Interview: Panic Cycle, Bank of England, Inflation, Increased Death Rate


Armstrong Economics Blog/Armstrong in the Media Re-Posted Oct 19, 2022 by Martin Armstrong

Click here to listen to my latest interview: “Panic Cycle, Bank of England, Inflation, Increased Death Rate”

Liz Truss’ Approval Plummets


Armstrong Economics Blog/Politics Re-Posted Oct 12, 2022 by Martin Armstrong

Truss inherited a beaten-down United Kingdom. The Bank of England declared that a recession was inevitable, sterling continues to fall, pension funds are evaporating, and the death of the queen caused an overall feeling of pessimism. Recent polls show that Truss is actually less popular than her predecessor Boris Johnson, even when Johnson was under fire for partying amid COVID lockdowns. Liz Truss currently has an approval rating of -47.

Theresa May had a score of around -46 before she resigned. Based on an Opinium poll of around 2,000 people, 53% would like Truss to resign. Even around 25% of Tory voters want her out of office only a month into the job. Even voters divided over the Brexit ruling disapprove of her with 61% of Leave voters noting disapproval, as well as 61% in the Remain camp.

“I am prepared to be unpopular,” Truss said shortly after taking office. Her proposed tax cuts for the wealthy and removal of caps on bankers’ bonuses caused the average citizen to feel as if she did not represent them. The International Monetary Fund said her plans would “increase inequality,” only adding to her criticism. She is under pressure to increase welfare payments and social programs.

Truss simply inherited a massive problem. Her government is also blamed for the rising mortgage crisis. The Bank of England is set to meet again on November 3, but many believe they may reveal their policy beforehand. They want to avoid the downturn that occurred after the mini-budget was released at the end of September. In the end – it is politics. Truss needs to appeal to the people before the Conservatives find a replacement scapegoat.

Sunday Talks, Neil Oliver – Those with Trumpets are Not Going to be Silent in the Fight Against Tyranny and Nihilistic Collectivism


Posted originally on the conservative tree house on September 25, 2022 | Sundance

It took an extra 12-hrs before the powers that be permitted the full video of Neil Oliver’s remarks from this week to be presented for replay (yesterday only a 4-minute segment was available).  However, that said, Mr Oliver speaks for many people when he outlines the nature of the political turmoil between the ‘elites’ and those they consider the ‘proles.’  WATCH:

[Transcript] – Those who speak out are shouted down until they are proved right. Again and again, and again we are made to watch, or to endure the crude, bullying tactics of the school playground. Reasoned debate and argument have long since gone over the hill into history. Now it’s just one long slanging match, in which the loudest, angriest and most effectively insulting voices seek to win by volume alone, so often echoed by mainstream media who hold reasoned voices in contempt … apparently preferring to ridicule and diminish rather than provide courteous space for those who merely have questions in need of answers.

Again and again, those shouted down are, however, revealed as having been right all along.

Those who spoke out against lockdowns were shouted down until they were proved right about irreparable harm done, the harms that confront us now in every aspect of our lives.

Those who doubted the efficacy and safety of so-called vaccines were shouted down – until they were proved right, and it became irrefutable and undeniable that those medical procedures did not work as advertised and had resulted in death and permanent injury for uncounted numbers.

Those who spoke out about the existence of rape gangs in British cities were shouted down until they were proved right and some … just some … of the victims finally had their voices heard and our establishment was shamed for having knowingly stood by for decades while uncounted thousands of the most vulnerable souls were treated like meat by men acting with impunity. All of it was excused and covered up on the grounds that to do otherwise would have brought accusations of racism.

Shouting down has become a universal and even when it is proven wrong, never is there any backing down by the loudest, any real admission of error. Instead, those voices just move on to their next target. But by now, the truth is that too much harm has been done and any temptation to shy away from confrontation is long behind us. Now more than ever is the time firmly to say, “enough” – we will not be silenced, however loudly we are condemned. This is precisely the moment when those questioning the dogma must find renewed strength for the fight.

Those who questioned the wisdom of sacrificing fossil fuels and nuclear energy on the altar of the so-called Green agenda, are yet more of those who have been proved right after all.

Now millions face a winter of cold and hunger – and futures blighted by the deliberate and whole sale diminishing of opportunities – on account of generations of political policies bordering on the suicidal. In the birthplace of the industrial revolution that illuminated the entire world, the lights are going out because economically illiterate politicians wanted to live out adolescent fantasies of saving the world.

I say it’s not the world in need of saving – but us, from them and the compound consequences of their vanity and greed.

Those who questioned and continue to question the so-called settled science of climate crisis are no longer just shouted down but demonized as latter-day heretics apparently fit for little less than burning at the stake.

Those who simply have questions about the war in Ukraine – about committing billions of pounds to war while Britons face the darkest winter of their lifetimes are shouted down as Putin-loving enemies of democracy. The shouting down is the response to every contrary voice, and the shouting down on this matter must stop as well.

Those who have questions about mass immigration – who fear the inevitable erosion and dilution of British culture by beliefs and behaviours of utterly different sorts arriving in their midst at an excessive rate, are still being shouted down now, even as the ancient religious hatreds of the sub-continent emerge, large as life, on English streets. If questions can’t be asked, how can answers be found?

Name-calling is at the heart of it too – the seat of the fire that burns to a crisp any with the temerity to challenge this orthodoxy or that. Those who questioned lock downs were called granny-killers; those who questioned vaccines were called covidiots; those who continue to challenge the Green agenda are climate-change-deniers – how effective, in the art of shutting down, is the dreaded suffix of denier, with all its echoes of 20th century horror?

Those who accused the rape gangs were derided as racists – another slur that is all but unsurvivable for anyone who wants to keep a job, far less a place in polite society. Those who have seen at first hand the worst consequences of too much immigration happening too fast … who have watched self-imposed segregation take shape in one town and city after another, the undeniable establishment of ghettoes, are similarly defamed – shouted down as having nothing more to offer than hate based on skin colour – when what they are actually pointing out is the crystalising and entrenching of the kind of division and imported religious hatred that ends always and only in the ugliness playing out in now in Leicester and Birmingham.

The damage done by the delusion, the myth of multi-culturalism – the band-aid hurriedly applied when concepts like assimilation and integration were seen to have failed – has hardly been limited to these islands.

Not so very long ago, Sweden was regarded as a beacon of caring, sharing, liberal leftism. Not anymore. Since 2018 there have been almost 500 bombings in the towns and cities of a country most people likely still believe, mistakenly, to be a model of safety and stability, the home of Ikea and St Greta of Thunberg. It’s not just bombs – 47 people have been shot dead so far this year. National Police commissioner Anders Thornberg is on record describing, “an entirely different kind of brutality” in ghetto-ised suburbs dominated by immigrants.

Since 2000, Sweden’s immigrant population – those born elsewhere but now resident – has doubled to 20 percent. Sweden took in more migrants per capita than any other country during the wave of immigration in 2015. Most of the incomers have been young men. At the recent general election, Sweden’s most outspoken anti-immigration party – the Sweden Democrats – emerged as the second biggest in parliament.

Those who have voted for the SDs are shouted down – even as news media carry reports of a new trend in so-called “humiliation robberies” during which victims are not just robbed but also degraded while their attackers film the abuse.

Despite the hitherto unknown levels of violence and crime, still it is hard for Swedes to speak out about the reality of their situation. Those who point to the existence of ghettoes – of no go area’s into which fire and ambulance crews will not venture without police escorts – are shouted down as “safety deniers”. Can you imagine … “safety deniers” … whatever next?

When will the shouting down stop? Time and time again those calling out real problems, real danger, are the targets of tactics shaped always and only to silence dissent, to deride and alienate any who seek to give voice to uncomfortable truth, even just to ask a question.

On the other side of the Atlantic, in the US there is no functioning southern border to speak o-. The number of those heading north is now of the seven-figure variety. That is unsustainable, in every way. Those speaking out are shouted down as racists and xenophobes, as you would surely expect. Florida governor Ron De Santis is among those that have taken to moving migrants on – putting them aboard planes and buses and transporting them to self-proclaimed “sanctuary states” whose politics and politicians declare them as fully supportive of new arrivals.

No sooner had 50 of those immigrants touched down in wealthy, liberal enclave Martha’s Vineyard, however, than the allegedly tolerant and welcoming residents had moved heaven and earth to ensure those pilgrims were back on buses and headed out of sight and out of mind before leaving so much as a footprint on the all-white beach.

It was ever thus – those with enough money and the right friends get to preach about how others must live … while being forever insulated against the consequences. Too many people, made guinea pigs for social engineering by holders of influence, have been handed too much to bear.

Those authority figures, who never had any intention of taking part in their own experiment but saw to it instead that the inhabitants of distant corners they neither knew nor cared about would have to sink or swim in an ill-judged and excessive wave of newcomers, will continue to do as they please whilst insisting those beneath them in the food chain should simply shut up.

But now is most definitely not the time for dissenting voices to lose their collective nerve. Now more than ever those with questioning, defiant, contrary voices must find the determination to go on. We face economic challenges of a sort most of us have never before had to contemplate. Furthermore, we have been divided among ourselves as never before.

Old certainties have been torn away with nothing desirable to replace them, but we must remember what has been taken and so resolve to take it all back.

This is no time for silence. After two years like no others – when we’ve been told to be frightened of each other on account of a disease, of our way of life on account of its impact on the world, of the future itself – it might be tempting to submit.

Here’s the thing: the shouting and the name calling are the least of it. After Covid, after Lockdown, after war, after crisis after crisis after crisis. If we don’t make all of our voices heard and right now, ask yourself, what might they try next?  (link)

The Bank of England All but Admits Recession


Armstrong Economics Blog/BRITAIN Re-Posted Sep 23, 2022 by Martin Armstrong

The Bank of England (BoE) all but admitted the UK is officially in a recession. Bank Governor Andrew Bailey stated weeks ago that there was nothing the central bank could do to prevent a recession at this stage. The Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) voted to raise rates by half a percentage point to 2.25%, marking the highest level since 2008. The markets were expecting a 75 bps hike, but the central bank is moving slowly and aiming to avoid panic.

The central bank foresees a 0.1% drop in GDP over the next three months after experiencing a 0.1% decline last quarter. The CPI report for August came in at 9.9%, which is only a slight drop from July’s 10.1% reading. Winter is coming, and that is when the full impact of the energy crisis will be felt. The BoE believes inflation will rise to 11% in October when energy caps are altered. Like the Federal Reserve, the BOE is a long way from its 2% inflation target and relied on QE for far too long.

The dollar’s strength continues to cause a devaluation in sterling as the USD is seen as the last safe haven.

Don Lemon Uses Queen Elizabeth II Death to Propose Colonial Slavery Reparations, Gets Schooled on Who Ended Slavery


This is a little funny and a well-deserved embarrassment for CNN host Don Lemon. {Direct Rumble Link}

The intellectually deficient little nitwit from the fake news has no concept of true historic reference when he began advancing a narrative about the British monarchy paying reparations due to slavery.   However, the royal scholar being interviewed, Hilary Fordwich, has a solid understanding of history and used the opportunity to remind Don Lemon exactly which country was the first to end the practice of slavery and how many British patriots died battling against African tribal lords and kings who did not want to end it.

Don Lemon was left a befuddled mess…  LOL WATCH:

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Queen Elizabeth II Coffin Lowered into Royal Vault During Stunning Final Interment


Posted originally on the conservative tree house on September 19, 2022 | Sundance 

The entire funeral day for Queen Elizabeth II was filled with incredible tribute and depth. One of the most unforgettable days in history. However, that said, perhaps the most moving moment was at St. Georges Chapel in Windsor Castle, when Queen Elizabeth II’s coffin was lowered into the Royal Vault, bringing to an end public mourning for Britain’s longest-reigning monarch.

The sounds and images of the lone bagpipe growing ever dimmer as the coffin was lowered was really memorable. Then came the inflection point of the final farewell and the blessing and prayer upon new King Charles III, and the singing of God Save the King. A very moving tribute reflecting the intensity of the day for the British people. WATCH:

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Neil Oliver Notes the Appearance of the Silent Majority Paying Respect to Queen Elizabeth II and the Traditions of Great Britain


Posted originally on the conservative tree house on September 18, 2022 | Sundance 

For his monologue this week, U.K commentator Neil Oliver notes the miles-long lines of British citizens, paying their final respects to Queen Elizabeth II as she lays in state, as yet another appearance of the silent majority.  The silent majority do not often surface, but when they do -whether in politics or culture- they make a dramatic appearance from every corner of the United Kingdom.

The political rulers of the constitutional monarchy would be well served to take heed of the millions who are traveling from every town, village and hamlet to pay their respects to Queen Elizabeth II.  Their very visible appearance is representative of who really holds the power in the nation.  Politicians, regardless of their sense of grand importance, are mere fleas when compared the scale of an assembled nation.

A united people have more power than any small group of rulers.  Their assembly in collective mourning is a visible and timely reminder to those who have disconnected themselves from this understanding.  WATCH:

[Transcript] – When Winston Churchill lay in state in Westminster Hall, in 1965, journalist Vincent Mulchrone described two rivers running through London, one made of people, dark and silent as the night-time Thames.

Now another river of other people is flowing through an altogether different London, all the way to that same Hall and, this time, the coffin of The Queen. Westminster Hall is still there. Britain is still there. I’ve wondered if it’s a glimpse, at least in part, of the silent majority we hear so much about but seldom see.

It would be wrong to generalise, to imagine we could know the motivations of every person in that long line. But so many people moving as one, in the same direction at the same time surely suggests something shared. My hunch, for what it’s worth, is that many are also grieving the passing of the world they grew up in – a world of long-lived certainties – old certainties that seem to have died too at some point in the past few years.

Over and over again the silent majority, whoever they are, wherever they are, seem to defy expectations, much to the annoyance and frustration of those who wish they would simply disappear, once and for all. Brexit defied those expectations; so too an 80-seat majority for Boris Johnson’s Conservatives. The silent majority won’t do what they’ve been told, that much is clear.

They are silent, that majority, but they are still there, silent yes, and stubborn too, and from time to time they stand up and make their point about what Britain means to them, indeed, what they mean by Britain, and British, and how they want things to be. I say this is one of those times – and what those people, some of them at least, are making clear, not by words, but by deeds, is that they want the way things used to be – and could still be, should still be.

Lo and behold, and given the chance, all manner of silent people – people with no platform from which to speak – have demonstrated what they mean, what they would say if they had the chance, by their quiet, respectful actions in the aftermath of the death of the Queen

A figurehead, someone who had been there, whether foreground or background, for all of their lives, was gone. Yet another sudden absence from a Britain that feels like it’s being deliberately dismantled, taken apart bit by bit in the manner of an old family-owned business being asset-stripped for all that might be sold off cheap.

That thousands upon thousands of those people have chosen to stand in line and be part of the process of declaring affection, if not love, not just for Elizabeth II but for all that the monarchy represents, says something profound – something that anyone with any sense at all should listen to and understand, and also respect. Whatever efforts are made to strip the Britishness out of Britain, only reveal another, deeper layer of Britain. It turns out, it’s Britain all the way down.

Those thousands are saying a respectful goodbye to the Queen, but by taking part in that ritual of remembrance – and no one does ritual and remembrance better than the British – many at least might also be declaring, loud and clear, what matters to them deep down where it counts. And what apparently matters to them is the Britain they have known and, which is much more important, the Britain they wish to continue to know.

The pressure to accept change is all around us – incessant and relentless. Surrender this; forget about that; take this instead whether you want it or not … the push is powerful but so too, and perhaps more powerful when it finally matters, is the determination to hold on, and to be what we have been for a time longer than anyone alive might remember. Standing in line to make an indelible memory of the death of the Queen is, for many of those taking part, about remembering who WE are, who WE want to continue to be.

Against the expectations of some, the death of Elizabeth II has made plain and visible not what separates the peoples of the four countries of the United Kingdom, but the ties that bind. Those with a mind to insist the time of a United Kingdom, even a Britain, has had its day, would have had everyone believe the mass of the population had outgrown concepts like constitutional monarchy. Those progressives would like it better if Britain was governed not by the pesky, independent-minded British – with their traditions and their ancient laws and customs – but by unelected bureaucrats elsewhere and answerable to no one.

Symbols matter and the king or queen of a constitutional monarchy symbolises the people. We are all sovereign individuals – and the monarch is the first sovereign among equals. Under the terms of the coronation oath, the monarch vows to defend the people and the realm, to keep safe all our essential freedoms as free people. It is potent and meaningful stuff. We live in a constitutional monarchy – all the pomp and pageantry of recent days insists that we do. In ways that should matter, the monarch is there to protect the people, every single one of us, from the ambitions of here-today-and-gone-tomorrow politicians.

In a constitutional monarchy there is a deep and powerful truth which makes it worth having above all alternatives – which is to say that in the end it is the people of a true constitutional monarchy, that govern the country. Protected by a constitutional monarch living and embodying the reality of their coronation oath, no institution – no monarch, no parliament, no judiciary, no civil service – outranks the people. Put simply, we tell them all what to do – and if they are playing their sworn and honest parts as described by the constitution – they get on and do what we have told them to do.

In the end, each of us is answerable only to a jury of our peers – and each and every jury is empowered also to judge the very justice of the law itself.

In a constitutional monarchy, we the people have all the power we will ever need to protect ourselves from any and all. It is the living out day by day, of the constitution – not just voting once every five years – that manifests, and so makes real, the true power of democracy.

This is a moment in our history, make no mistake. We will see in the days and weeks ahead how our future is being shaped.

But here’s the thing: in recent times the powers-that-be had seemed to relish telling us that it is not just change that lies ahead, but necessary pain. If the people must be cold and hungry, leading smaller, limited lives, then so be it, they said. It’s for the greater good. No pain no gain and all that. But as the world’s cameras made plain for all to see, the line filing patiently towards and past the Queen’s coffin was made not of faceless numbers, cogs in a machine, but of unique individuals, one after another in a seemingly endless procession.

The vast majority were maskless, every one of them visible. Pain will not be felt and endured by faceless masses, but by those individual people. Rather than hidden away out of sight – as they were for months of lockdown – the people of Britain, the silent majority among them, were there to be seen, if not heard.

In the end, that’s what Britain is, if it is anything at all worthy of the name – millions of equal, sovereign, free individuals who know who they are and what they want. World leaders will shortly descend upon London – leaders demonstrably minded to seize and hold on to unimaginable power over our lives. There will be no better time to be visible to those leaders, to have them look a sovereign people in the eyes.

Someone, somewhere better be paying attention.

Queen Elizabeth II Now Lies in State at Westminster Hall for Four Days


Posted originally on the conservative tree house on September 14, 2022 | Sundance

Formal Information on Events from UK Army – At the stroke of 2:22pm this afternoon, Her Majesty The Queen’s coffin was carried in procession on a gun carriage of The King’s Troop Royal Horse Artillery from Buckingham Palace to Westminster Hall, where she will lie in state for four days ahead of her State Funeral on Monday 19 September 2022.

At 2:22pm on the dot, guns were fired from Hyde Park by The King’s Troop Royal Horse Artillery – one round every minute for the duration of the procession, meaning approximately 38 rounds were fired. Leading the procession out of Buckingham Palace and along The Mall was the dismounted detachment of The Life Guards of the Household Cavalry, featuring more than 50 soldiers.

As Her Majesty arrived in Westminster, the coffin was carried in procession by a bearer party of The Queen’s Company 1st Battalion Grenadier Guards from the gun carriage and placed on a raised platform, known as a catafalque, into Westminster Hall.

After a short service, the captain of The Queen’s Company 1st Battalion Grenadier Guards, assisted by a senior sergeant, laid The Queen’s Company Colour, the royal standard of the regiment, on the steps of the catafalque at the south end.

A continuous vigil will be kept by His Majesty’s Body Guard of the Honourable Corps of Gentlemen at Arms, assisted at times by The King’s Body Guard for Scotland (The Royal Company of Archers), The King’s Body Guard of the Yeomen of the Guard, assisted by The Body of Yeomen Warders of HM Tower of London, and by units of the Household Division.

Those units will include: The Household Cavalry, the Grenadier Guards, the Coldstream Guards, the Scots Guards, the Irish Guards and the Welsh Guards. Each period of 24 hours will be divided into four watches. Except for the first and last, each of the 20 watches will last for 6 hours. Within each watch, a Vigil will last for 20 minutes.

[Formal Details Here]