Published on Jan 15, 2015
Before you can understand the Magnitsky Act you will need background on Martin Armstrong who is one of the most famous economic forecasters alive, but you wouldn’t know it after the whitewashing job he’s suffered at the hands of the federal government and the mainstream financial press. The man who in the 1980s and 90s had central bankers and politicians calling him for advice is now scrubbed from the memory banks of sites like Bloomberg.com. He’s famous, or infamous, for having predicted the October 1987 Black Monday crash to the very day. He also called the Nikkei stock market collapse in 1989 and the Russian financial collapse in 1998. And he hasn’t lost his touch, outfoxing hedge fund managers by predicting last week’s Swiss National Bank decision to abandon its peg to the Euro. Martin is not an Austrian by any stretch, relying on complex mathematical and historical models rather than economic theory. But he is strongly anti-state, anti-central bank, and quick to criticize Keynesian orthodoxy. Martin spent more than a decade in a government cage after being prosecuted by the SEC, including 7 years for the non-crime of contempt of court. His story, both as a forecaster and a stubborn thorn in the side of federal prosecutors, will be told in an upcoming documentary. It’s a story you won’t want to miss.
There was a documentary film made and released in the US on Amazon in November 2017 “The Forecaster” it still shows as available but it has been removed from U-Tube along with other related documentary films and band in America and the EU. Below are links to various posts that I have posted on my blog related to Marty. This documentary and other related documentaries have mostly been band from viewing as they show many US banks, the US Federal Government and John McCain in very had light and justly so.
Why is Former Ambassador Refusing to be Questioned by Russians?
You can Watch The Magnitsky Act Behind the Scenes Here (Must Watch)
Legend! This woman has big time gusts (I’d say nuts but would be an insult to her) most men would not do that!
September 6, 2018
Epic. Will likely never be outdone…. Not this year. GOAT?
(Backstory) – More on Backstory from Yesterday HERE
Make Zina Bash the next Attorney General.
Emerging Market Debt Crisis – A Reality Check
Armstrong Economics Blog/Emerging Markets
Re-Posted Sep 6, 2018 by Martin Armstrong
QUESTION: Hello Martin … I follow emerging markets closely and one thing I note is that the size of the sovereign forex-denominated debt burdens are quite small relative to GDP except in the case of Argentina (48%). Everybody else, including Turkey and Indonesia) is 11% or less. How can you have a debt crisis if everybody is clearly able to service their debts? That’s what confuses me. Today the Bloomberg EM dollar debt index is at 6.05% — whereas in 1998 it was 17%! That is saying the risk is still fairly subdued no?
Thank and regards,
MC
ANSWER: There are at least three major factors that are not calculated in this perspective. The dollar debt rises exponentially in the cost to service that debt as the currency declines. It was that very relationship which sent Germany into hyperinflation during the 1920s. Germany had to print more money to make reparation payments and the more they printed the worse it became. If you look closely, Turkey’s external debt has grown 10% just in the past year alone as its currency has declined and interest rates have risen.
Next, we have the rising interest rates which add to the crisis further undermining the economy. The interest must be paid in terms of the foreign currency. Also, keep in mind that they have also issued external debt in euros.
The third dimension of Emerging Market Crisis is private. In the case of Turkey, in particular, this debt crisis differs significantly in one very critical manner. We are not looking at purely as crises fueled primarily by government debt. Much of the private debt of corporations have also borrowed in dollars and euro. This makes the crisis very problematic. There can be no IMF bailout for all the outstanding private debt in foreign currencies.
It is unwise to simply look at the government debt issue. Turkey’s problems through the combination of government and corporate debt can trigger a very critical global contagion. There are significant risks centered on lenders that get caught up in the financial crisis such as pension funds and banks who have lent into Emerging Markets in search of high yield. Portuguese and Spanish banks are heavily invested in Turkey. If Erdogan defaults and turns to Russia, he would take the Euro down with him.
I have reported that there is also a rising risk of a debt crisis in China. However, this is confined to the private sector and at the provincial level – not federal. China has moved to discourage borrowing money in foreign currencies. It is extremely RARE to encounter a corporate borrowing in a foreign currency that even understands the long-term risk that is inherent within the transaction due to foreign exchange.
Additionally, you must take into account the CONTAGION FACTOR that will erupt on trading desks. Once a crisis begins in Emerging Market debt, they will not look at the number on any individual country – they will just sell the entire category at the market. The Bloomberg EM dollar debt index is not a convincing indicator as is the case for the Dollar Index which is traded on the exchange. Also keep in mind that private contracts can be nullified by federal governments. In the case of the USA, when Roosevelt confiscated gold, all contracts that were between two private parties containing a Gold Clause for repayment, were declared illegal and unenforceable by the Supreme Court (see PERRY v. UNITED STATES, 294 U.S. 330 (1935).
Attributing All-Powerful Ability to CIA is not Warranted
Armstrong Economics Blog/Politics
Re-Posted Aug 30, 2018 by Martin Armstrong
QUESTION: Mr. Armstrong; You seem to be the only reliable source one these machinations of Russiagate. There are those who say that the neoconservatives used Ukranian politicians financed by Washington to overthrow the democratically elected government of Ukraine and to put in office a government hostile to Russia. The intent was to use Ukraine, a Russian province for more than three centuries, to create problems for Russia that would absorb Russia’s attention and return a free hand to Washington and Israel in the Middle East. The neocons rejected the Crimeans actually voted to reunite with Russia when they were ethnic Russians. It seems they spin conspiracies to further Russiagate. Can you shed any light?
Thank you so much
EN
ANSWER: Let me explain something. I have many friends in Ukraine. I had personal friends on the barricades. Here is a photo of a Russian soldier we published before there was an acknowledgment that there were Russian soldiers in Eastern Ukraine. It was taken by a friend who asked if they were there to protect them and asked if they could take a picture. I cropped out my friend.
I had many people on the ground. The revolution was the people against Yanukovich. He was really from the East and could not even speak proper Ukrainian. He and his sons were oligarchs and they were shaking down businesses. The people rose up against the corruption – plain and simple.
The CIA and European powers ENETERED to hand pick who they wanted to lead the nation. The people were told that if they rose up again, they would not be supported by the West.
The CIA and neocon could not create that revolution. They took advantage of it, but they could not create it. The language map shows clearly that Donetsk and Crimea were predominantly Russian. All these conspiracy theorists twist things around and do not accept that sometimes things happen on their own. We are witnessing massive demonstrations now in Romania for the very same reasons. These are not CIA plots. The people are rising up against government corruption everywhere. Even in China, Xi came to power to cleanse China of corruption. I had a friend in Donetsk who reported to me when Russian tanks came down the street.
Not everything is a CIA plot. These people give WAY TOO MUCH credit to people who lack that sort of all-powerful status. They have insulted the Ukrainian people who they regard as mindless fools incapable of standing up for their rights. There were snipers on the roofs killing people on the barricades. There has never been any prosecution of such people.
We CAN Go Back Again
Lindsey Graham and Chuck Grassley Adjust Positions To Support President Trump Firing Jeff Sessions….
Earlier today Senator Lindsey Graham provided a pathway for President Trump to fire Attorney General Jeff Sessions after the mid-term election. To further bolster this likelihood, Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley affirmed he could now make room for a replacement confirmation in the lame-duck congressional session between the November election and January 2019.
The statement by Senator Graham is a considerable reversal given his prior admonishment that firing AG Sessions would result in “hell to pay”; and further underlines an increasingly visible acceptance by high-profile republicans that Attorney General Jeff Sessions has been an abysmal failure.
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The Attorney General has been strong and effective on border security and immigration issues, mostly due to effective support for Border Patrol, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and the Dept. of Homeland Security (DHS). However, on the needed institutional reform Sessions has been frustratingly inept. Many who understand Main Justice politics openly say AG Jeff Sessions is actually scared of the apparatus under his authority.
Against the abject failure of the DOJ to accept oversight and commit to reform amid the obvious chaos from a highly politicized previous administration, in May of this year House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes threatened to hold Attorney General Sessions in contempt of congress.
In an interesting set of tweets two weeks ago, President Trump highlighted the lack of DOJ leadership (specifically AG Jeff Sessions) in addressing institutional corruption within the DOJ which led to “spygate” and a fraudulent application for an unlawful FISA application used to conduct surveillance upon U.S. Person Carter Page.
In the second set of tweets that day, President Trump noted how officials within the FBI are continuing to obstruct oversight and refuse to turn over evidence of institutional corruption. In a pointed question President Trump asks: “What are they hiding”?
The overall message delivered by President Trump highlights the ongoing institutional issues which are not being addressed by either AG Jeff Sessions and FBI Director Christopher Wray. Both Law and Order officials are acting as corruption monitors, and neither are confronting it.
And within this dynamic we accept events as they appear:
•After the IG report on the Clinton investigation, Director Wray took no action to address the issues of the deeply political FBI; and no-one within the organization has been held accountable. With the single exception of McCabe, all former corrupt officials have been permitted to exit with full benefits and pensions intact.
•Additionally, there is no effort on behalf of the DOJ to follow-up on the IG criminal referral to charge former Asst. FBI Director Andrew McCabe for lying to the FBI, leaking information to the media and using his office/position to influence an official investigation.
•Worse yet, there is an ongoing and highly visible DOJ leadership effort to cover-up the gross criminal behavior of the head of the Senate Intelligence Committee Security staff, James Wolfe. Despite overwhelming evidence that James Wolfe leaked top secret and highly classified intelligence to the media, the DOJ has only charged Wolfe with one much lesser crime of lying to the FBI.
Initially, through 2017, we were optimistic that Attorney General Jeff Sessions and FBI Director Christopher Wray would take action to: (A) reveal the scale and scope of the prior unlawful DOJ/FBI activity; and (B) bring criminal charges against those officers who engaged in a conspiracy to influence the 2016 election and overthrow a duly elected President. However, in the face of overwhelming evidence highlighting the Sessions/Wray emphasis, we can clearly see from their decision-making their primary goal is preservation of the institutions regardless of downstream consequences.
If he is not afraid, at the very least Attorney General Jeff Sessions has continued down a path of willful blindness.
After the IG report outlining seriously corrupt and unethical behavior within the FBI, it was painfully obvious FBI Director Christopher Wray was going to twist himself into contortions to avoid even accepting the scale of corruption outlined within the report.
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That is just a small snippet of the IG report, and none of this has been addressed.
In the aggregate, Jeff Sessions, Rod Rosenstein, Christopher Wray and David Bowditch appear to be working against the interests of reform in their efforts to protect the Washington DC institutions sunlight. All four officials are allowing current career staff and former officials within the DOJ/FBI to continue conspiring to protect their former colleagues.
It has become increasingly obvious that if the MAGA community, the electorate writ large, can all pull together and win/hold the 2018 Mid-Term election President Trump will likely fire the failing leadership of both the FBI and DOJ. Within this backdrop President Trump’s personal efforts to win and hold position in the November elections is essentially a visible display of his intent toward that objective.
It is now clear that officials connected to the DOJ and FBI, or officials within Washington DC, cannot be used in any effort to eliminate the corruption within both organizations. It will take bold outside leadership, with knowledge of the operations, to dismantle it.
How to reform?
I would propose that President Trump goes outside-the-box toward the Judicial Branch, and locates two federal judges, from outside DC, with a request to become heads of the DOJ. Perhaps two members of the SCOTUS list who could be trusted to confront the internal dynamic and remove the embed corruption. Or perhaps one Federal Judge as Attorney General, and one state AG as the deputy. Example: Judge Dianne Sykes as AG, and Pam Bondi (or similar) as Deputy.
It will take a great deal of internal DOJ reform to get rid of the Lawfare mindset.
Similarly I would propose two former Governors should be brought in to lead an institutional reform effort within the FBI. Perhaps Rick Perry as FBI Director, and/or Bobby Jindal as Deputy (or similar). Two people who know the structure of investigative need, with prior institutional knowledge, who can push the importance of domestic security into the FBI field office ranks and re-prioritize the objectives.
The lessons throughout 2016, 2017 and 2018 have showcased that any/all corruption reform within DC institutions, simply cannot be dealt with by any leadership entity that has a personal or professional network connected to the adverse interests of Washington DC.
Yesterday Was Peak “Muh Russia” – The Lanny Davis Gig Isn’t Turning Out The Way Media Intended….
The pesky thing about the truth is its figurative ambivalence to any feelings or emotions that surrounds it. A few counter-intuitive media appearances by Michael Cohen’s lawyer, Lanny Davis, highlights this point succinctly.
Chuck Ross at the Daily Caller has been brilliantly monitoring the statements by far-left Clinton sycophant/convenient Cohen lawyer, Lanny Davis. Two big admissions today are toxic to the previously preferred media narrative.
In one interview Lanny Davis tells CNN, per his client, candidate Donald Trump had no knowledge of the Trump Tower meeting between Don Jr. and Natalia Veselnitskaya.
(Via Daily Caller) […] “So Michael Cohen does not have information that President Trump knew about the Trump Tower meeting with the Russians beforehand or even after?” CNN’s Anderson Cooper asked Davis.
“No, he does not,” replied Davis, a longtime Clinton insider who started representing Cohen earlier this summer.
Davis’s bombshell statement severely undercuts a July 27 CNN report that Cohen was willing to tell special counsel Robert Mueller that he was in a meeting when Donald Trump Jr. told his father about an offer to meet with a group of Russians who wanted to provide dirt on former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. (read more)
In a second, earlier admission, lawyer Lanny Davis undercut the preferred narrative surrounding the validity of the Clinton/Steele Dossier:
(Via Daily Caller) […] Davis dealt another major blow to the allegations of Trump campaign collusion when he said in an interview with Bloomberg News that the Steele dossier’s allegations about Cohen are “false.”
“Thirteen references to Mr. Cohen are false in the dossier, but he has never been to Prague in his life,” Davis said.
The dossier, which was funded by the Clinton campaign and Democratic National Committee, alleged that Cohen visited Prague in August 2016 as part of a “clandestine” operation to collude with Kremlin insiders to influence the 2016 election. Dossier author Christopher Steele claimed that Cohen arranged payments to hackers to carry out the scheme.
“Never, ever, ever in Prague,” Davis reiterated in an interview on MSNBC later Wednesday. (link)
The intelligence mistake of Michael Cohen traveling to Prague, is a direct-line thread connecting the FBI/DOJ FISA(702)(16)(17) database searches to Fusion-GPS, contractors, and the Steele dossier. As such there would be a very strong motive for similarly aligned political entities within the U.S. intelligence apparatus to take strong action to cloud the connection. In short they have always needed to lower and cloud the connection.
Thus the origin of the July 31st, 2016, FBI Counterintelligence Operation against candidate Trump began as an unofficial outcome of an unofficial CIA referral (John Brennan) connected to unofficial contacts with political and intelligence people within the U.K and Australia. An unofficial and Machiavellian construct.
After Donald Trump won the election, all of the aligned intelligence entities -including Obama officials therein- were now at risk. Hence “the insurance policy”. The issues extend beyond the unlawful activity of the DOJ and FBI; however, one of the trails of their collective activity ended up inside the Steele Dossier with the false fact surrounding Michael Cohen in Prague.
The intelligence apparatus needed to create something, anything, that removed the connection; and, as if on cue…. one of the original leaks from the Mueller Team specifically targeted this threat:
WASHINGTON – The Justice Department special counsel has evidence that Donald Trump’s personal lawyer and confidant, Michael Cohen, secretly made a late-summer trip to Prague during the 2016 presidential campaign, according to two sources familiar with the matter.
Confirmation of the trip would lend credence to a retired British spy’s report that Cohen strategized there with a powerful Kremlin figure about Russian meddling in the U.S. election. (read more)
This is where it becomes critical to remind yourself of how far this group went to manipulate the outcomes of the election. Do not sell these Machiavellian-mind people short. Remember, one of the key benefits of the raid on Michael Cohen was to create the architecture underneath fabricated media narratives (stories). The actual content of evidence captured in the FBI raid was/is irrelevant; at the time, they needed the basic element of truth -that the raid took place- as the foundation downstream propaganda.
The U.K., Australia and the U.S. intelligence apparatus, foreign (cia) and domestic (fbi/doj-nsd) collaborated to influence the 2016 U.S. election outcome. As such, those same entities had a vested interest in creating a false series of facts that removed the threat within the false Michael Cohen Prague visit.
The “small group” of Mueller activists within the DOJ and FBI needed to create any alternate appearance in order to cover for the very real likelihood the intelligence apparatus used Christopher Steele to launder search outcomes from the abuse of the U.S. FISA database (NSA, FBI and DOJ-NSD). This Mueller crew needed to create a plausible way the specific Cohen event could have made it into the Steele Dossier without using U.S. intelligence databases.
The raid on Michael Cohen initially created the basis for affirming a false claim. The use of friendly foreign intelligence to potentially substantiate false claims was the plausible deniability they need. Everything is essentially propaganda.
They knew they would lose a fact battle, so they chose to fight a propaganda war.
…that’s the essential argument made by James Comey’s friend Benjamin Wittes in his plan of action written in October 2016 when he described the “insurance policy” – in his outline of what to do in the unlikely event Trump wins. You might remember that Wittes was the friend FBI Director James Comey used to leak his memos to the New York Times.
Remember this?
The Turkey Crisis Cannot Be Resolved without Regime Change
Armstrong Economics Blog/Turkey
Re-Posted Aug 17, 2018 by Martin Armstrong
The key to understanding Turkey is really simple – Erdogan has lost the confidence of his people and the world. The free-fall in the Turkish lira should be no surprise. After years of rampant dollar borrowing, running large current account deficits in the face of both a lack of domestic military hardware production along with the lack of domestic oil production, throw in an autocratic-dictator with aspiration of empire building who then appoint a family member to bring down interest rates that he thinks is the source of inflation, and presto you get an economic cauldron that is impossible to survive.
Erdogan may be a dictator who rigs the elections, but that does NOT mean he can dictate that interest rates should be lower. Interest rates are not the SOURCE of inflation, they are the PRICE of inflation. He thinks that he can order interest rates lower and that will stop his economic crisis. Qatar should just kiss its $15 billion good-bye for there is NO HOPE of saving Turkey without a replacement of Erdogan. He will blame absolutely everyone BUT himself. His attempt to hunt down and prosecute anyone who speaks against him as treason is just a normal reaction of a dictator who has lost his mind. What comes next? Purges as with Stalin?
California Real Estate Peaks and Begin a Crash
Armstrong Economic Blog/Real Estate
RE-Posted Aug 17, 2018 by Martin Armstrong
California has joined the states with not just the highest taxes in America, but it has become one of those states that people are just leaving resulting i9n a net outward-migration. There is a logical consequence when a state becomes a place people are trying to flee from – real estate MUST decline in value. Already, sales of both new and existing houses and condominiums in Southern California has declined 11.8% year over year. Prices rallied and reached a record high in 2018. The median price paid for all Southern California homes that were sold in June 2018 was a record high reaching $536,250, according to CoreLogic. This was reported as a 7.3% increase compared to June of 2017. When you see such short-term surges in a market, that is often the sign of how every market peaks. Real estate is no exception.
Many have touted for years that California property leads the nation. Therefore, whatever trend appears they will spread to the rest of the nation. While we do not necessarily agree with that statement, nonetheless, real estate will be on the decline in most states where taxes are rising. Property is still going to rise in the 7 states without income tax. For those who are unfamiliar with Socrates, we have created indexes for real estate on a worldwide basis. Here is the page you can view what is available.
California may seem to be a leading indicator, but this appears to be with respect to direction only. While Southern California reached record highs in property values in 2018, this appears NOT to be a leading factor, but a lagging one. Our index for the nation as a whole with a limited focus to Residential peaked in August 2016. We have NOT yet elected a Monthly Bearish Reversal. Trump has clearly made a major economic difference. Capital has been returning home and this has helped to create jobs and soften the economic decline in the USA compared to Europe and Asia. This will also have a fundamental backdrop to the dollar.
ISIS Fighter Omar Ameen Easily Achieved Refugee Entry Into the U.S. – Arrested Yesterday For Extradition To Iraq…
The U.S. Dept of Justice detained ISIS fighter Omar Ameen in Sacramento, California, yesterday (full pdf below) pending extradition back to Iraq on murder charges. Incredibly Ameen gained State Department entry into the U.S. through the refugee system.
Despite the claims of the Obama administration, Omar Ameen’s ability to enter the United States is a clear example of weaknesses within the refugee process and lies told by former administration officials about the security therein.
From the DOJ memo of extradition, Omar Ameen first applied for refugee status in Turkey in 2012. Then in June of 2014 applied for refugee status to the United States. The extradition memo explains that “based on the written and verbal answers given by Ameen, his refugee application was approved by USCIS on June 5, 2014.”
On June 21st, 2014, Ameen, who claimed to work as a truck driver, murdered police officer Ihsan Abdulhafiz Jasim in Rawah, Iraq, an ISIS stronghold. Four months later, November 4th, 2014, Ameen entered the U.S. settling in Salt Lake City and then later traveling to Sacramento, California, where he was arrested.
He is currently detained and is likely to be extradited to Iraq to face charges of premeditated murder. However, the larger issue of how he was able to gain such easy entry into the United States should give everyone pause. As noted by The Daily Caller:
[…] Ameen was allegedly a member of ISIS. In 2004, before the rise of that brutal terror group, Ameen and his family helped start AQI, according to the DOJ. In addition to allegedly killing an Iraqi police officer, Ameen is suspected of planting IEDs and committing terrorist acts near his hometown of Rawah.
But Ameen appears not to have faced any rigorous questioning from the U.S. government about terror links and his criminal activities. Instead, he simply answered “no” to questions about his alleged ISIS and al-Qaeda links while inventing a false narrative about his father and brother.
“Have you ever interacted with, had involvement with, or known any members of … Al Qaeda in Iraq … the Islamic State of Iraq or any other armed group or militia?” was one of the questions USCIS posed to Ameen.
“No,” he answered, according to Justice Department documents.
Ameen denied he had ever committed crimes in Iraq.
“In actuality,” according to the Justice Department, witnesses told the FBI that Ameen committed “numerous crimes ranging from robbery to placing [improvised explosive devices].”
“Ameen’s negative answers cut off a line of questioning relevant to his admissibility to the United States,” the Justice Department filing states.
“Based on the written and verbal answers given by Ameen, his refugee application was approved by USCIS on June 5, 2014.” (read more)
Here’s the MEMORANDUM OF EXTRADITION:
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Centinel2012 