Beware of April 2023


Armstrong Economics Blog/Russia Re-Posted Sep 25, 2022 by Martin Armstrong

There is a serious question as to why the Western press has been putting out nothing but one-sided propaganda. I have been warned that my sources in Russia are concerned that the hardliners behind the scene have been critical of Putin for NOT being more aggressive. Of course, there is the youth protesting over the war and the Western press has been happy to project only that image.

Today, for the very first time, the New York Times has actually reported what I have been reporting for weeks:

“Powerful, well positioned and ideologically committed, they want a much more aggressive war effort. “

I am concerned that if Putin is overthrown, the propaganda of the Western press makes it sound like everything will be back to normal. That is so far from the truth, it is not even funny. The Pi Target from the fall of the Soviet Union will be April 6th, 2023. Zelensky stood up on February 23rd, 2022 and said he wanted to restore nukes in Ukraine in direct violation of all the agreements since 1991. The next day Putin invaded.

John McCain was there at Maidan promising US support to overthrow Yanukovich and to create a revolution against Russia. It was John McCain who was pushing to fund the proxy way against Putin in 2014. In December 2016 after Trump was elected, he traveled to Ukraine promising military support to wage war on Russia backing the neo-nazis. Trump rejected that and that is why McCain hated Trump. McCain has been pushing war with Russia all along. It was the US-installed “interim” government in 2014 that began the civil war attacking the Donbas and the Minsk Agreement was brokered by Germany and France to allow the Donbas to vote on their separation from Ukraine. Zelensky has refused to recognize that agreement.

Zelensky promised peace and the end of corruption. He has done the exact opposite. He rejected Henry Kissinger’s advice to let the Donbas vote. Zelensky would rather destroy his entire country than yield “one inch” to Russia.

I am deeply concerned that if Putin falls for any reason, we are looking at significant risk and our computer’s forecast back in 2013 that Ukraine will be the hot sport, is exactly on track. Russia has its hawks just as we have had to endure John McCain who has supported endless wars for his personal vendetta. Despite his death, other has taken up the agenda and are working hard for war with Russia and the Hawks are doing in Russia and China right now. The smartest play they can make is to attack Taiwan and go fully into Ukraine simultaneously. The West is economically too weak to support a war on two fronts simultaneously. I cannot believe our world leaders are this stupid.

Allow the Donbas to vote and monitor it by independent observers from both sides. The people are predominantly Russia and they are Russian Orthodox, which Zelensky has also outlawed their religion. It will be hands down that they vote for their independence. The alternative is not something we really want to head into cheering for our own destruction on both sides.

Conservative Nationalist Giorgia Meloni Wins Big in Italian Election, Certain to Become First Female Prime Minister


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

GREAT NEWS – Looks like the Italians have decided to Make Italy Great Again and voted overwhelmingly to support Giorgia Meloni and the nationalist coalition.  With an anticipated 45% of the exit polls, this outcome will almost certainly make Giorgia Meloni the first female prime minister in Italy.

Giorgia Meloni’s electoral alliance is holding a wide lead in Italy’s national vote. Exit polls on state television are putting the ‘Brothers of Italy’ result around 45%, with an alliance of League leader Matteo Salvini and conservative former Premier Silvio Berlusconi resulting in a solid majority in Parliament.

Rai state broadcaster said the closest contender, the center-left alliance of former Democratic Party Premier Enrico Letta, has apparently garnered only 29.5% of the vote.

ROME, Sept 26 (Reuters) – Giorgia Meloni, head of the nationalist Brothers of Italy party, said on Monday Italian voters had given a clear mandate to the right to form the next government and called for unity to help confront the country’s many problems.

“If we are called upon to govern this nation, we will do so for all Italians, with the aim of uniting the people, of exalting what unites them rather than what divides them,” Meloni told reporters. “We will not betray your trust.” (link)

Lega (League) leader Matteo Salvini, Forza Italia leader Silvio Berlusconi and Brothers of Italy leader Giorgia Meloni

The European Union bureaucrats have lots of sad tonight.

The Police State Is Here (Ep. 1850) – The Dan Bongino Show


The Dan Bongino Show Published originally on the conservative tree house on September 13, 2022

In this episode, I address the shocking new moves by the deep state to intimidate and frighten team Trump. I also show disturbing video about digital currencies and how they plan to use them.

Hillary Clinton Compares Trump Supporters to Nazi’s Following Hitler, as Baseline for Denying Autocracy of Democrats


Posted originally on the conservative tree houe on September 24, 2022 | Sundance

There it is again. A lot of attention is being paid to the remarks by Hillary Clinton where she compared President Trump MAGA rallies to Adolf Hitler rallies and President Trump supporters to Nazis. However, that’s not the dynamic that should be emphasized.

The real issue at the heart of the leftist nonsense is the part where they keep contrasting “democracy” vs “autocracy.”

It’s an issue I keep referring to {Here and Here and Here} because their nonsense is so easy to deconstruct.  Never has there been a more obvious example of Democrats acting as unilateral Autocrats as was exhibited during the COVID-19 crisis.  Biden literally mandated a vaccine.  Democrat governors and officials literally mandated rules and regulations by fiat with zero representative input.

For a full year of COVID-19, Donald Trump never dictated a single mandate and deferred everything to the states.  Trump’s unwillingness to force action, including federal mask mandates, became an election year campaign issue.  However, as soon as they took power, the Joe Biden authoritarian government, in combination with the state leaders who supported it, instantly became most autocratic, non-democratic, leaders in modern U.S. history.  Yet, in order to retain their insane ideological projection, all of them – including Hillary Clinton in this soundbite – must deny and pretend not to know that reality.  WATCH:

[Transcript] – “I remember as a young student, you know, trying to figure out how did people get, um, basically, bought in by Hitler?  How did that happen? And I watched newsreels and I’d see this guy standing up there and ranting and raving, and people shouting and raising their arms, and I thought – what’s happened to these people, why did they believe that?  

“I saw the rally in Ohio the other night, Trump is there ranting and raving for more than an hour, and you have these rows of young men with their arms raised. I thought, what is going on?  So, there is a real pressure, and I think it is fair to say we are in a struggle between democracy and autocracy.”

“You know, I believe one of the reasons that Putin decided ‘what the heck, I’m going to go invade Ukraine, I’m going to go and take them over, you know in three or four days’, is because he assumed if Trump had been reelected, Trump would have pulled us out of NATO, and then Trump didn’t end up back in the White House.”  

Man, I would love to have a few minutes with these knuckleheads, ask questions and challenge their bulls**t.

The History Books Will Prove This is an Industrial Example of The Great Pretending


Posted originally on the conservative tree house on September 24, 2022 | Sundance 

This is epic. This is like listening to Grandpa rail against the Federal Reserve and central banks without realizing the motive behind what the Federal Reserve and central banks are doing.   This is the best example to date of the misconception behind ‘The Great Pretending.’

U of Penn, Wharton Business School professor of finance, Jeremy Siegel, rails against Jerome Powell and the central bankers for raising interest rates into a collapsing western global economy.  Everything, everything he outlines, is essentially accurate about the damage being done to western economies. …. Except the biggest realization and acceptance is missing…. It’s being done by design.  The people he outlines are not making a mistake, they are doing it on purpose.  First, WATCH:

The U.S, EU, CA, AU and western economic central bankers did not respond sooner to the inflation crisis (2021) because the central banks were waiting for the politicians in their systems to establish the energy policy that their pre-planned action was intended to support.  [<- Reread that if needed].

Once the collective Build Back Better/Climate Change energy policy was established (2021), and after the resulting inflation created the justification for the central bank action, then -and only then- did the central bankers trigger the next phase of raising interest rates (2022) to reduce western economic activity and support the Build Back Better agenda.

All of this was by design.  None of this was by mistake.  The process, strategy and timing were all part of the Build Back Better agenda.  Purposefully created inflation, the result of the energy policy, was planned and used by the central banks to justify the rate increases.  It was a self-fulfilling prophecy built into the Build Back Better roadmap.

Now these ‘bankers’ are trying to collapse the economy to meet the reduction in energy production.  The bankers are supporting the political motives of the politicians.  This is all intentional.  Jeremy Siegel misses this core and fundamental aspect.   However, some of the lesser ideological western leaders (politicians) are starting to get ‘cold feet.’

The U.S, EU, France, Canada and Australia/New Zealand are ‘all-in.’   Joe Biden (U.S.), Justin Trudeau (CA), Jacinda Ardern (NZ), Emmanuel Macron (FR) and Ursula von der Leyen (EU) are unwavering and all in.  All of their central bank control officers are also all-in, including Christine Legarde (EU).  These unflinching ideologues are not going to budge, but some of the politicians within their economic systems are starting to get cold feet.

Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida was the first to express reservations about the collective goal to sink their economy.  German Chancellor Olaf Scholz is also realizing he may not survive unless he cuts the cord tying him to the Build Back Better anchor of un-survivable renewable energy policy.  The recently installed British Prime Minister Liz Truss is also trying to untangle the knot tied by Boris Johnson, as her nation now suffers with double digit energy price increases.  These are the first fractures in the coalition since the Build Back Better agreement was made.

Jeremy Siegel is correct as to the outcome, but he -like almost all western financial pundits- are blind to the true motive.  Siegel is blaming it on incompetence, instead of going back to the original Build Back Better design as openly expressed by the central banks and politicians in 2020.   They were not hiding it.

The collective western leadership openly said this exact scenario was what they were going to do coming out of the useful COVID-19 pandemic.

The Western leaders openly stated they were going to use the time of lowered economic activity (created by the pandemic) as a gauge to measure and deploy a permanent change to the global system of energy development.  They were going to exit the pandemic with a new focus on climate change and new energy systems.

That pandemic “exit” was the gateway into the “economic transition” that all of the western leaders then began describing.

Throughout 2021 traditional oil, coal and natural gas exploitation was reduced by policy.  Inflation skyrocketed while the central bankers waited like kids playing double-dutch jump rope.  Wait,…. summer 2021…..  wait, fall 2021….. wait, winter 2021… wait, spring 2022…. and then, after the energy policy cemented,…   “NOW” run in and jump – Summer 2022, with the rate hikes.   The timing was by design.

Can you see it now?

Mulvaney, Goolsbee and Santelli Finally Discuss Supply Side Energy Driven Inflation and the Disconnect of The Political Federal Reserve


Posted Originally on the conservative tree house on September 23, 2022 | Sundance

Mulvaney, Goolsbee and Santelli Finally Discuss Supply Side Energy Driven Inflation and the Disconnect of The Political Federal Reserve

September 23, 2022 | Sundance | 51 Comments

Finally, a finance and economic discussion that touches on the critical component to inflation that no one dare say, or else they suffer political backlash.  Although Mick Mulvaney, Austin Goolsbee and to a lesser extent, Rick Santelli, had to maintain the acceptable ‘pretending’ approach, parsing words carefully, at least this is one of the first times where the supply side (energy driven) issue of global inflation was discussed.

As the group collectively admitted there is no other option other than a “hard landing” that collapses the economy from the current Fed approach; additionally, Rick Santelli, blasts the relationship between the political central banks and the global leaders who have pressured this dynamic.  WATCH:

.

Still pretending, but lessened a little.  Hey, progress.

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.

Checkbook Economics, Household Expenses Rise $961 Per Month, $11,532/yr, While Incomes Remain Flat


Posted originally on the conservative tree house on September 22, 2022 | Sundance

With most financial media being intentionally obtuse with the Biden economic impact upon Main Street, it is refreshing to see analysis that cuts to the heart of the matter.  HatTip to ZeroHedge who provides a link to a great article outlining reality for blue and white-collar working families.

The folks at NerdWallet have taken the inflation date from the Bureau of Labor and Statistics (BLS) and applied the math to real life.  The result is a good encapsulation of checkbook economics and how the Biden economy is painful for the working class.

In total, Joe Biden’s energy policy driven inflation has added $961/month to preexisting expenses.  That’s $11,532 a year just to retain the status quo standard of living.

(NerdWallet) – […] In all of 2020, American households spent $61,300, on average. This number includes everything we spend our money on: housing, food, entertainment, clothing, transportation and everything else. In 2022, it stands to reach $72,900, a difference of more than $11,500 if consumers want to maintain the same standard of living. Keep in mind, this is an average, a number that represents an approximation across all Americans, but one that’s exact to a very few. Those who earn (and therefore spend) more will see more dramatic dollar increases. Those who earn less may see less dramatic dollar jumps, but the impact of these rising prices could be more significantly felt. (read more)

If the average household spent $61,300 and inflation is adding $11,500 to the expense, that means we now have to spend 18.7% more just to maintain the current standard of living.  That average is in line with what we are seeing in the real world.

KASH PATEL: THE REAL REASON DEM RUN COUNTIES ARE NO LONGER SAFE


The Charlie Kirk Show Published originally on Rumble on September 21, 2022

A very good discussion with a good idea!

Interview WORLD FIRST: The Plot to Seize Russia, War Propaganda, and More


Armstrong Economics Blog/Armstrong in the Media Re-Posted Sep 22, 2022 by Martin Armstrong

Listen to my latest interview with Maria from Zeee Media.

Description from Maria:

World renowned economist Martin Armstrong joins us to break the story of the several-decade long plan to seize Russia, detailing how he has obtained declassified documents from the Clinton Administration, and how he was previously targeted for possessing this knowledge – which he is finally able to release.

Martin takes us through his encounter with an alleged terrorist from 9/11 while he served in prison, who was actually a Pakistani Christian that was framed by the US Government. We also discuss world events, war propaganda, and Martin’s insight into where we are heading.