another 3,000 gone in the goods-producing industries overall.

Large businesses are not hiring. They’re at capacity based on the economic reality of an economy in stagflation. The Bureau of Labor Statistics will release the closely monitored nonfarm payrolls report this Friday for the first time since the government shutdown. The Fed may look to determine rates, but lower borrowing costs will not suffice as employers simply do not have confidence in the economic landscape of tomorrow.

Jan 8 2026

Socrates & War


Posted originally on Jan 7, 2026 by Martin Armstrong |  

AE Equity War Index M 11 3 25

QUESTION: Marty, Socrates has been targeting the first week of January and the month of January as a panic cycle in war. How did you ever create a computer that can predict such events well in advance?

MK

ANSWER: Look. I have stated many times, this was never my intent. Some of humanity’s most important breakthroughs happened completely by accident—the kind of discoveries where someone spills something, leaves a mess, or makes a mistake and ends up changing the world.

Probably the most famous was the discovery of Penicillin. Alexander Fleming went on vacation in 1928 and left a dirty petri dish in the lab sink. When he returned, bacteria had grown everywhere except where mold had formed. That observation revolutionized medicine and has saved countless millions of lives.

Henri Becquerel discovered radioactivity in 1896 when he opened a drawer. He’d left uranium on top of a photographic plate with wooden crosses between them during overcast weather, and when he developed the plates, the crosses appeared—the uranium was exposing them without sunlight.  This accidental finding earned him half a Nobel Prize and led to Marie Curie’s groundbreaking work.

Some accidents were downright messy. Spencer Silver at 3M was trying to create a super-strong adhesive in 1968 but accidentally made a weak one that could be easily removed—it seemed like a failure until someone realized it was perfect for Post-it Notes

The list goes on an on. But while this maybe a discovery of great importance, it has also been my curse. They have done everything to me from trying to kill me to throwing me in civil contempt without any explanation completely against everything in the Constitution denied a trial under the pretense it was “civil” and not “criminal.”

MA Socrates Prison

Socrates was my inspiration. I paid my respects to the jail cell in Athens where they imprisoned Socrates for also standing by his convictions. His fearlessness in the face of death is one of the most powerful themes in the Apology. His reasoning is remarkable.

Socrates argued that when performing an action, the only relevant question is whether one is acting justly or not—considerations of life and death are selfish and unimportant next to considerations of justice. He compared his philosophical calling to a soldier’s duty: just as a good soldier shouldn’t abandon his post in battle even at the risk of death, he couldn’t abandon his post as a truth-seeker.

His central argument was that fear of death is just another kind of false wisdom, of claiming to know the unknowable. Since no one actually knows what death is, fearing it presumes knowledge we don’t have. Socrates then offered what’s essentially a win-win scenario. Death is either a state of nothingness—like a peaceful, restful sleep. How many of us have such a wonderful night not to be awakened by a dream. Or it’s a migration of the soul where he could meet all his great friends and figures from the past to engage in a conversation about wisdom. Either way, he saw no reason to fear it.

When the jury offered to let him go if he’d just stop philosophizing, Socrates refused, saying he would rather die than give up participating in philosophical inquiry, claiming that the unexamined life is not worth living.

This was my inspiration. Once you lose the fear of death, there is nothing left for them threaten you with. When they threatened my family, I wrote to Dorthy Heyl of the SEC and threatened to commit suicide to save my family, but I promised I would not go as quietly as they forced Stephen Schiffer in a previous SEC case taking his lawyers away and their threats led him to comit suicide.

We the People

My philosophy was forged by their ruthless corruption. Federal prosecutors used threats against Michael Milken’s family members to pressure him into pleading guilty to a crime he did not commit. They inverted insider trading from a director selling stock ahead of declaring bankruptcy to the fraud being the public did not have the same information to profit from. As I wrote, there is no such crime defined by Congress. This is a bureaucratic rule when laws are supposed to be created by the PEOPLE, not rules by bureaucrats.

We live in tyranny. There is no rule of law. Judges do as ordered by the government which is why the conviction rate in federal cases is virtually 99% whereas Adolf Hitler’s conviction rate in the People’s Court (Volksgerichtshof), a political tribunal, had devastating statistics between 1937 and 1945. The court heard over 14,000 cases and condemned over 5,000 people to death. That’s roughly a 36% death sentence rate overall, though the numbers grew far worse as the war progressed. However, The most notorious court in history had been that of Hitler which had a 90% conviction rate to something overall. The American justice system has outdone Hitler.

Hect Model Schiavoni REDACTED

They demanded the source code even in writing. That had nothing to do with anything but political prosecution. If I turned that over, then what? Even my lawyers told me it did not matter what I turned over, they would NEVER release me. When they want something, you have no rights. The only reason they were forced to release me was when the Supreme Court ordered them to respond. If it was not for the Supreme Court, I would have died in civil contempt long ago not much different from Socrates. They wanted this war model that they saw as national security.

Jan 8 2026

World War III Unfolding Before Our Eyes


Posted originally on Jan 7, 2026 by Martin Armstrong |  

Tanker 2026

The Neocons have won. Taking Venezuela followed the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis agenda to prevent Russia from installing nukes as a countermeasure for Ukraine. There are now even discussions about using military force to seize Greenland, but the most audacious direct slap in the face to Russia is the seizing of a tanker with a Russian flag, and Putin assumed would be enough to warn the US to keep its hands off it.

2026_01_07_09_39_01_US_Says_It_Has_Seized_Russian_Flagged_Tanker_Connected_to_Venezuelan_Oil_The_E

Russia had staked its reputation and geopolitical credibility on conferring official protection on the shadow-fleet oil tanker the Neocons pushing for WWIII have pursued with total disregard for the consequences. As the more than two-week pursuit of Bella 1 unfolded, Russia re-flagged the vessel with its own colors, renamed it the Marinera, and added it to an official Russian ship database. The Neocons do not give a shit. What they hell, they send other people’s children to die – never themselves. The re-flagging to a Russian ship was assumed it would say hands off or war. The Neocons want war. This is about the total destruction of Russia which they have been dreaming about since childhood. People like John Bolton joined the National Guard so he did not have to go to Vietnam.

1964 Troika over throw Khruschev

The danger here is that when Khrushchev backed down in 1962, there was a coup and he was replaced with Brezhnev. When a proposal for Russia to join NATO, a second coup took place this time against Gorbachev. Slapping Putin across the face may make the press cheer, but this puts internal pressure on Putin. If does not respond definitively, he too will be overthrown by their Neocons.

Nuclear Deterrence

Nuclear war could be just one step away!

No that the Neocons have deliberately put Americans in the direct confrontation with Russia, Putin made a fatal mistake. He assumed that nuclear weapons are still a deterent. He has limited him to rhetoric about ‘red lines’, and the Neocons are showing the world that they think that Russia is just a very large Venezuela, that can be pushed around without any real consequences. The Neocons are drooling over the idea of sending American forces into the Black Sea with Tomahawk missile carriers. They perceive Putin as weak who is afraid to push the button.

Britain and France have signed a historic agreement committing to boots on the ground in Ukraine as soon as any ceasefire with Russia comes into place. They are determined to have WWIII with Russia that they think will make Europe relavant again geopolitically.

World War III

We will do a special update on the Private Block with the computer’s latest forecasts on timing.

Jan 7 2026

The Left’s Top Dark Money Network of Donors


Posted originally on Jan 7, 2026 by Martin Armstrong |  

A liberal network is pushing Biden's hand for SCOTUS pick | New York Post

Arabella Advisors, the world’s most influential fund for left-wing politics, has rebranded but not dissipated. Arabella Advisors infamously created the Sixteen Thirty Fund, a dark money nonprofit that funneled hundreds of millions to persuade voters to support “progressive” causes, with the backing of George Soros, Bill Gates, Pierre Omidyar, and Swiss billionaire Hansjörg Wyss.

Arabella rebranded itself into Sunflower Services, a public corporation controlled by a collective group of nonprofits that were previously under its management. The group has separated its 501(c)(3) and 501(c)(4) arms as only the latter has the ability to send money to political missions in lieu of offering tax deductions for those donations. All donations are strictly anonymous. Not only is the group permitted to operate anonymously, but those paid to promote their messages also operate in secrecy. WIRED magazine alerted the public that the Sixteen Thirty Fund was paying over 90 online social media influencers up to $8,000 a month to support Democratic causes. These content creators operate under the “Chorus Creator Incubator Program,” and they are provided with specific propaganda tools such as “advocacy training,” message briefings, newsroom events, and are often asked to partner with politicians and other left-leaning organizations.

Traditional political advertisements are disclosed as advertisements. “Paid for by…” However, the new form of media control is through “unique” social media messaging. Moreover, the majority of these social media platforms are already controlled by the leftist billionaire elite. Aside from Elon Musk’s X, all major channels can remove content at whim, and we saw their broad reach during the COVID-19 pandemic when every platform was scrubbing the internet of content that went against the left mainstream media narrative.

The Sixteen Thirty Fund will distance itself from Sunflower Services, but all of these non-profits operate as the left’s personal ATM to use for political warfare. Clinton administration alumnus Eric Kessler began Arabella Advisors in 2005, before it quickly gained popularity among those with the money and power to reshape politics. Swiss billionaire Hansjörg Wyss was the first major financier, using his wealth to reshape US politics. 501(c)(4) nonprofit organizations may receive funds from foreign donors, and the likes of Soros and Wyss were quick to insert their ideals into US politics through Arabella.

The Sixteen Thirty Fund, for example, spent nearly $80 million on 33 different state referendums from 2017 to 2023. Conservatives argued against permitting foreign investors from infiltrating US politics, leading Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Arkansas, and Wyoming to enact laws banning foreign funds from being spent on ballot referendums. The anonymous donors bypassed the law through numerous smaller NGOs masked as grassroots organizations including “Families Over Billionaires,” “Arizonans United for Health Care,” “Log Off Movement,” “Keep Iowa Healthy,” “Floridians for a Fair Shake,” “Design it for Us,” and “Michigan Families for Economic Prosperity.”

Propaganda is far more subtle in today’s day and age. The people controlling the narrative do not care about these causes. The people paid to push these messages do not understand that they are working for the very people they claim to detest.

Jan 7 2026

Syria and Israel Mend Ties


Posted originally on Jan 7, 2026 by Martin Armstrong |  

Syria.US_.Trump_

Syria has agreed to create an intelligence network with the United States and Israel. Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa, a former Sunni jihadist and known terrorist, became a CIA asset after he was captured while fighting for Al Qaeda in Iraq. I explained on numerous occasions that he was compromised and installed into his position by the CIA; Syria’s new alignment with Israel should not come as a shock.

Steve Witkoff, Jared Kushner, and Tom Barrack represented the US envoy for Syria during the Israel-Syria meeting in Paris this week. Washington reported that the meeting went as intended, with Israel and Syria agreeing to a  “fusion mechanism” by which they will share intelligence, diplomatic engagement, military de-escalation, and commercial issues.

For decades, Syria and Israel have technically been at war. That hostility has been useful politically for both sides. It justified military budgets, internal repression, and foreign alliances. This development reiterates what the computer has warned: the Middle East is fragmenting into blocs, and the old Cold War alignments are collapsing.

Middle East Map 2

Reports have emerged that Iranian officials are seeking to assassinate al-Sharaa. Al-Assad’s former military intelligence chief, Major General Kamal Hassan, is building a militia among Syria’s Alawite minority community, according to a December 2025 Reuters report. The ousted dictator’s billionaire cousin, Rami Makhlouf, has been financing Hassan’s efforts. Feared special forces commander Suhail al-Hassan, known as “The Tiger,” has been recruiting thousands of men to oppose al-Assad and retake control.

Syria is no longer beholden to Iran as its new financiers are from the West. Russia is no longer policing the region and the US has a stronghold over Syria. This alignment is temporary and a precursor to a larger regional conflict on the horizon.

Jan 7 2026

Excessive Taxation Penalizes Workers


Posted originally on Jan 7, 2026 by Martin Armstrong |  

Resume.Jobs_.Unemployment

Britain is not becoming a nation of part-time workers by accident, nor is this some benign lifestyle evolution as the press would like to portray it. It is a symptom of a collapsing incentive structure, and once incentives break down, the economy follows. Britons today work, on average, 2.3 fewer hours per week than they did twenty years ago.

Economists keep missing the point because they obsess over employment levels rather than productivity and motivation. Adam Smith understood this centuries ago. The wealth of a nation depends on the productive use of its population, and labor itself is capital. When you penalize labor through taxation and regulation, you destroy the capital base of the economy. Britain has done precisely that.
The expansion of the welfare state requires ever-higher taxes, and those taxes do not fall evenly. They fall disproportionately on those who actually work, produce, and take risk. Britain has created a system in which the marginal benefit of working harder is weak or outright negative, once taxes, lost benefits, compliance costs, and inflation are taken into account. Under those conditions, rational people become unproductive.

What is especially telling is that this is no longer confined to low-income workers. Highly skilled professionals are opting to reduce hours, shift into part-time roles, or deliberately cap income to avoid punitive tax thresholds. When doctors, engineers, accountants, and executives start making lifestyle decisions based on avoiding taxation rather than maximizing productivity, the system is already broken.

Governments always pretend this is about “work-life balance.” That is propaganda. People have always valued their time. What has changed is confidence. When people believe that extra effort will improve their future, they work harder. When they believe the state will confiscate the reward while increasing the risk, they stop. Productivity collapses not because people cannot work, but because they no longer believe it is worth it. People no longer believe the system is fair, and once that belief is gone, productivity never recovers without a crisis.

Ca

Jan 7 2026

Term Limits & Insider Trading


Posted originally on Jan 6, 2026 by Martin Armstrong |  

DeSantis 1 6 26

I was invited to a briefing this morning on Term Limits and Congressional Insider Trading. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and Rep. Anna Paulina Luna presented the agenda. I mentioned at the WEC in November that these two actions would be forthcoming. Anna Paulina Luna is behind the prohibition of Congressional Insider Trading with bypartisan support. In addition to throwing his support behind Luna’s bill to end Congressional Insider Trading, Governor DeSantis also said he is leading the effort across the country to have states certify a Constitutional Amendment for term limits for members of Congress.

MAA 1 6 26

I was invited to this briefing this morning. I certainly endorse these efforts. I don’t believe the press is fairly reporting what is going on. So far, I believe 28 states have agreed to propose a Constitutional Amendment for Term Limits. To PROPOSE an amendment via state application: 34 states (two-thirds). To RATIFY an amendment and add it to the Constitution: 38 states (three-fourths). This is the effort and with 2026 being the 250th year anniversary and political change lies on the horizon, we have have a shot at at getting to the formal proposal stage.

If this were solely up to Congress, it would be a real uphill battle. The only way to do that would be to say those who are there now are grandfathered in, but any replacement would then be confined to one term and out.

Insider Trading 1

Congress passes a law saying “the FDA must make rules to ensure safe food” (the statute). The FDA (like the SEC) then creates a specific rule that “eggs must be refrigerated at 40°F” (the rule). The insider trading ban works the same way. Congress NEVER created an insider trading statute. This is all done under the rules of the SEC. The real problem is that the bureaucracy has become so outrageous and vast that we are NOT represented by Congress and this is, in my opinion, UNCONSTITUTIONAL, because we the people have no right to vote for anyone on the bureaucracy.

The Greatest Bull Market in History two volumes

In 1986, I had written the Greatest Bill Market in History where I did the full account of the formation of the SEC. Insider Trading was that a Director of a Company knew they were going to file bankruptcy so he sold all his stock the day before. When they charged Michael Milken with Insider Trading, I was contacted by the lawyers and explained that the interpretation they were using was exactly opposite of the 1930s. Here they claimed you and I are going to takeover Facebook. The Facebook shareholders do not know. The fraud is supposed to be that they LOST the opportunity to make money. They did not lose money as in the 1930s. One guy went to trial and he won against the SEC.

Insider Trading 2

The SEC will NEVER prosecute a politicians for what they have completely distorted. They can argue that the information is coming from lawyers, not directors. But essentially, the entire “Inside Trading” is completely vague at best and is selectively applied if they want your ass. Most assume there is a LAW and Congress exempted themselves. This is an abomination created by the SEC. Because other countries did not understand the reality of the SEC “rule” in the slightest, various countries passed laws that were not really about privileged “insider” info, but it was just ant-rich Marxism.

Because I had offices around the world, trying to comply as an advisor and an investor became impossible. In some jurisdictions, if you asked me about IBM, and I owned one share of IBM, I had to disclosed my entire investment portfolio. With a team of law firms from every financial center, the conclusion was I could not have a stock account anywhere. It has morphed into me advising of a share I happened to have with no inside information can be a crime. When they tried to investigate me, the US Attorney Richard Owens could find anything and just said “You are one smart SOB.”

Even Ron DeSantis said clearly that when he was in Congress decades ago, they knew about the fraud in Minnesota. They would even talk about it back then but do nothing.

corruption bribe under the table

I have informed them that the best way to disguise a bribe is to set up two futures accounts. They enter a buy and sell trade on whatever and at the end of the day, they they allocate the win to the politician and the loss to the payee. This will NEVER show up as “insider trading” just that they were a fantastic trader one time in some commodity.

1 Waiting Dogs

Like my dogs who will patiently wait for my return, we will have to be very patient on these two actions. They are step in the right direction. Let’s see!

Jan 6 2026

Venezuelans Rejoice – Socialism Failed Yet Again


Posted originally on Jan 6, 2026 by Martin Armstrong |  

The people of Venezuela are celebrating Maduro’s departure. Those who have lived under socialism understand the depths of its destruction. Hugo Chávez is celebrated as a social justice warrior for eliminating capitalism in the 2000s. Socialism does not work because the system eventually runs out of other people’s money, as Margaret Thatcher once proclaimed. We only need to look at recent history to see the severe consequences of switching to this system. Venezuela first reported that it had a “nutritional emergency” in February 2016.  President Nicolás Maduro also declared an “economic emergency” in January of the same year, providing him the power to rule by decree. Inflation was running at 141.5%, according to Venezuelan authorities, but the IMF believed the figure reached 270% in 2015 and had the potential to reach 500% by the end of 2016.

Venezuela.Socialism

There were rumors going around that people under socialism faced such severe food shortages that they were forced to break into zoos and eat the animals. Unfortunately, this is a fact. Reports were circulating in Venezuela of people consuming zoo animals around 2016 and 2017. The animals that remained in these zoos starved to death or ate one another. The people were in such dire conditions that they were forced to consume dogs, cats, decaying meat, and anything else they could find.

The socialists claimed that acknowledging the food shortages could lead to American intervention, and Maduro consistently blamed US sanctions for his nation’s failure. As reported by a Spanish newspaper, this is how the average person waiting for their food rations: “Five hours in line to buy a chicken; kicks, pushes, and blows of all kinds to be one of the fortunate ones to enter the supermarket and get away with a bag of flour or rice, basic goods that Venezuela does not have available to everyone, unfortunately.”

Maduro told the people to grow their own food and gloated that he, too, was producing his own eggs and produce. The government owned the grocers and food production companies and intervened numerous times to prevent private-sector intervention. Politicians take no responsibility for the suffering caused by their policies, and this is precisely what a portion of the West is seeking to implement today.

Maduro.Venezuela

Over 7.7 million people have fled Venezuela due to one of the worst economic collapses in modern history not attributed to war. GDP contracted 80% from 2013, according to the IMF. Inflation reached an astounding 130,060% by 2018, the bolivar collapsed, prices doubled daily, and people were forced to carry carts of worthless cash for basic purchases. Around 30% of the population lived in poverty in 2013. Fast forward to 2025, roughly 87% to 90% of the population lives in extreme poverty and despair.

People wonder why Venezuelans are cheering Maduro’s downfall from the safety of their first-world suburbs. Older generations remember a time when Venezuela was a thriving economic powerhouse before it rapidly fell under socialism. Oil was insufficient to sustain a system that rendered innovation and productivity worthless.

Now, Venezuela’s problems did not begin with Maduro. Maduro inherited a flawed socialist system and continued its mismanagement. Under Chávez, Venezuela was already in decline, but Maduro assumed power precisely as the country entered a major ECM down wave. Instead of reforming, he doubled down on the same policies that were already destroying confidence and refused to take ownership in typical bureaucratic fashion. The destruction was locked in long before sanctions became meaningful because the government destroyed confidence, property rights, and capital formation. Socialism wages war on capital, and capital is a pacifist that will willingly flee. Once you nationalize industry, confiscate private property, impose price controls, and criminalize profit, capital will flee and not return. Every war waged against capital results in a lost battle for the aggressor as it cannot be captured and the business cycle cannot be defeated.