Armstrong Economics Blog/Armstrong in the Media
Posted Nov 26, 2022 by Martin Armstrong
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New Interview: Energy, Russia/Ukraine, Cryptos, US Civil War, Real Estate Crash
Category WEF You Will Own Nothing and You Will be Happy
Meloni Set to Abolish Italy’s Welfare State
Armstrong Economics Blog/Italy Re-Posted Nov 25, 2022 by Martin Armstrong
Italy’s new PM Giorgia Meloni revealed her first economic initiatives with a budget of 21 billion euros. The Italian government will no longer provide free handouts to those who simply refuse to work. This should not be controversial.
For starters, anyone eligible for welfare must actually reside in Italy. Those capable of working will have eight months to find employment before their free paycheck runs out. Alternatively, if someone refuses a job, they will be excluded from receiving welfare. The 5-Star’s citizens’ wage will be abolished by next year as the system has been abused by many who simply do not want to work. They are reviewing the pension system as well, but it’s too late to save the pension funds.
Italy’s first female PM is also encouraging couples to start families amid a birth rate crisis. Women may take a sixth month of maternity leave and still receive 80% of their salary. Meloni cut taxes on goods for newborns and feminine hygiene. Couples will receive a 50% increase in the “baby bonus,” and families with over three children will receive more incentives. Italy needs future taxpayers.
Everyone cheered when America appointed its first female vice president, but Kamala Harris has done nothing for women who still pay the pink tax and do not have access to maternity leave. It is astonishing how controversial this move has become with the papers calling Meloni a Fascist dictator for preventing working taxpayers from paying for those unemployed by choice.
G20 To Impose COVID Vaccine to Restrictions on International Travel
Armstrong Economics Blog/Economics Re-Posted Nov 25, 2022 by Martin Armstrong
The world masters dictating to us, the scum of the earth, have adopted under the pretense of the COVID vaccine the means to shut down migration and travel internationally. This will naturally further restrict global economic growth, and everywhere we turn, these people claiming to be world leaders are leading us into a cliff on the other side of 2032.
We were hoping to hold a WEC in Dubai where everyone can fly into without vaccines — an international reunion face to face. These leaders of the world’s largest economies at the Bali G20 drafted and signed a declaration in which the 20 countries agreed to adopt vaccine passports with the purported goal of promoting global travel and tourism. In fact, any country adopting this will have the opposite impact. I have resigned myself that I will never see Australia, New Zealand, or Europe ever again. Whatever these people can do to destroy the world economy, they are doing
Those who understand what is really taking place and that we are on the edge of global defaults post-2024 are not likely to take these vaccines. Hence, they are really trying to prevent movements that will overthrow governments. Just like communism fell in 1989, our Western economies will collapse, and they cannot prevent it. It will not necessitate massive civil unrest. People are not buying their long-term debt anymore, and when they cannot keep funding this insanity, they will collapse of their own accord. This is not some child’s game of blowing bubbles. We live in the real world.
Cleaving Beginning? – Climate Change Policy Makes Europe Too Expensive for Low-Cost EV Manufacturing
Posted originally on the conservative tree house on November 24, 2022 | sundance
We have been closely monitoring the signs of a global cleaving around the energy sector taking place. Essentially, western governments’ following the “Build Back Better” climate change agenda which stops using coal, oil and gas to power their economic engine, while the rest of the growing economic world continues using the more efficient and traditional forms of energy to power their economies.
Within the BBB western group (identified on map in yellow), the logical consequences are increased living costs for those who live in the BBB zone, and increased prices for goods manufactured in the BBB zone. In the zone where traditional low-cost energy resources continue to be developed (grey on map), we would expect to see a lower cost of living and lower costs to create goods. Two divergent economic zones based on two different energy systems.
This potential outcome just seemed to track with the logical conclusion. The yellow zone also represented by the World Economic Forum, and the gray zone also represented by an expanding BRICS alliance. Against this predictable backdrop we have been watching various events unfold, some obvious and some less so.
Today, we get an obvious example:
NEW DELHI, Nov 24 (Reuters) – Fiat parent Stellantis (STLA.MI) has concluded it can’t currently make affordable electric vehicles (EVs) in Europe and is looking at lower-cost manufacturing in markets such as India, its chief executive told reporters.
If India, with its low-cost supplier base, is able to meet the company’s quality and cost targets by the end of 2023, it could open the door to exporting EVs to other markets, said Carlos Tavares, CEO of the group whose brands also include Peugeot and Chrysler.
“So far, Europe is unable to make affordable EVs. So the big opportunity for India would be to be able to sell EV compact cars at an affordable price, protecting profitability,” Tavares told reporters at a media roundtable in India late on Wednesday.
Stellantis is investing heavily in EVs and plans to produce dozens in the coming decade, but Tavares warned last month that affordable battery EVs were between five and six years away.
On his first visit to India since taking over as Stellantis CEO, he said the company was still working out a plan regarding EV exports from the country and had not yet taken any decisions. (read more)
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Normally we would expect to see market forces determining the ultimate economic outcome. Historically, we would not expect government policy that puts their nation at an economic disadvantage. However, in this WEF controlled new western economic normal we see multinational corporations’ making decisions and government leaders creating policy to support the corporations.
There is money to be made by corporations within the climate change agenda, and there is money to be made by producing goods with low-cost wages and cheap materials. Eventually, if you keep following this to its natural conclusion, the entire yellow zone becomes a service driven economy.
Multinational corporations in control of government are what the BRICS assembly foresaw when they first assembled during the Obama administration. When multinational corporations run the policy of western government, there is going to be a problem. Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa (BRICS) saw President Obama sub-contracting, actually giving away, U.S. trade policy.
In the bigger picture, the BRICS assembly are essentially leaders who do not want corporations and multinational banks running their government. BRICS leaders want their government running their government; and yes, that means whatever form of government that exists in their nation, even if it is communist.
BRICS leaders are aligned as anti-corporatist. That doesn’t necessarily make those government leaders better stewards, it simply means they want to make the decisions, and they do not want corporations to become more powerful than they are. As a result, if you really boil it down to the common denominator, what you find is the BRICS group are the opposing element to the World Economic Forum assembly.
The BRICS team intend to create an alternative option for all the other nations. An alternative to the current western trade and financial platforms operated on the use of the dollar as a currency. Perhaps many nations will use both financial mechanisms depending on their need.
The objective of the BRICS group is simply to present an alternative trade mechanism that permits them to conduct business regardless of the opinion of the multinational corporations in the ‘western alliance.’
Again, if you follow the Build Back Better agenda to its natural conclusion, the entire yellow zone becomes a service driven economy.
Australians Safe from Fifth Jab
Armstrong Economics Blog/Australia & Oceania Re-Posted Nov 23, 2022 by Martin Armstrong
After taking four vaccines and failing to curb the transmission of the coronavirus, Australian health officials will not recommend a third booster shot. Health Minister Mark Butler said the Australian Technical Advisory Group on Immunization (ATAGI) admitted that a fifth dosage of the mRNA vaccine would have “minimal” effect toward reduction efforts.
Australia once had some of the strictest COVID restrictions in the world, and this is huge news. ATAGI member Allen Cheng, Ph.D., mentioned that the risk of myocarditis in younger people is troubling. “Vaccinations are beneficial and protective even for younger people but the more doses you get the less benefit you derive from them and then we start to worry about causing side effects,” Cheng said.
Butler said that new booster recommendations will be made in early 2023. Australians are not off the hook yet. Everyone over the age of 30 has been eligible for a second booster since July. The government still recommends staying “up to date” on vaccinations despite that standard constantly changing.
Ukraine Supporters & Denial of History
Armstrong Economics Blog/Ukraine Re-Posted Nov 22, 2022 by Martin Armstrong
I apologize, the proposal began in 1991 for Russia to join NATO. But the final agreement with respect to Ukraine’s nukes was not in Belgrade but in Budapest. History has been rewritten to support the war against Russia for climate change. I have never seen any account of history that reports NATO invited Russia to join in 1991. Some people are so pro-Ukrainian that it is insane. They are really cheering for World War III and no doubt believed in COVID, Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq, and Hillary’s RussiaGate. They refuse to open their eyes to see that they have been played for fools as always to justify war.
So cheer all you want. This war will NOT be confined to just Ukraine you can watch it on TV as if it is some video game. Ukraine was the 3rd largest nuclear power. That was a fact. The US paid them to surrender their nukes to Russia and they in turn provided nuclear power rods for electricity. James Baker warned about loose nukes and Ukraine was one of the three republics that ended up with nukes. The difference was, Ukraine wanted to use them on Moscow. All my sources back then were deeply concerned that Ukraine just could not ever be trusted. It was Ukraine that kept the cold war going. Zelensky has supported the Ukrainian Neo-Nazis who have even bragged that they feed the bones of Russian-speaking children to their pet wolves. I have fact-checked that and it is a true statement made to the press.
My dealing with Ukrainian governments has always been: Just show me the money. Ukraine is a corrupt black hole. History will show who is on the right and wrong side if any side survives.
Good luck with your hatred. Remember, there is a funny thing about what we call karma. What you wish on someone else may be what becomes your own undoing. So don’t worry. Your hatred of Russia will end that nation, but it will be a Phryic War and nobody will survive. So cheer the loss of your future. You will get what you deserve in spades.
The Polish Association of Memory of Victims of Crimes of Ukrainian Nationalists documented 135 methods of torture and murder practiced by Ukrainian Nazis. Poland officially called the Ukrainian actions genocide. The Ukrainians have been protected by the CIA for decades ONLY because they hated Russians. They continue to protect the Ukrainian Nazis only because they are waging war against Russia.
The Ukrainians were unprecedented in their war crimes during WWII and the sheer outright cruelty one would expect only exists in some B-Rated horror movies. This included:
- Running children through with stakes
- Cutting a person’s throat and pulling their tongue out through the hole
- Sawing a person’s torso in half with a carpenter’s saw
- Cutting open the belly of a woman in an advanced stage of pregnancy, removing the fetus, and replacing it with a live cat, before sewing up her abdomen.
- Cutting open a pregnant women’s abdomen and pouring in broken glass
- Nailing a small child to a door.
Ignore all the history you want to keep fanning the flames of war. When you lose everything, remember – you asked for this result.
Associated Press Fires Journalist Who Claimed Russian Missiles Hit Poland, Creating Panic and Calls for War
Posted originally on the Conservative tree house on November 22, 2022 | Sundance
The Associated Press received a lot of international scorn for reporting incorrectly that Russia fired missiles into Poland {Backstory}.
As soon as the AP attributed the missile attack to Russia almost immediately other media outlets began promoting calls for a NATO led war against Russia. Additionally, the G20 summit was taking place and various international leaders began discussing an article-5 convention against Russia.
However, the single source of the AP report was wrong, a senior U.S. intelligence official, if there actually was a source. It was the Ukraine military who fired the missile into Poland, not Russia.
The Daily Beast notes today that the Associated Press has fired James LaPorta, the journalist who made the claim of Russian origin.
(Via Daily Beast) – The Associated Press scared much of the world last Tuesday when it alerted readers that “a senior U.S. intelligence official” said “Russian missiles crossed into NATO member Poland, killing two people.”
That report, which was widely cited across the internet and on cable news, was taken offline the following day and replaced with an editor’s note admitting the single source was wrong and that “subsequent reporting showed that the missiles were Russian-made and most likely fired by Ukraine in defense against a Russian attack.”
On Monday, the AP fired James LaPorta, the investigative reporter responsible for that story, Confider has learned.
The piece, which was originally co-bylined with John Leicester (who is still working at the AP), attributed the information to a single “senior U.S. intelligence official,” despite the AP’s rule that it “routinely seeks and requires more than one source when sourcing is anonymous.” (read more)
Ukraine & Fake News
Armstrong Economics Blog/War Re-Posted Nov 22, 2022 by Martin Armstrong
QUESTION: Sir, Discussing Ukraine with a friend, I brought up the Belgrade Agreement of 1991. Searching the internet I found one article besides your blog spot that references it. I couldn’t find it. Do you have a copy? Censorship at its finest.
Keep up the good work.
DK
ANSWER: That is really unbelievable. The agreement was reached in 1994 following the collapse of the USSR in 1991. Al Gore was quoted by the Guardian on December 18, 1993: “Ukraine is deceiving us all” and that its nuclear policies were “evil.” As the Guardian reported that the Ukrainian “government and its parliament are already in NATO’s bad books for refusing to make good their promise to abandon nuclear weapons.” It was Ukraine that was threatening the entirety of Eastern Europe for their hatred of Russians dating back to ethnic cleansing from the Nazi era was alive and well. You absolutely cannot trust anything Ukraine would ever agree to. I have warned that when shaking hands with Ukraine, you better forget counting your fingers; you need to make sure you still have your arm. Even the IMF has said that Ukraine is the most corrupt country in Europe. NOTHING they say can be trusted.
There was a very real deep fear that Ukraine would not only make sure that the cold war would continue, but they also were highly radical and would use nuclear weapons to claim Russia fired first. Ukraine is a country that is not trusted by its neighbors. It is absurd propaganda that they are fighting for Democracy by refusing to allow the Donbas to vote when they absolutely hate the people there. But the West refuses to protect the Donbas also because they are simply Russians. This one-sided view of human rights allows Ukraine to propel the entire world toward World War III.
Every document you look at and the press pre-2022 cast Ukraine as a dangerous country dominated by corruption and engulfed still in this view of ethnic cleansing from the days of Hitler. Because the CIA protected the Ukrainians, they have never been held accountable, and they are now propelling the world into war.
But Adalaide University just published a study on how Ukraine has been using BOTS to manipulate the world’s opinion to support Ukraine and the destruction of Russia. Ukraine has always been disliked by its neighbors because of its support for Hitler. They have long been considered radicals and linked to the Nazis all because Hitler promised to allow them to create their own country.
Ukraine was NEVER a country before the USSR. They were more like the Kurds in Iraq. The borders they are fighting for were merely drawn for administrative purposes by the USSR. They were the ones who pushed for the collapse of the USSR, and they were the ones who immediately began forming an army of 400,000 that scared the hell out of all their neighbors.
By 1992, they were fighting to take over the Russian fleet. Even Dick Cheney was deeply concerned because Ukraine was irresponsible, and their hatred of Russians from the Nazi days surged to the surface. They had more nuclear weapons than China at the time.
James Baker went to negotiate and argued that Ukraine should surrender its nuclear weapons. There were never trusted. Just like the Serbs in Bosnia, the hatred ran very deep. Ukraine took the position that it would only surrender its nuclear weapons if Russia did. Their arguments were simply colored with Russian hatred. They instantly formed an army after 1991, and the Belgrade Agreement was finally reached in 1994, where they agreed to surrender their weapons and remain neutral, with NATO vowing not to invade, and Russia took the same position. Only then did Ukraine agree to surrender its nukes, for they realized that NATO did not trust them and would regard Ukraine as a terrorist state hostile to Europe.
Ukraine then argued it would cost too much to surrender all its nukes. They were the third-largest nuclear power in the world. They then demanded all sorts of guarantees, which they have violated today, but they also extorted money from the United States to disarm their nukes. To cement the deal, Bill Clinton paid Ukraine $175 million to return the nukes to Russia, and Russia, in return, provided the nuclear power rods for Ukraine. Of course, FAKE NEWS seems to be repainting history with the current color of fashion.
The Ukrainian Civil War was started by the UNELECTED government installed by the US & NATO. They immediately sent an army to attack the Russians in the Donbas. They called it an “anti-terrorist operation,” all to pretend they wore white hats. The Ukrainian people did NOT vote for this war. This was instigated by the West. I warned from the outset that our computer back in 2013 pinpointed Ukraine as the place where World War III would begin. It is now being driven to destroy Russia for climate change. This is NOT my personal opinion. Sorry, I wish it were. Then I could be wrong like any person. But this is the computer projecting, and it has been dispassionate.
For the Ukrainians who cheer war, I remind you of the story of Croesus, king of Lydia. He asked the Oracle at Delphi if he would win if he waged war upon Persia. The Oracle replied, “A great empire will be destroyed.” He took that as his victory. He lost, and the collapse of the great empire was his. Ah, how stupidity causes history to repeat. Ukraine will be utterly destroyed. Their view of a nation-state will be but a fleeting moment of greatness. They are destroying all the lives of their own people simply because of their hatred of Russians and their quest for ethnic cleansing. Everyone supporting Ukraine in this hatred will suffer the same fate. Post-2032, we will get to redesign our government from the ground up. Nothing will remain standing like the fallen statutes of Egypt and Rome. Our time will come.
Zelensky was elected on a promise to end corruption, yet, he has stashed more money offshore than any former leader in Ukraine. He promised to end the civil war and seek peace with Russia. He lied to gain power and has done exactly the opposite. This guy puts money before his own country while hiding it offshore, as the Pandora Papers confirm, and refuses to negotiate or honor the Minsk Agreement because fools would stop sending money to his government, and the well would quickly dry up.
The day before Putin came to defend the Donbas, Zelensky stood up and said he would seek to reestablish nuclear weapons. That ended Ukraine’s 1994 agreement to remain neutral. This was like 1962 when Russia put nukes in Cuba.
The people who never question anything about Ukraine are the same people who believed COVID was like the black plague and you would die without a vaccine and a mask. People are so easily manipulated. Unfortunately, if they were not, how would you get people lining up to fight and die on a battlefield when the very BEST they could ever hope for is to return unharmed to a family who is still there?
Bots manipulate public opinion in Russia-Ukraine conflict
Posted on Sep 8 2022 by Lee Gaskin
Researchers from the University of Adelaide have found bots have had a major online presence during the war between Russia and Ukraine.
The researchers analyzed 5,203,764 tweets, retweets, quote tweets, and replies posted to Twitter between February 23, 2022, and March 8, 2022, containing the hashtags
#(I)StandWithPutin, #(I)StandWithRussia, #(I)SupportRussia, #(I)StandWithUkraine, #(I)StandWithZelenskyy and #(I)SupportUkraine.
“We found that between 60 and 80 per cent of tweets using the hashtags we studied came from bot accounts during the first two weeks of the war,” said co-lead researcher Joshua Watt, an MPhil candidate in Applied Mathematics and Statistics from the University of Adelaide’s School of Mathematical Sciences. “This drove more angst in the online discourse and even impacted discussions surrounding people’s decision to flee or stay in Ukraine.”
“We observed increases in words such as ‘shame,’ ‘terrorist,’ ‘threat,’ and ‘panic.’ Pro-Russian human accounts were having the largest influence on discussions of the war – particularly on accounts which were pro-Ukraine. To our knowledge, this is the first body of published work which addresses online influence operations in the context of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022.”
“In the past, wars have been primarily fought physically, with armies, air force and navy operations being the primary forms of combat. However, social media has created a new environment where public opinion can be manipulated at a very large scale.”Co-lead researcher Joshua Watt, MPhil candidate in Applied Mathematics and Statistics from the University of Adelaide’s School of Mathematical Sciences.
Fellow co-lead researcher, Bridget Smart, a Masters student in Applied Mathematics and Statistics, added: “Our research identifies that this is happening during the Russia-Ukraine war and provides a statistical framework which quantifies the extent to which this is happening. This work extends and combines existing techniques to quantify how bots are influencing people in the online conversation around the Russia-Ukraine invasion. It opens up avenues for researchers to understand quantitatively how these malicious campaigns operate, and what makes them impactful. This research has identified that social media organisations may need to be better equipped for detecting and handling the use of bots on their networks. It has identified that governments may need to have stricter policies on social media organisations, and that social media can be a vital tool during conflict.”
The paper titled “#IStandWithPutin versus #IStandWithUkraine: The interaction of bots and humans in discussion of the Russia/Ukraine war” has been published in arXiv and will be presented at The International Conference on Social Informatics in Glasgow from 19-21 October.
House Republicans Demand Audit of Ukraine Funding
Armstrong Economics Blog/Corruption Re-Posted Nov 21, 2022 by Martin Armstrong
After sending off funds to Ukraine for nine months, people are requesting an itemized bill to find out where billions of taxpayer funds were spent. The newly flipped House called for an audit of Ukrainian funds and a reprioritization to secure America’s own border. Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) accused the Biden Administration of bringing in disabled Ukrainian soldiers as “pawns” when negotiating for additional funds. With the recent FTX blow-up, it is more apparent than ever that these funds to Ukraine have been mishandled.
We have sent billions of funds to Ukraine, but nothing has been done to secure the US-Mexico border despite numerous states declaring an invasion and begging Washington for help. “We are completely protecting another country’s border and also waging a proxy war with Russia,” Greene said. “We had five million people cross our border illegally since Joe Biden took office, let’s compare that to how many Russians have invaded Ukraine, 82 thousand Russians have invaded Ukraine,” Greene stated. As I have stated in prior posts, the cost of building a wall was insignificant compared to the cost of housing illegal immigrants.
A deep-dive audit into the handling of Ukrainian funds would lead to Biden’s impeachment, but this could never happen as too many players would crumble. This situation is larger than Biden conjuring up his own money laundering scheme single-handedly, as people on both sides have their hands in the endless war fund pot.
Article 5 Against Ukraine?
Armstrong Economics Blog/War Re-Posted Nov 18, 2022 by Martin Armstrong
COMMENT: Ukraine attacked Poland. Does this not make Ukraine an enemy now since they struck a nato country?
REPLY: That would certainly be a plot twist. It would never happen since the agenda is to go to war with Russia. Zelensky did not immediately apologize to Poland for killing two Polish citizens, as he was hoping his new friends would blame Russia and immediately begin World War III.
It was a very passive apology as well. He apologized for the “Russian missile terror” and alleviated himself of any blame. “Expressed condolences over the death of Polish citizens from Russian missile terror. We exchanged available information and are clarifying all the facts. Ukraine, Poland, all of Europe and the world must be fully protected from terrorist Russia,” Zelensky said on Twitter.
Technically, Ukraine did attack Poland. Poland is a NATO member, and Ukraine is not. It does not matter if it was an accident, as they can use any excuse to start a full-scale global war under the current conditions of NATO that say “any” attack could be grounds for collective defense.
As Article 5 notes:
“The Parties agree that an armed attack against one or more of them in Europe or North America shall be considered an attack against them all and consequently they agree that, if such an armed attack occurs, each of them, in exercise of the right of individual or collective self-defense recognized by Article 51 of the Charter of the United Nations, will assist the Party or Parties so attacked by taking forthwith, individually and in concert with the other Parties, such action as it deems necessary, including the use of armed force, to restore and maintain the security of the North Atlantic area. Any such armed attack and all measures taken as a result thereof shall immediately be reported to the Security Council. Such measures shall be terminated when the Security Council has taken the measures necessary to restore and maintain international peace and security.”
Centinel2012 