There has been a real crisis evolving in Berlin. When the Wall came crashing down, East Germany regarded that it owned all the property and thus sold vast tracts of apartments to major investors. Now 20 years later, the socialists are claiming this is not fair and the government should either buy the property back from these investors or confiscate it. There are many people on the left and in the Green Party who see nothing wrong with confiscating private property. Why should they pay for something they cannot afford to buy? Under their reasoning, there is some human right that should allow them to go into a car dealership and drive away with what they want because it is unfair that they cannot afford to buy it.

Berlin has been toying with the idea of holding a referendum on banning big landlords and expropriating their homes into social housing. This is part of a response to growing complaints in the German capital about the cost of living. The expropriated homes will be some 200,000 units that would then become government property, once again, and could be rented out for below market rates.

The danger of allowing private property to be seized without compensation is that it will be devastating for Germany and Europe as a whole. Real property is critical to confidence. If the state can even allow a referendum where the majority of people will be handed the property of the minority, this is really a return to the days of the Nazis. They could not borrow funds on the open market so they targeted the Jews and expropriated all their property. Of course, in those days they killed them. Today, they won’t kill the investors. They will just take all their wealth. It seems that allowing referendums to retroactively change the law is very dangerous. If anyone wants to know why the euro could collapse to new historical lows, put this one into your thinking cap and ask if you want to invest in something that can be arbitrarily confiscated.

QUESTION: I believe back at your 1985 WEC, if I remember correctly, besides the 2016 target for the first opportunity for a third party type president, you also gave the date 2021 for the potential breakup of the Treaty of Rome. Could you refresh my memory on that one?

See you in Rome

Thanks as always

WN

ANSWER: There were two dates for Europe. Economically, the first date was 2008. That was the end of a 51.6-year cycle from the signing of the Treaty of Rome. The second date is 2020.03, which is two Pi cycles of 31.4 years. Now 2020.03 lines up with the end of this particular Economic Confidence Wave that turns 2020.05.

This is why Rome is going to be an interesting WEC, to say the least. We are preparing an authoritative work entitled “The Fate of Europe.”

We are reaching an extremely important change in trend. You can see the pressure and all that is at stake for the EU itself has set up a site it pretends to be a Fact Checker. This is indicative of the rising tensions.

Then we have total insanity with BREXIT where Prime Minister Theresa May is really working for the EU against her own country. The postponement of BREXIT until October 21st is on the table. May hopes that it will come down to accepting whatever terms the EU demands. She hopes Britain will surrender all sovereignty to Brussels or accept a hard exit, which she thinks everyone would reject. She believes the choice will be a hard exit. She is pitching it as the end of the world or remain and overrule the people and democracy.

In all the years I have worked around the world with various governments and political figures, I have never seen the entire world in such total chaos.

Historically, there was always some bright spot where the sun still shined. Today, it just seems to be gray and overcast everywhere we look. We seem to be on track to fulfill our manifest destiny whichever direction that will be — toward liberty or totalitarianism. There seems to be little other option. It will take us all to push for liberty when the time comes.

QUESTION: Hello Mr. Armstrong,
I´d like your opinion on this,
During 7 Decades in which our lives got better, longer, richer, safer, healthier, better educated, more peaceful and more stimulating. Even World poverty has decreased in a rate never seen before, still, news coverage got increasingly negative

What explanation could there be for this? Is it excessive competition for attention as media sources multiply or an excessive any deeper reasons? I compare it to Markets, seems to be similar like trading on news, which is impossible because when the news is the worst, usually its the low and when everything and everyone is optimistic its the high.
regards

ES

ANSWER: Coming out of World War II, society really advanced in many ways from technology to medicine. This is the part of the societal cycle that is best to live in. Then what happens is corruption. The news becomes corrupt in sync with politics. I believe this becomes the case because news becomes institutionalized as it is owned by big firms who then direct the news to slant to their personal benefit. This is a funny skit on British News. It is so true here in the States as well. The Democrats love CNN and the Republicans love Fox. The news gravitates to a political slant and is no longer about news – it is always about selling more ads.

Yellow journalism was created by the battle between Pulitzer and Hearst. They created the Spanish American War to sell papers. Pulitzer’s name was worthless. To rehabilitate it he donated money to create the Pulitzer Prize for good journalism, which he never practiced.

Now we are in the downtrend of that cycle. The corruption has taken over everything. Just look at the list of presidents since Jimmy Carter. There is not a single president who has not been subjected to a special prosecutor investigating some action, which is always brought by the opposing party. I really fear who will come after Trump. Trump is probably the perfect president at this moment for he has such thick skin. Who else is going to run? If they do not have thick skin, what is the point? Will any rational person want to put their family through such scrutiny?

Even Melania Trump’s decision to wear a custom blue Ralph Lauren suit to her husband’s presidential inauguration in January 2017 set off a firestorm to the point that a staff member at Ralph Lauren publicly stated: “We immediately started to get complaints about Melania Trump wearing [the label]. And people [on Twitter] are using the #boycottralphlauren hashtag.”

Even a First Lady is now targeted for what she wears. This level of criticism was unheard of decades ago. Now everything offends someone and they seem to be looking for issues to claim they are offended.