A man attempted to purchase strawberries with cash at an Aldi grocery store in the UK, possibly leading to his arrest. They want us to adjust to the cashless society that will implement globally by the World Economic Forum under its Digital Currency Governance Consortium. Some call cash “hard currency” to further differentiate it from the coming digital world of finance. Piers Corbyn, who happens to be the brother of British Labour Party leader Piers Corbyn, has gone viral for what many are calling an act of rebellion against the globalists.
The Aldi in Greenwich only accepts payments through the Aldi App. Aldi implemented this measure during COVID and never repealed it. Stores are commonly banning all cash transactions, and it is legal for them to deny cash. These stores may not realize that the WEF will soon implement one “globally coordinated approach to [digital currency] regulation” and their individual apps will be obsolete.
As for Corbyn, he placed his cash on the counter and left the store with his strawberries. People cheered as he left the store. Aldi employees called the authorities. “I’m offering exactly the right amount of money here,” he announced, “I’ve paid my legal tender.”
“Legal tender” is merely any form of payment accepted by law. So while the “hard currency” produced by the Royal Mint may be considered legal tender to some, the grey area here is that sellers do not need to accept it as a form of payment. So what was once a commonly accepted legal tender is now fiat, containing no intrinsic value without the backing of CONFIDENCE.
When the gold coin was money during the 19th century, it rose and fell in purchasing power no different than any paper currency. You cannot walk into a grocery today and pay in gold. People only accepted paper money because they knew others would accept it as a form of payment. Fiat is simply an arbitrary decree.
Governments are telling the people loud and clear that cash will be phased out. They are making us accustomed to the idea, gaslighting us into thinking digital is more convenient. The truth of the matter is that the day will come when they ask us all to turn in our “hard currencies” in exchange for CBDC. I applaud this man for his act of bravery and hope he was not arrested over a pint of strawberries.
The victor gets to write history, and that is precisely what the LEFT did with FDR and the New Deal. You will never be an accurate analyst unless you accept that you are duty-bound to investigate the truth no matter where it may lead. The myth of the New Deal and its success in dragging the United States out of the Great Depression still prevails. This myth was the LEFT rewriting history, which truly became the propaganda that the Democrats had clung to right up to now, the Green New Deal.
This country had a massive Red Scare following World War I from 1918 to 1923. They were targeting Russians and assuming they were all just Communists when many fled here from Communism. The Department of Justice (DOJ) exploited it just as they did terrorists. When we were going to hold a conference at the Convention Center in Philadelphia owned by the government, they demanded that we purchase Terrorist Insurance covering the entire city and the state. They did not disclose that in advance and stole our deposit when I refused to comply – typical government. The DOJ gained more power, and we suddenly had to take off our shoes to board a plane – the only country to do such a thing.
The paranoia created was used to launch Congressional hearings, censorship, and new sedition legislation used today by the Biden administration against Trump and his supporters, all because of this manufactured Red Scare. They ignored the fact that the vast majority of people who were Russians had fled Communism. Even the story of Saint Petersburg, Florida, got its name on a coin toss, as legend would have it. In 1875 John Constantine Williams of Detroit, Michigan, moved to Tampa and bought 2,500 acres of warm waterfront land that would eventually become St. Petersburg. Many years later, Peter Demens, who was an exiled Russian aristocrat fleeing Communism, financed the Orange Belt Railroad to Williams’s settlement. Williams and Demens flipped a coin to see who would name the city. Demens won the coin toss and named it after Saint Petersburg, Russia. Williams named the city’s first hotel after his birthplace, Detroit.
Then as now, they turned against anyone who was Russian. This was whipped up by the press and the Department of Justice as they did to the Japanese during World War II. It just seemed that they had to target someone, and this time it appeared to be Trump supporters. The interesting fact is that the Red Scare was exposed as FAKE. By 1923, the Red Scare was exposed as being manufactured to generate business. They were also targeting unions. The first victim of the Red Scare was the union of mine workers.
Nevertheless, it was during the New Deal that the real communists infiltrated Roosevelt’s Administration. The New York Times celebrated Joesph Stalin and communism as the future and cure for the Great Depression. Their top journalist Walter Duranty (1884-1957) even convinced Roosevelt to recognize Russia. Duranty met with Roosevelt to convince him that Communism was working and to encourage his New Deal. The mainstream press in the 1930s was very much touting the Communists. They wanted to hear of Utopia and so reported only what they wanted to believe, as they are doing once again.
The New York Times (NYT) journalist Walter Duranty on March 31, 1933, denounced reports of famine to cover up the fact that Stalin stole all the food from Ukraine. The NYT was so pro-Communism that this was the natural infiltration of Reds, but nobody did anything about that. They wanted to hear of Utopia and so reported only what they wanted to believe, as they are doing once again. The New York Times even promoted Duranty to be awarded the Pulitzer Prize for that reporting fake news. When Gareth Jones (1905-1935) in March of 1933 said this was all a lie, the truth finally began to appear. It took the New York Times until 1990 to admit they engaged in fake news pushing communism, covering up the famine in Ukraine to suggest that Stalinism was the Utopia they wanted to impose in the United States. The NYT wrote that their reporting on the Russian Revolution constituted “some of the worst reporting to appear in this newspaper.” Duranty was doing this also to support Roosevelt’s New Deal. He helped install drastic progressiveness in taxation.
Roosevelt’s New Deal was based on Marxism. His first Brain Trust consisted of a group of Columbia Law School professor Adolf Berle, Jr. (1895-1971) and an economist Raymond Moley (1886-1975). In mid-1933, Moley began his break with Roosevelt when he saw that he was becoming increasingly Marxist. He abandoned Roosevelt entirely by 1936 when it became clear that the New Deal had failed. Roosevelt replaced Moley with a decisively leftist economist named Rexford Tugwell (12891-1979). Moley became highly critical of Roosevelt and Tugwell’s policies to such an extent he switched parties and became a Republican.
Tugwell, an academic economist, embraced the Utopian ideas of Stalinism. It was Stalin who Lenin warned should not follow him. Lenin wanted Communism, but each state retained its sovereignty, whereas Stalin was authoritarian and imposed central planning and carried out his Great Purge of 1937-1938, killing between 700,000 and 1.2 million, involving anyone he thought would oppose his central planning. Tugwell sought to impose Stalin’s central panning and crafted much of the legislation in those years that cartelized industry, controlled prices, and embarked on Soviet-style projects. Tugwell was a great admirer of Soviet “achievements” in agriculture and housing, believing the fake news published by the New York Times. Roosevelt even sought to stack the Supreme Court with Soviet admirers to overrule the U.S. Constitution to create this tremendous new Soviet Utopia in America.
All of these regulations did not save the United States – they actually made it far worse. LEFTIST historians have reached a consensus that regards the accomplishments of the New Deal as the major watershed event constituting a definitive dividing line in American social-economic history. These historians present the Roosevelt administration as marking the end of the passive state dominated by big business interests and the beginning of the interventionist state. This new interventionist state was designed to curb the concentrations of business power, claiming to be the protector of the rights and interests of the powerless and underprivileged. They have projected that they alone will secure the general welfare against the capitalists and their profit-seeking agenda. Against this revision of history, the opponents saw this New Deal as a conspiracy of leftist intellectuals with the help of labor union factions. Career politicians have always maintained the public image of Marxist Socialism while selling favors for money to lobbyists.
“Mrs. Clinton said she dreamed of “open trade and open borders” throughout the Western Hemisphere. Citing the back-room deal-making and arm-twisting used by Abraham Lincoln, she mused on the necessity of having “both a public and a private position” on politically contentious issues. Reflecting in 2014 on the rage against political and economic elites that swept the country after the 2008 financial crash, Mrs. Clinton acknowledged that her family’s rising wealth had made her “kind of far removed” from the struggles of the middle class.”
Consequently, the New Deal was the 20th-century evolution of the Marxist Interventionist State. Ironically, they would cut special favors for big business that allowed the Leftist Agenda to take hold. By introducing regulations to intervene in the economy, they corrupted the government by endorsing the rise of lobbyists. What actually took place was that where big businessmen had failed to achieve monopolies during the 19th century, they turned to the Federal Government for protections of various sorts. This even allowed companies by Pfizer to be protected from lawsuits for their failure to provide safe drugs.
The great achievement reached a climax with the passage of the NationiaI Industrial Recovery Act (NIRA) of June 1933. This was one of the measures by which Roosevelt sought to assist the nation’s economic recovery during the Great Depression. This was a unique experiment in economic history that sanctioned, supported, and also enforced an alliance of industries. The Sherman Antitrust laws were actually suspended. Roosevelt insisted that companies were required to write industry-wide “codes of fair competition” that effectively fixed prices and wages, created production quotas, and imposed restrictions on the entry of other companies into the alliances. This was seeking Soviet-style control over industry without seizing private ownership. Promises of self-regulation enticed companies and declared codes of fair competition. While it was marketed as protecting consumers, competitors, and employers, the country’s various industries were to write their own regulations. Employees were given the right to organize and bargain collectively in unions. They were not to be required to join or refrain from joining a labor organization as a condition of employment.
The National Recovery Administration (NRA) was created by the National Industrial Recovery Act (NIRA) and was engaged chiefly in drawing up these industrial codes for all industries to adopt until March 1934. More than 500 codes of fair practice were adopted for various industries. Patriotic appeals were made to the public, and firms were asked to display the Blue Eagle, an emblem signifying NRA participation. However, in 1935, the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously declared the NRA unconstitutional. They held that it infringed the separation of powers under the United States Constitution. The NRA stopped operations. However, Roosevelt was not deterred, and much of the labor provisions reappeared in the National Labor Relations Act, passed later the same year – 1935. This resulted in the one-sided LEFTIST power of unions, which were the core of the New Deal but led to serious corruption over the course of the next three decades.
Yes, I know, we’ll never get rid of the Myth that the New Deal saved us, but the reality is that the Great Depression lasted longer than it would have otherwise taken due to the FDR intervention. We can see that unemployment was still greater than 10% even in 1937 despite the rally in the stock market between 1932 into 1937. It was 1938 when Roosevelt passed the Fair Labor Standards Act establishing a minimum wage. It was also when Hitler marched into Austria, establishing a geographical union of Germany and Austria. Then there was the Munich Pact, where Britain, France, and Italy agreed to let Germany partition Czechoslovakia.
As we can see, the worst unemployment actually took place in 1936, some four years after FDR was elected. So much for his policies reversing the Great Depression. The real event was war, which is why FDR allowed Pearl Harbor to occur. The scandal was that we had broken the Japanese CODE, so the question was, why did we allow Pearl Harbor to take place? They concluded that there was no direct evidence that FDR knew.
COMMENT: Mr. Armstrong, I have been impressed by your Economic Confidence Model. You said there would be no recession until after 2024. You were really the only one who said that. Now Bloomberg reported that the forecasters who “were first out of the box to predict a US recession” are now hedging their bets. They mention Deutsche Bank Vice Chair of Research Peter Hooper and Fannie Mae chief economist Doug Duncan. However, Nomura Securities International senior economist Aichi Amemiya still says a recession is coming, but “it’s getting to be a close call.”
Not one of the significant houses seems ever to get it right. I just wanted to say your model shines a light on the whole analysis field. I can’t wait for your Geometry of Time.
DF
REPLY: Thank you. It has been a most interesting experience. As I said, this is something I bumped into. I did not go looking for such a model. It was something that found me, as many say it was my destiny, even growing up in a house with the address of 314 South Lippincott Ave, in Maple Shade, New Jersey.
These are the books I am trying to get out this year. The Geometry of Time will be next year. The Mark Anthony book should be on Amazon and Barnes & Noble in a couple of weeks. That is, using the coinage to demonstrate what the real story is behind Cleopatra. She was certainly not black as NETFLIX presented to rewrite history for the WOKE agenda. This is very similar to the USA using Ukraine in a proxy war to destroy Russia. Here, Cleopatra funded a war that the coinage was so massive; it still accounted for 20% of the money supply 100 years later.
The Modern Analysis is nearly finished. This goes precisely to the subject you have brought up. This is a reference book on my version of technical analysis, which is different from the mainstream, but it goes into the whole problem of analysis used by academics, which is blinding us to the reality of our actions.
The De-Dolarization demonstrates how this entire nonsense that hyperinflation is caused by just increasing the money supply, which is like saying the Great Depression took place simply because the stock market went down. Here too, the lack of any real investigative analysis has doomed the Eurozone because of the distorted view of the real cause of hyperinflation.
The Geometry of Time will be the companion to Modern Analysis for the 21st Century. This will deal with cycles from the how to the why. It has been academia’s refusal to embrace cyclical analysis and any form of technical analysis that prevent any worthwhile forecasting. This is why people like Larry Summers admit they cannot forecast the economy’s future.
QUESTION: Do you think the BRICS would create a gold-back currency as proposed by Russia?
SJ
ANSWER: The Neocon has directed the Biden administration to remove Russia from SWIFT. Their single-minded goal is destroying the world economy, but they do not care. They think they will conquer Russia and China and dominate the world so they will worry about the monetary system afterward.
You have to understand that if the BRICS followed that directive and created a single gold-back currency, they would have to end any idea of international trade. This proposal is understandable given the hostility of the United States from the Neocons, who are now in charge. Congress is oblivious to what is happening, and the American public is arguing over Transgender destroying the family unit.
This is not some simple one-dimensional idea that we create a limited-backed currency. That will be DEFLATIONARY and, at the same time, promote civil war in the United States. Politicians cannot run for office, promising endless gifts, forgiving student loans, etc. You cannot have deficits. This would NECESSITATE the end of Marxism once and for all.
This idea of a gold-back currency requires political change on a grand scale. That is coming. Post-2032 will be a new monetary and political system. Before then, they are pushing CBDC, and they will restrict what you can buy or sell, and this is all to retain power because they KNOW they are losing it. But in the process, they are destroying everything. The people who voted for Biden had no clue that they were voting for a coup and the ultimate destruction of Western civilization as we have known it.
I buy gold, but I also understand the game. I do not want gold-back currency; I prefer gold to remain as a hedge against the government. If they back the currency with gold, this time, they will be knocking down every door to confiscate it all.
These Neocons have already divided the world economy in two. They think they will conquer the world. The enemy is within.
There is a strong divergence within the May jobs report as released by the Bureau of Labor and Statistics (BLS) [DATA HERE]. Payrolls increased 339,000 in May from April and previous months were revised up by 93,000. That is good news. However, the household survey, from which the unemployment rate is derived, showed employment down 310,000 jobs and the unemployment rate increased to 3.7%.
One of the aspects driving higher payroll starts are the number of people taking on additional part-time jobs. This aspect is noted in a decline for the number of hours in the average workweek. As more PT jobs are added, the number of hours in a workweek declines. As noted in the BLS data, “the average workweek for all employees on private nonfarm payrolls edged down by 0.1 hour to 34.3 hours in May.”
There were 161.0 million people working in April. There are 160.7 million people working in May.
There were 5.7 million people unemployed in April. There are 6.1 million unemployed people in May.
The unemployment rate increased from 3.4% to 3.7%.
There are 310,000 fewer people working in May than were working in April. However, payrolls increased by 339,000 over the same timeframe. See graph above for where those jobs were gained.
(NBC) – […] Job gains were broad-based last month with health care contributing 52,000 and leisure and hospitality adding 48,000. Food services and drinking places led the increase in the latter industry, which had been adding an average of 77,000 jobs per month over the prior 12 months.
Overall, the U.S. economy added 339,000 jobs for the month, much better than the 190,000 Dow Jones estimate and marking the 29th straight month of positive job growth.
The unemployment rate rose to 3.7% in May against the estimate for 3.5%. The jobless rate was the highest since October 2022, though still near the lowest since 1969.
Olu Sonola, head of U.S. regional economics at Fitch Ratings, said the jobs report is a mixed bag.
“The strength of the payroll survey is clearly a big surprise, largely on the back of robust job growth in the healthcare sector and the business and professional services sector,” said Sonola. “However, the 0.3% increase in the unemployment rate is the highest monthly increase since April 2020.” (more)
WAGES – As noted within the BLS report, “In May, average hourly earnings for all employees on private nonfarm payrolls rose by 11 cents, or 0.3 percent, to $33.44. Over the past 12 months, average hourly earnings have increased by 4.3 percent.” Wage growth still lags inflation; the middle class is getting poorer. However, with the fed focused on wage growth as the leading indicator of their false pretenses to combat inflation, wage growth is too high (they want around 3.0%).
The Biden economic and monetary policies are delivering the results they want. Higher energy prices, higher costs of living, lower real wages and increased middle class pressure. The serf model.
The BLS was forced to admit yesterday their Real Hourly Compensation growth was previously flawed. [CHART DATA SOURCE]
That chart of revisions to real wages tells us a lot about the economic pain being felt by the working class in the U.S. If it feels like you are working harder and going backwards in your ability to afford basic essentials, that’s because you are.
The prices for essential goods and services have risen at a much greater rate than the wages needed to afford them. This is the result of Joe Biden’s energy policy, economic policy, and now magnifying monetary policy.
Our goods and housing costs are higher. Our wages are not growing much. The cost to borrow money to afford the gap is increasing. This is unsustainable.
In my opinion, the economy overall – as a measure of units produced and sold – has been in a contracting position since the fourth quarter of 2021. The appearance of economic growth, the value of goods and services, is an illusion that has been created by higher prices, ie. inflation.
Posted originally on the CTH on May 13, 2023 | Sundance
Recently I went to the supermarket to pick up some general provisions. Given the nature of previously predicted food price increases, and proactive measures to mitigate the predictable prices, I haven’t needed to purchase basic foodstuffs in a while. Yikes! The prices… Wow.
Since we originally warned in ’21 about the waves of food price inflation that were coming, the prices have more than tripled on many food commodities. That part is not as surprising in current review; however, the prices of processed foodstuffs is, well, quite frankly astounding.
I am left to wonder how working-class people are able to afford the jaw dropping price increases in highly processed food products like condiments (mayo, ketchup, mustard, etc), and even coffee and milk. I knew the processing costs would drive those prices, but the scale is just astounding.
Beyond the foodstuff, what was truly stunning was the current price of non-food items at the store. Items like chemical cleaners, soaps, aluminum foil, trash bags, Styrofoam products, ziploc bags, paper goods, etc. I mean seriously, $8 for a box of trash bags, good grief.
After a review of the non-food item prices, I went back to the recent BLS report [DATA HERE] to look at the producer price index to see if the data reflected the scale of the processing cost that I was reviewing across a broad spectrum of goods.
Are consumers getting gouged by manufacturers who are taking advantage of the price shock inside the ongoing inflation?
Or are the processing costs, mostly driven by energy price increases, really that big a factor in the end product as it is generated?
In the topline final demand Producer Price Index [Table A above] you can see how we are cycling through the second wave of inflation that hit in the spring of 2022. The rate of price increase is lower, but the prices are still rising. That means the prior massive price increase is now baked into the product, and the current price will never decline. Instead, it will just increase at a slower rate than before.
However, that’s not the full story… and that is not the data I was most curious about.
The intermediate product costs are really where the story is found.
Raw materials (unprocessed goods) are essentially in a deflationary status [-19.2% in April]. Meaning demand for the raw material has dropped well below the available supply. However, look at how much of the deflationary price is consumed in the processing of the raw materials.
A full 16% is consumed by processing cost increases [energy, physical plant, transit, production costs etc]. That is remarkable.
A random example might be citric acid. The price of the citrus base drops 19.2%, but the processing of the base into the intermediate good phase chews up 16% of the drop in raw material price and exits processing only 3.2% lower in price than a year prior.
Another example might be found in plastics. The petroleum base, and/or a combination of each material additive, might be 19.2% lower than prior year, but processing negates the lower raw material price, and exits into intermediate essentially even -.04, and then toward the ending +2.3% final demand change in the rate of price increase.
The PPI data is essentially showing the flow of costs of production as reflected in the impact during processing. We can assume mostly increases in energy, transport and distribution costs to bring the raw material forward to final good status.
Key takeaway, the demand side of the raw material is diminished. There is less raw material demand. However, processing costs are continuing to drive the final production price of goods that head into the hands of wholesalers who then bring the product to market.
The outcome of this are the prices of processed goods as noted in the products on the shelves.
QUESTION: Are you noticing rather remarkable price increases in non-food goods during your store visits?
ANSWER: Your problem is the assumption that everything must be trading at some fair value. That is up there with the theory of random walks. ALL markets trade for periods where they remain well below fair value. That was the entire takeover boom of the 1980s which they also blamed on me because I was advising many of the takeover players. I simply showed these charts back then which show in terms of book value, the Dow Jones bottomed in 1977. The market was grossly undervalued because you could buy a company, sell all its tangible assets, and double or triple your money. Michael Douglas’ famous speech in that movie about “greed” would not even be possible if everything always trade like some mythical robot at fair value. Everything overshoots and undershoots.
The metals are NO DIFFERENT. Every market swings between grossly UNDERVALUED and then grossly OVERVALUED. This is part of the business cycle. If there were no periods of gross undervaluations, there would not be a sudden boom either.
This is what you have to come to grips with. There is such a thing and the business cycle. Our cyclical analysis would not be possible if everything was trading at a flat line of fair value. This nonsense in metals is made up of people who have been wrong, and need to blame someone else. It is like blaming climate cycles on CO2. This notion of fair value is rooted, I hate to tell you, in Marxism, because he too did not understand the business cycle.
QUESTION: Good afternoon – Will try to make this one quick. Know you are busy. Have you ever asked Socrates how to “defeat” its predictions? Or to reduce volatility/amplitude of projected events?
(Really, you should be recognized alongside Adam Smith, Ricardo, et al. for your discoveries and contributions.)
JN
ANSWER: Because the entire world is connected, it does not appear that it is possible to prevent an event from unfolding. I have come to the conclusion that the best we can ever hope to accomplish is to reduce the magnitude of volatility.
The CFTC had even subpoenaed me demanding a list of all my clients worldwide. I defeated them in court. Their argument was that I had been manipulating the world economy and by turning over my client list, they would prove the magnitude of my influence. These people do not believe in forecasting for they only believe in manipulating society. Even Larry Summers claimed that if you create a model that actually worked, then that would dictate the future.
What these people miss is the fact that we are all connected globally. This is why government IS THE PROBLEM for they think that they can manipulate the future. But since we are all connected globally, it is impossible for one nation to alter the course of the global trend.
The world economy cannot be manipulated. It is far too complex to alter the course of the entire globe. It has been governments that have always created war. Look at every time the bankers thought that they had the guaranteed perfect trade, they have blown up and run to the government for bailouts.
Their allegation against me has never changed. If I say gold will double and it does, it is ONLY because I have too many people as followers rather than the fact that the computer has identified the trend.
So Socrates has confirmed on many occasions – the world economy must travel through these cycles. It is just how society functions.
Imagine if you could have bought a loaf of bread in 1932 for 7 cents. That 7 cents would be $3.09 today would be a gain of 4,414%. Of course, you could not even freeze it that long. That is also the problem with many who sell investments. Gold was $20.67 in 1932 so that has been a gain of 8990%. On the other hand, the Dow Jones Industrials bottomed in 1932 at 40.56. That has been a gain of 83,992%.
In 1955, the Dreyfus Fund was established by a New York stockbroker named Jack J. Dreyfus, Jr. (1913–2009) It was Dreyfus who acquired the open-end Nesbett Fund, which had $2.3 million in assets. This ambitious stockbroker renamed the fund bestowing his own family name upon it which would become a household word in the decades ahead. By year end, the assets grew to $5.6 million as 1955 drew to a close. The best decision Dreyfus made was to buy 400 shares of an unlisted stock. That “sleeper” stock was Polaroid which he bought for $31 7/8. Dreyfus would watch this single purchase rise to $6,372 per share – not counting splits – in the years ahead. This outstanding performance almost single-handedly led to the mutual fund boom in the 1960s.
Sometimes a new technology paves the way for something that changes the game.
I have created this site to help people have fun in the kitchen. I write about enjoying life both in and out of my kitchen. Life is short! Make the most of it and enjoy!
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