Category Economics

Nov 4 2023

Jobs, Wages and Official Labor Reports Continue Showing Major Disconnects from Reality on Main Street


Posted originally on the CTH on November 3, 2023 | Sundance 

I have not written as much about the economic analysis coming from the official institutions of government because, well, quite frankly, none of it has made sense for several months.  In this era of great pretending, I am reminded of the official catchphrase which began in 2021, “managing the transition.”

When you contemplate that “managing the transition” can also equate to controlling public opinion, and when you overlap the dynamic of large U.S. institutions manipulating information in order to control that opinion, then suddenly the trust in the data evaporates.   When the reality of the economic situation you can measure, gauge, and sense on Main Street is increasingly detached from the government data about what’s happening on Main Street, things get weird.

EXAMPLE TODAY – Bureau of Labor and Statistics: “Total nonfarm payroll employment increased by 150,000 in October, and the unemployment rate changed little at 3.9 percent.” That’s the topline as announced.

Then you drop to the adjustments on the same report: “The change in total nonfarm payroll employment for August was revised down by 62,000, from +227,000 to +165,000, and the change for September was revised down by 39,000, from +336,000 to +297,000. With these revisions, employment in August and September combined is 101,000 lower than previously reported.”

September and October are generally significant upticks in labor, as the process for holiday preparation (shipping, transport, etc.) are underway.  However, that historic pattern is no longer applicable.  We see consumer trends in a downward direction, general uneasiness of the economic situation is relayed by businesses and consumers who are the key to reality, and yet the official reporting reflects something entirely different.  Thus, you must ask yourself if this is part of the aforementioned “managing the transition.”

Additionally, staying with the bigger (non-pretending) picture, the U.S. government intentionally imports 7.5 million illegal aliens.  Where are they in the data of employment conditions?   Is there a metric that can evaluate the impact of a non-skilled labor influx that takes place simultaneous to a negative economic reality of inflation and diminished wages felt by those traditionally measured.

When you look carefully at the data provided by the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA), the Dept of Labor (DoL) and the Bureau of Labor and Statistics (BLS), what you come away with is the data-driven impression of something that you cannot actually see in the reality of the economic world around you.  Quite simply, none of it makes sense.

If you begin talking about the disconnect, you enter a sphere of sounding like a conspiracy theorist.   Would the official institutions of economic analysis actually manipulate data as an outcome of the larger goal to “manage the transition”?  For me the answer is an emphatic, yes.   However, how do you quantify that disconnect when the people with a vested interest in hiding any conflict are the same people who control the release of the data?

It is a reality that 75% of the American people feel their economic situation has worsened and continues to be worse.  Many people are increasingly incapable of staying ahead of increases in cost of living.  Govt institutions say inflation has come under control, yet the prices continue skyrocketing and everyone can feel it.  Financial insecurity is the new normal amid a growing population, while the managers of the transition say, ‘all is well.’

The only thing that brings a person back from the world of crazy speak, is a review of actual ground reports on Main Street from people who are living their daily lives and trying to cope with the costs of maintaining that standard.  Almost everyone expresses having more difficulty keeping their financial head above water.  Yet the data released by government paints a different picture.   The distance between reality and ‘official data’ has never been wider than it is today.

Fewer goods are being manufactured.  Fewer goods are being shipped.  Fewer sales are taking place.   In a naturally contracting cycle this would mean less jobs.  However, the data shows job growth.

♦Health care added 58,000 jobs in October, in line with the average monthly gain of 53,000 over the prior 12 months. Over the month, employment continued to trend up in ambulatory health care services (+32,000), hospitals (+18,000), and nursing and residential care facilities (+8,000).
♦Employment in government increased by 51,000 in October and has returned to its pre-pandemic February 2020 level. Monthly job growth in government had averaged 50,000 in the prior 12 months. In October, employment continued to trend up in local government (+38,000).
♦Social assistance added 19,000 jobs in October, compared with the average monthly gain of 23,000 over the prior 12 months.
♦In October, construction employment continued to trend up (+23,000), about in line with the average monthly gain of 18,000 over the prior 12 months. Employment continued to trend up over the month in specialty trade contractors (+14,000) and construction of buildings (+6,000).
♦Employment in manufacturing decreased by 35,000 in October, reflecting a decline of 33,000 in motor vehicles and parts that was largely due to strike activity.
♦In October, employment in leisure and hospitality changed little (+19,000). The industry had added an average of 52,000 jobs per month over the prior 12 months.
♦Employment in professional and business services was little changed in October (+15,000) and has shown little net change since May. Employment in temporary help services changed little over the month (+7,000) but is 229,000 below its peak in March 2022.
♦In October, employment in transportation and warehousing was little changed (-12,000) and has shown little net change over the year. Over the month, warehousing and storage lost 11,000 jobs, while air transportation added 4,000 jobs.
♦Information employment changed little in October (-9,000). Employment in motion picture and sound recording continued to trend down (-5,000); the industry has lost 44,000 jobs since May, at least partially reflecting the impact of an ongoing labor dispute.

DATA

What do you see happening in/around your area?   How are the employment conditions nearest you?

Oct 27 2023

Business Deportations


Armstrong Economics Blog/World Trade Re-Posted Oct 27, 2023 by Martin Armstrong

The world will become a more hostile place in the months ahead as we move toward 2024. Governments have identified their enemies that have embedded themselves within Western society. First, governments will ask businesses owned by unfriendly nations to leave, and next, they will target individuals.

Syngenta has owned 160 acres of farmland in Arkansas for three decades. Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders raised concerns over the company’s ties to China and the CCP. “Seeds are technology. Chinese-owned state corporations filter that technology back to their homeland, stealing American research and telling our enemies to target American farms,” Huckabee explained. The company is now being forced to leave America due to fears of national security. Additionally, they must pay a $280,000 fine for failing to disclose foreign ownership.

The state is providing Syngenta with a 30-day evacuation notice before they attempt to confiscate their land. A spokesperson for the company stated that they have been in operation since 1988 with no issue. “Syngenta’s work in the US — including in Arkansas — continues to benefit American farmers, strengthens American agriculture and makes the US a more innovative and competitive participant in the global agricultural marketplace,” the spokesman said, calling the move “shortsighted.”

However, the government knew this was a Chinese-run business years ago, as the US Department of Defense compiled a watchlist of companies connected to China in 2017. The growing fear of global warfare has gifted government the power to deport businesses on short notice. Slowly but surely, these companies will be asked to leave the US.

As a reminder, China is America’s largest trading partner. China is not currently at war with America. The government is opening Pandora’s box as this will lead to an exodus of foreign-run businesses and China will retaliate. We remember the ongoing trade war with China during the Trump administration with sanctions matched with sanctions. The globalists scream “Inclusivity!” left and right but plan on removing businesses simply because they’re connected to a foreign nation deemed unfriendly without a thorough investigation.

There are already discussions of deporting individuals for their religious and/or political beliefs. This will not be limited to the US. France’s Macron is attempting to deport those with “extremist beliefs.” Other countries will follow, especially with violently charged protests growing throughout Western nations that opened the doors to countless refugees since 2015 when Syrians were fleeing. The issue here is that the government has the sole discretion to decide who can stay and who must leave. If only those in charge would use history, recent history, as an example.

Oct 18 2023

Why Was the 1987 Crash Important Even for Today


Armstrong Economics Blog/Training Tools Re-Posted Oct 18, 2023 by Martin Armstrong

COMMENT: I watched a pretend analyst who claimed the 1987 Crash was nothing. It is amazing how these people claim to be analysts yet do not understand the first thing about what took place behind the chart. I was there at your WEC in Princeton the weekend of the crash. I don’t remember if it was videoed. If so, you should post that.

Dan

See you in Orlando.

REPLY: Your statement is a sad epitaph on analysis these days. The “pretend analyst” is a Fed watcher who never looks beyond the shore. There is nothing you can do with these people. If they cannot look beyond a domestic economy, they are not analysts – plain & simple. Because I warned them back in 1985 that they would create a crash within 2 years by manipulating the dollar down 40%, when the Crash Came in 1987, that is when they were forced to call me.

When they began to realize that lowering the dollar by 40% also created a bear market in US assets for foreign investors, including US debt, they held the Louve Accord.  Yet, look closely at the chart. The dollar had already bun its decline. It had nothing to do with the central banks. Those in charge know less than the average investor. They proceed, always assuming they have power – but over what they do not comprehend.

They then announced that the dollar had fallen far enough. When the dollar continued to decline, that is when the market realized that the CENTRAL BANKS COULD NOT CONTROL THE WORLD ECONOMY. Once that took place, that is what unfolded as the 1987 Crash. My biggest accomplishment was to persuade the Brady Commission not to impose restrictions on the market when the formation of the G5 created the crisis. But the government will NEVER blame itself. The most significant accomplishment I was able to do was to get the Brady Commission to at least imply that foreign exchange had something to do with it.

The lesson of 1987 is NOT in the chart. It is behind the chart. Once the public realized that the central banks were not actually in control, that is when the panic took place. Today, when interest rates rise without the Fed’s actions because of the Neocons constantly threatening the world and China over Taiwan, that is when panic will strike. It all goes nuts once people realize that the government is just a ship of fools with ZERO sailing experience. That is when gold will break out. It is that CRACK IN CONFIDENCE that will cause the panic.

That is the Significance of the 1987 Crash

Sep 30 2023

Frances Fox Piven vs. Milton Friedman, Thomas Sowell (Video 1980)


Armstrong Economics Blog/Uncategorized R-Posted Sep 30, 2023 by Martin Armstrong

https://youtube.com/watch?v=JQkdSj6arn0%3Ffeature%3Doembed
Aug 2 2023

The Myth of FDR’s New Deal


Armstrong Economics Blog/America’s Economic History

Re-Posted Aug 2, 2023 by Martin Armstrong

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.

Jul 10 2023

Gold Back Currency Reality


Armstrong Economics Blog/Gold Re-Posted Jul 8, 2023 by Martin Armstrong

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.

Jun 23 2023

Forecasts & the ECM


Armstrong Economics Blog/ECM Re-Posted Jun 23, 2023 by Martin Armstrong

COMMENT: Hello,
I remember you writing more than once last fall that the week of Nov 9th was targeted by the computer for something significant. That week was the elections, which I think everyone focused on. However, FTX also collapsed that week, which is pretty significant. You have yet to take credit for this great prediction.
Thank you so much for your work, you are a true humanitarian.
Respectfully submitted,
SL

REPLY: These forecasts are not my personal opinion. There are just so many such forecasts it becomes overwhelming to try to point out every single one when the model is covering the entire world. I am working diligently to do the book on the Economic Confidence Model and all I can hope is that with a track record of such forecasts since the 1970s, just maybe, people will open their eyes and understand we cannot manipulate society for political gain when we are all connected. No politicians can eliminate unemployment when the world is in a depression.

I am trying to document the turning points historically. I have gathered all the people who have discovered cycles in EVERY field. Only is economics has cycles been rejected because economists and politicians want to pretend they can manipulate the world. That is what Klaus Schwab is trying to do right now.

I hope to have this book out with the first edition for the attendees of the WEC com November.

May 17 2023

The 37 Year Cycle


Armstrong Economics Blog/Civilization Re-Posted May 17, 2023 by Martin Armstrong

Well, Sports Illustrated just had to join the BudLight Woke Controversy. I suppose they could have put a Transgender on the cover. So it looks like they decided to stop short of that insanity and chose to put Martha Stewart who is 81 on the cover.

Elle McPhearson, known as the Body, really saw her modeling career take off after making the Sports Illustrated magazine’s annual Swimsuit Issue in 1986. She appeared on the cover a record five times: 1986, 1987, 1988, 1994, and 2006. Girls would line up with the hope of following Elle’s career desperately trying to make the cover of Sports Illustrated.

It is curious, but between the 1986 Cover of Elle & 2023 with Martha Stewart, it is shockingly precisely on time. And as for those who will speculate that Elle and I were somehow connected, her father was one of our Australian partners. No, I never dated Elle. The story that circulated in Tokyo was funny but completely exaggerated. Elle began a clothing line and sent me samples of her line of Men’s underway.  That was the extent of that and some were claiming why would she be sending me men’s underwear It was her clothing line. That was it. Not personal shopping for my birthday.

Interestingly, that is an important cycle interval and the fact it is impacting Sports Illustrated is very disturbing. Yes, it was my famous off-the-cuff forecast that Authentic would win the Kentucky Derby back in 2020. It was a long shot, so they said. But It was the third Derby win for the Jockey John Velazquez. Yet Authentic became the first horse to win Kentucky Derby, Preakness Stakes, and Belmont Stakes in 37 years.

It was October 1986 when an agreement was then reached to meet in Reykjavík, Iceland, between Gorbachev and President Reagan limiting nuclear weapons. This October will be 37 years. In January 1987, Gorbachev called for democratization: the infusion of democratic elements such as multi-candidate elections into the Soviet political process. A 1987 conference convened by Soviet economist Leonid Abalkin, a key adviser to Gorbachev, concluded: “Deep transformations in the management of the economy cannot be realized without corresponding changes in the political system.” We are more likely to see the end of that and a turn back to nationalism in Russia as a consequence of this war instigated by the Neocons. That will be in 2024.

This is not looking good at all.  The 5th 309.6-year cycle from the Fall of Rome in 476AD also comes due in 2024. I understand there are people who are trying to promote patriotism to retake the United States and return it to the days when agreements were honored and the Constitution stood for something. I appreciate those sentiments, but unfortunately, our computer says clearly that they will fail for without the PAIN, there is no REFORM = GAIN. Just as I have warned that these dark forces seeking to impose their totalitarian view of government will also fail. Neither side will prevail and we must simply CRASH & BURN and that is required if we are to recreate a new world post-2032.

Real Woman

This WOKENESS is simply part of the strategy to divide and conquer. Keep the people divided and they will not ban together against government. This entire Transgender insanity is very serious. There are only about 1.6 million people in the US who identify as Transgender. The US population is just under 335 million people. This is less than 0.5%. Yet, girls have been denied sports careers and mothers are no longer moths but birthing people. All because 1.6 million want to be called a woman so we can no longer define what is a woman. So those who give birth and reduce to just a birthing person. Again, all of this is to undermine our society and divide it so profoundly to ensure that we will never band together to restore the United States and the original intent of the Constitution.

Gorgeous Thai ladyboys, Pattaya, Thailand. 31.10.2020

In Thailand, the sex-change capital of the world, Ladyboys are very common. They do NOT call themselves “women” but refer to themselves as “ladyboys” and are everywhere. It is no big deal. If you meet a girl, you just ask if they are a ladyboy and they will simply reply yes or no. So why here in the USA do we have to change the definition of a “woman” to accommodate less than half of one percent? I don’t think calling my mother, hey birthing person of mine, has the same ring.

Just as former Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg made clear, Roe v Wade was NEVER about women’s rights – it was about eugenics and reducing the population. This is ALSO behind this entire LGBQT movement to teach children even in 3 grade that they can choose to be LGBQT and push them to even change their gender. This is the same agenda as abortion – reduce the population.

Even more seriously, the climate change agenda. This is all about reducing our standard of living and there is no science behind this because they refuse to look beyond the mid-19th century so they can blame everything on the industrial revolution.

The only way for this Great Reset, which they have taken from our Economic Confidence Model predicting the collapse of our current monetary and political system come 2032, they are hoping to push us into a new age of totalitarianism. Civilization expands with warming periods, and it declines as we head into cold periods and darkness.

Mar 27 2023

Are Markets Irrational or Analysts?


Armstrong Economics Blog/Forecasts Re-Posted Mar 27, 2023 by Martin Armstrong

QUESTION: Mr. Armstrong; Who is being irrational? The markets or the analysts?

KE

ANSWER: That’s simple. It is the analysts. The markets are ALWAYS correct. When you have bank failures unfolding, people will withdraw money out of caution. It is the very same reason there are ancient hoards of coins. You find coins in times of economic stress and uncertainty. This is a purely RATIONAL human response to uncertainty. It consistent for thousands of years. For any analyst to claim the markets are acting “irrationally” only proves they should look for another profession.

Sir Thomas Gresham began his career in 1543 working at Mercers’ Company at the age of 24 years old. He left England for Antwerp/Amsterdam which was the financial center of the day much like Wall Street. That was where he became a merchant businessman which was where banking existed in those days. He became an agent for King Henry VIII in the Antwerp/Amsterdam market. He became a trader and in so doing, he began to observe how capital moved.

The interesting aspect was that he was called in as a sort of crisis manager as I have been during financial upheavals. In 1551, Sir William Dansell, who was King’s Merchant there in the markets, ended up putting the English Government into a financial crisis thanks to his mismanagement.  The English turned to Gresham for advice since he became quite astute at trading. They adopted his proposals. It was then that Gresham proposed a very ingenious tact. He advocated a FOREX intervention to push the pound higher on the Antwerp change. His intervention proved so successful that in just a few years King Edward VI had discharged almost all of his debts. By pushing the pound higher, he was able to repay the previous debts by devaluing them.

Therefore, the English Crown sought Gresham’s advice in all their finances until Mary came to the throne in 1553. Gresham was instantly pushed aside for  Alderman William Dauntsey, who lacked trading experience and quickly sent the Crown into financial stress. Gresham was called back to deal with the mess once again.

Under Queen Elizabeth’s reign (1558–1603), he continued as a financial agent of the Crown and also became the Ambassador Plenipotentiary to the Governor of the Netherlands. This was the period of civil unrest in Antwerp which compelled him to return to England in 1567. This is also when the English had the founding of the Royal Exchange to compete with the Netherlands. It was Gresham who made the proposal to build, at his own expense, a bourse or exchange. This demonstrated that Gresham was a trader and understood how capital flowed.
Apart from some small sums to various charities, Gresham bequeathed the bulk of his property (consisting of estates in London and around England giving an income of more than 2,300 pounds a year) to his widow and her heirs, with the stipulation that after her death his own house in Bishopsgate Street and the rents from the Royal Exchange should be vested in the Corporation of London and the Mercers Company, for the purpose of instituting a college in which seven professors should read lectures, one each day of the week, in astronomy, geometry, physic, law, divinity, rhetoric and music.[1] Thus, Gresham College, the first institution of higher learning in London, came to be established in 1597.

Gresham’s Law (stated simply as: “Bad money drives out good“). He concluded this from his observations that foreign exchange back then was based on the metal content and weight of the coinage. Therefore, as debasement took place, people would hoard the old coinage of higher quality and spend the debased.  Thus, the bad money drove out the good and actually shrunk the money supply in circulation.

He urged Queen Elizabeth to restore the debased currency of England. In so doing, you got to repay old debts with debased currency. Governments to this day practice that same trick. Repaying a 30-year bond today the bondholder cannot buy what the money was once worth 30 years ago. The interest does not really compensate for the loss of purchasing power over long periods of time.

Mar 24 2023

US National Debt – A Different Perspective


Armstrong Economics Blog/Uncategorized Re-Posted Mar 24, 2023 by Martin Armstrong

In 2010, Barron’s wrote a piece on me effectively laughing at my forecast that the share market would rally to new highs. What seems to inevitably unfold is this notion that whatever the event might be in motion, the mere thought of a reversal in trend appears impossible. When the press disagrees with Socrates, I know it will be the press who is wrong. And because they end up being wrong, of course, they cannot print a retraction so they will just pretend you do not exist rather than admit – Sorry, we were wrong. The Dow made that new high above 2007 by February 2013. That was 64 months from the October 2007 high.

I have been in the game for many years. With each event, it appears to be like Groundhog Day. They pop their heads out and declare they do not see their shadow, so the entire world will disintegrate and that is always based upon opinion. It is never backed by real analysis. Just the standard human trait of assuming whatever trend is in motion, will remain in motion.

Being an institutional adviser, I have never had that luxury. We have had to deal with some of the biggest portfolios in the world. They want accurate forecasting, and it has to be long-term – not day trading. They are not interested in the typical headlines of doom and gloom that the press love to print with every financial event simply to get readership. That is all they care about. It has been the financial version of the fake news.

When we step back and look at this favorite fundamental that people beat to death to predict the end of the world, the national debt, and the collapse of the dollar. Little did they know that the increase in National Debt during the 2007-2009 Financial Crisis was supposed to bring down the sky and end the existence of the dollar. We can see the sharp rise in debt simply made a double top with the Financial Crisis of 1985.

It was that previous 1985 Financial Crisis that set in motion the Plaza Accord which brought together the central banks creating what was then the G5 – now G20. Of course, like every government intervention, the side effect was the 1987 Crash and their attempt to reverse their directive at the Plaza Accord became the Louve Accord. When the traders saw that failed, the collapse in confidence led to the 1987 Crash.

It has always been a CONFIDENCE game as I pointed out with the 1933 Banking Holiday previously. In this case, the failure of the Louvre Accord which came out and said the dollar had fallen enough, once new lows in the dollar unfolded and the central banks could not stop the decline, led to financial panic by 1987 which manifested in the 1987 Crash.

This chart shows the quarterly change in the National Debt since 1966, Here you can see the 1985 and 2008 Financial Crises were on par. Neither one ended the dollar no less the world economy. So when I warned the share market would rally and make new highs and Barron’s laughed in 2010, I said the same thing after the 1987 Crash and people laughed.

In fact, on the very day of the low, I said this was it and that we would rally back to new highs by 1989. That was perfect and the market responded to the Economic Confidence Model (ECM) which has been published back in 1979. This was more than simply forecasting the 1987 Crash and the very day of the low. It clearly established that the ECM had revealed that there was a secret cycle behind the appearance of chaos even in economics.

Larry Edelson was actually a competitor at the time. But Larry respected that the forecast from the model was far beyond what people would ever expect. If we are ever going to advance as a society, we have to stop the bullshit and understand HOW markets trade and WHY. Larry did that. He understood that the model was something larger than just personal opinion.

Even those claiming to be using the K-Wave cannot make real forecasts. The basis of Kondratieff’s argument came from his empirical study of the economic performance of the USA, England, France, and Germany between 1790 and 1920. Kondratieff took the wholesale price levels, interest rates, and production and consumption of coal, pig iron, and lead for each economy. He then sought to smooth the data using an averaging mathematical approach of nine years to eliminate the trend as well as shorter waves. Kondratieff thus arrived at his long-wave theory suggesting that the economic process was a process of continuous waves of boom and bust.

Kondratieff’s work was compelling and contributed greatly to the Austrian School of Economics that first began to develop the concept of a Business Cycle. The general central principle of the Austrian Business Cycle Theory is concerned with a period of sustained low-interest rates and excessive credit creation resulting in a volatile and unstable imbalance between saving and investment. Within this context, the theory supposes that the Business Cycle unfolds whereby low rates of interest tend to stimulate borrowing from the banking sector and thus then result in the expansion of the money supply that causes an unsustainable credit ­source boom which leads to a diminished opportunity for investment by competition.

Benner

Here is a chart of the business cycle that was created by a farmer named Samuel Benner. Benner based his work on Sunspots, which actually incorporated solar maximum and minimum that today’s Climate Change zealots refuse to consider. Nevertheless, someone manipulated Brenner’s work and created a chart to try to influence society handing it in with a wild story to the Wall Street Journal published this cycle on February 2nd, 1932, when the market bottomed in July 1932. Still, nobody knew who had investigated this phenomenon in 1932.

WSJ1933

When I was doing my own research reading all the newspapers to understand how events unfolded, I came across this chart. I found it interesting that during the Great Depression people were reaching out and some began to embrace cyclical ideas. The problem with both Kondratiff and Brenner was that the period they used to develop their cycles was the 19th century because the real Industrial Revolution was unfolding and in the 1850s, 70% of the civil workforce were all in agriculture. Consequently, if you constructed a model based entirely upon one sector, it would work only as long as that sector was the top dog.

Being a historian buff, it quickly hit me that NOTHING remains constant and that the economy will ALWAYS evolve, mature, and then crash and burn. Where agriculture was 70% of the workforce in 18590, it fell to 40% by 1900, and then down to 3% by 1980.

Just look at energy. The earliest lamps, dating to the Upper Paleolithic, were stones with depressions in which animal fats were burned as a source of light. In cultures closer to the sea, they began to use shells as lamps which they would burn at first animal fat. Clay lamps began to appear during the Bronze Age around the 16th century BC and the invention quickly spread throughout the Roman Empire. Initially, they took the form of a saucer with a floating wick.

We even find Roman oil lamps as luxury items crafted out of bronze. There are collectors of terracotta oil lamps for there is a vast variety of motifs. There is everything from dolphins, and various entities, to erotic oil lamps, which may have been used in brothels. The point is, if you constructed a model on oil, you would have surely accomplished similar results to Kondratief and Brenner.

Then of course, just as the energy moved from animal fats to vegetable oils, by the 19th century it returned to whale oil which was extracted from the blubber. Emerging industrial societies used whale oil in oil lamps and to make soap. However, during the 20th century, whale oil was even made into margarine.

Then the discovery of petroleum and the use of whale oils declined considerably from their peak in the 19th century into the 20th century. Ironically, it was fossil fuels that probably saved whales from extinction. Hence, now we are entering a period where they deliberately want to end fossil fuels and move to solar and wind power. Obviously, just a cursory review of energy reveals the problem of basing a model on the current energy source or major economic industry. Things change with time.