Posted originally on Feb 24, 2025 by Martin Armstrong
French Economy Minister Eric Lombard is eager to lower the public deficit with an aim of 5.4% of GDP in 2025 followed by 3% into 2029. The European Union requires member states to maintain a budget deficit below 3% but only 17 of the 27 members have met that target. France is the largest European economy failing to maintain this goal as they grapple with ever-rising government debt.
“We are going to work with all the political parties … to discuss, to talk with us. We are going, also, to work with the unions, with the employers, in order to reach a consensus on the main policies that are key for the country, and policies on which we can make adjustments that will allow us to spend less in 2026,” Lombard said, later admitting that politics have had a “negative impact on growth.”
The economy experienced a 0.1% contraction during Q4. The Bank of France expects the economy to grow by 0.1% to 0.2% in Q1 of this year, while the IMF predicts the economy will rise by 0.8% for the year.
France is facing a fiscal crisis of its own making. The government has consistently failed to address the core structural issues, instead relying on higher taxes and superficial spending cuts, which only serve to undermine economic growth. The public deficit, now surpassing 5.6% of GDP, is spiraling out of control, and the government’s projections to bring it under the EU’s arbitrary 3% threshold by 2029 are nothing more than wishful thinking. History has shown that governments never truly cut spending—they merely shift the burden through taxation, stifling private sector expansion.
The reality is that France, like much of Europe, is caught in a vicious cycle of excessive government intervention, anti-business policies, and high taxation, all of which discourage capital formation. Pension funds are vanishing. Political instability and declining tax revenues have exacerbated the deficit, yet the solution proposed is always the same—more taxes, more regulations, and empty promises of austerity.
Nothing is more inflationary than war, and Macron is eager to send off French troops to Ukraine as he closely aligns with Brussels to spur on the next major war. Confidence will decline, capital will flee, and interest expenditures will continue to rise. France risks a debt crisis that will only accelerate the collapse of the EU’s financial system. As I’ve warned before, the trend is clear: governments refuse to reform until they are left with no choice. The question is not if, but when, France will face the reckoning of its fiscal mismanagement.
Posted originally on Feb 24, 2025 by Martin Armstrong
White House Coronavirus Response Coordinator Dr. Deborah Birxhas come out to say that “the science” has “done wrong in public health.” Vaccine hesitancy rates have been rising since it was exposed that the mRNA vaccine did more harm than good. Birx has admitted that the COVID vaccine was never meant to be a preventative measure.
“The science” should not have forced the general population to take an experimental vaccination, Dr. Birx admits. The vaccine was initially designed, allegedly, to protect people “at risk for severe disease” and/or those over 65 with comorbidities. Even then, the vaccine did not protect any segment of the population from transmission and infection. So the most vulnerable in the population were not only still exposed to COVID-19, but they were then at risk for developing potentially fatal side effects brought on by the vaccine itself.
A December poll by Pew Research found that 60% of Americans would not take another booster vaccine. Every dataset shows vaccine hesitancy rates rising, but Dr. Birx believes that overall vaccination rates have fallen by 50%.
“The childhood vaccines, like many of the diseases, you get it once, you don’t get it again,” she explained. “And this is getting the children to have that disease without getting the deadly consequences. That is not what the COVID vaccine was designed to do. It wasn’t designed to prevent infection, and if you look at the vaccine hesitancy rates, they’ve doubled since COVID.
The public was aggressively told that the vaccine was the ONLY way to survive the pandemic. We WERE told that the vaccine would prevent infection and anyone who declined was putting the entire public at risk. Then the truth behind the Wuhan lab leak was exposed. Dr. Anthony Fauci admitted that there was no science behind social distancing, masking, and lockdowns. Public trust in the government has completely shattered.
There has been a resurgence in diseases like the measles as parents are understandably hesitant to vaccinate their children. I, for one, will no longer take the annual flu vaccination. It has never prevented anyone from contracting the flu, but they say, “Oh, don’t worry. The flu would have been worse if you didn’t take the vaccine.” Countless doctors have told me that I was wise for refusing the COVID jab since they have seen countless patients come in with side effects.
Posted originally on Feb 24, 2025 by Martin Armstrong
Former Biden Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg chastised the practice of DEI initiatives while speaking to the DNC Chair. That’s correct – the same forum that blamed Kamala’s loss on racism and misogyny. Buttigieg recently moved to Michiga,n where he is expected to run for state governor. The Democrats are turning on the very policies they aggressively pushed after realizing the people will no longer vote for woke insanity.
Pete Buttigieg said: “What do we mean when we talk about diversity? Is it caring for people’s different experiences and making sure no one is mistreated because of them, which I will always fight for? Or is it making people sit through a training that looks like something out of Portlandia, which I have also experienced, and it is how, it is how Trump Republicans are made if that comes to your workplace with the best of intentions, but doesn’t actually get at what actually matters here.”
Apparently, DEI initiatives create “Trump Republicans” as people want to be judged on their character and qualifications rather than their race or sex. Pete Buttigieg is the DEFINITION of a DEI hire. He had absolutely no qualifications to lead the nation’s transportation sector. Biden cheered that Pete would become the nation’s first openly gay person to be confirmed by the Senate to a Cabinet position. Biden said he was appointing Pete to be in his “Cabinet of barrier-breakers” and openly said he was there “BUILD BACK BETTER.”
What qualifications did he have other than diversity? Some say that he helped handle some transportation issues while acting as mayor of South Bend, Indiana. Certainly, that could not be the BEST American for the job.
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) recently lashed out at DEI quotas, partially blaming the program for the recent Delta plane crash. “You couldn’t fill the role rather than us just simply saying, we need the best and brightest individuals, and we’re going to hire you specifically on merit. We’re going to train you specifically on merit,” Senator Markwayne Mullin stated. As a result, class sizes shrank to 80% to 70% of capacity to maintain DEI required ratios. “So Pete Buttigieg carries no credibility. The only reason why he was there was probably because of DEI to begin with,” Mullin said.
Now, Buttigieg is pivoting his stance completely. Yet, as Transportation Secretary, he established the Advisory Committee on Transportation Equity (ACTE) to force employees to undergo civil rights and equity training; he repeatedly apologized for having too many White people in his office. During his 2020 campaign for president, he openly stated that he wanted minorities to vote for him. “I need help, so the black voters who know me best, the people of South Bend, helped return me to the office by an overwhelming margin,” Buttigieg begged.
Following more of his speech at the DNC Chair:
“If we were more serious about the actual values and not caught up in vocabularies and trying to cater to everybody only in terms of their particular slice of combinations of identities versus the shared project. Actually if we thought about it a little bit differently, things like diversity would be actually an example of how we reach out beyond our traditional coalition.”
Politicians will claim to support any agenda that garners votes. Pete Buttigieg moved up the political ranks as a direct result of DEI hiring practices and now he is criticizing his own party for becoming “caught up in vocabularies” and not focusing on “actual values.” Expect more “progressives” to switch their stance and pretend they never supported the woke madness.
Posted originally on Feb 24, 2025 by Martin Armstrong
QUESTION: Hi Martin,
You have mentioned over and over that J.P. Morgan had to bail out the US Government in the late 1890’s with gold, which was US money at that time. Can you explain to us how the US economy could be strong at that time when the US Government went broke collecting tariffs on imports?
Chaz
ANSWER: The economy was strong, it was the silver democrats who overvalued silver taking bribes from the silver miners. That led to the arbitrage silver was pouring into the USA and swapped for gold. The insolvency was not from domestic debt but from the overvaluation of silver, and gold was the international settlement – not silver.
Today, we are in a debt crisis. This is economically different. The Panic of 1896 was about foreign exchange and the Democrats trying to inflate the economy with silver as they are still trying today with endless spending and no accountability. This led to their attack on the gold standard and the 1893 march on Washington that became the Wizard of Oz. See:
Posted originally on Feb 23, 2025 by Martin Armstrong
COMMENT: Mr. Armstrong, Congratulations. Socrates was correct once again. Scholz’s unpopular Social Democrat government has the worst performance since World War II. Merz won, and Afd doubled its support, coming in second. If this was America, Merz’s less than 29% would have been a joke. Here, he will rule Germany and stupidly vow no coalition with AfD. He has not got the memo as you say that the people are shifting.
Thank you for Socrates. This is the only forecaster that is not biased.
Hans
REPLY: Yes, Friedrich Merz’s conservative opposition leader, what would not be even a headline in the United States. When you have so many parties fighting, you get very ineffective governments. That many Italians have told me keeps politicians arguing against each other and leaving the people alone. Indeed, as our computer projected, the Alternative for Germany nearly doubled its support, putting in the strongest showing for an alleged “far-right party” that had been against wholesale immigration since World War II.
Chancellor Olaf Scholz conceded defeat for his left-leaning Social Democrats. He said it was “a bitter election result.” Perhaps he should listen to the people rather than to Kaus Schwab. Marxism does not work. It has destroyed every economy it has ever been deployed because it is outright against human nature.
Merz vowed to move quickly to put together a coalition government but has vowed not to make a coalition with AfD all because the press has labeled them far-right, asking to be Nazis. Any coalition Merz created without AfD will only doom Germany to a continuation of the never-ending economic stagnation of Europe’s biggest economy thanks to Russian sanctions and the stupid net-zero climate change policies. Merz had pushed hard in recent weeks for a stricter approach, but with opposition to NATO against peace with Russia in order to remain relevant, will Merz fall in line with the EU war objectives?
Germany is the most populous country in the 27-nation European Union and a leading member of NATO. It has been Ukraine’s second-biggest weapons supplier after the U.S. Therein lies the problem. Scholtz promised Zelensky he would be his biggest supporter. Ukraine only takes. I never give up anything. The Ukraine government is the most corrupt government runs it in the world, and they are like a merchant who takes your money and declares all sales are final and have no returns.
Based on exit polls and partial counting, the projections put support for Merz’s Union bloc came in at around 28.5% and the anti-immigration AfD at about 20.5% — roughly double its result from 2021. Scholz’s Social Democrats collapsed to just over 16%, which was an all-time historic low even under the 20.5% from 2017. The Greens came in at an appalling just over 12%.
Merz made a huge mistake because of the press and dismissed the idea that voters wanted a coalition with AfD. “We have fundamentally different views, for example on foreign policy, on security policy, in many other areas, regarding Europe, the euro, NATO,” he said. Mertz has ignored the vote and he is just doing as directed by the EU and NATO. This does not speak well for Germany’s’s changing directions.
I do not see Mertz changing Germany’s economic direction. He must reject the EU and NATO and listen to the German people.
Posted originally on Feb 23, 2025 by Martin Armstrong
Zelensky offered to resign if Ukraine joined NATO, which he knew would start World War III. Sure, he will fly to Miami with his stolen billions and fund the Neo-Nazis of Ukraine to eradicate all Russians. You will never know the pure hatred of Russians in Ukraine. He ran on peace and did the opposite. The death toll in Ukraine has risen from 13,000 to over 1.1 million. This man many see as the anti-Christ whose purpose has been to create World War III.
I would cut off EVERY penny to Ukraine. If the people want to save their country, they better overthrow this dictator who dares to say the Ukrainian people do not want elections. I have not found a single Ukrainian to utter those words. We will never again have any representation in Ukraine, for under his laws, he can execute them for what I write on this blog.
Posted originally on CTH on February 24, 2025 | Sundance
FBI Director Kash Patel has selected Dan Bongino to be the Deputy FBI Director. The position does not need senate confirmation.
President Trump praised the selection on his Truth Social account [SEE HERE] and it will be a selection very well received by the conservative base of support.
President Trump:“Great news for Law Enforcement and American Justice! Dan Bongino, a man of incredible love and passion for our Country, has just been named the next DEPUTY DIRECTOR OF THE FBI, by the man who will be the best ever Director, Kash Patel. Dan has a Masters Degree in Psychology from C.U.N.Y., and an MBA from Penn State. He was a member of the New York Police Department (New York’s Finest!), a highly respected Special Agent with the United States Secret Service, and is now one of the most successful Podcasters in the Country, something he is willing and prepared to give up in order to serve. Working with our great new United States Attorney General, Pam Bondi, and Director Patel, Fairness, Justice, Law and Order will be brought back to America, and quickly. Congratulations Dan!”
The Fourth Amendment has been destroyed by legislative permission, and a complete lack of accountability for violations of law. Americans are no longer “secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures,” and “reasonable cause” warrants are no longer needed.
It should not be too much to ask for an FBI Director who respects the Fourth Amendment. Alas, in the real world of the Patriot Act, pragmatically we are well aware that every sub-silo and contractor within the FBI toolbox has access to this unlimited surveillance library.
Perhaps unbeknownst to most, the people advising President Trump on IC nominations also hold a vested interest in making sure the candidates continue to allow exploitation and position for the next phase, the introduction of AI.
I prefer an FBI Director who does not support FISA-702 warrantless searches of U.S. citizen data. Unfortunately, everyone in the orbit of President Trump providing the advice and recommending the candidates, do not hold the same view. Not a single one.
Support for the American surveillance state, is the common thread that runs through every nomination and selection.
I am used to being well outside the wire, looking at how the IC is weaponizing systems against us. I can assure you; they do not view Patel or Bongino as a threat.
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