This upcoming seminar in Frankfurt Germany will deal with both the short-term and long-term. This has been the Year from Political Hell, and it will not end until after the German elections. With the ECB finally throwing in the towel admitting (but certainly not publicly) that nearly 10 years of low to negative interest rates has utterly failed to reverse the deflation. Now with the expectation of higher interest rates, the optimism is returning on schedule in Europe as virtually 99% are touting that deflation is over and let the good times roll.

Of course, the greatest error with currency is the general public view it as a share price. They assume that the higher the Euro the stronger the economy becomes. Yet historically, the exact opposite is always true because currency is the medium of exchange which sits on the opposite side of the scale with tangible assets. Deflation is when assets decline because the currency rises in purchasing power.

When we look at the historical highs in the U.S. dollar, we can see the peaks are not marked by economic booms, but the economic depressions/recessions. The first peak in the dollar was World War I, then 1931 and the Depression, then 1949 post World War II, then 1985 and the steep recession that prompted the birth of the G5.

The rise in the euro and the decline in the dollar is part of the set-up before the Monetary Crisis begins in 2018. You must always swing to the opposite direction of the eventual trend. The lowered dollar is EXACTLY what Trump wants to increase US exports in theory to create more jobs. A higher dollar will reverse all the aspirations of Trump.

The real question become which target can the Euro reach before reversing the trend in 2018? Are we looking at the 116 level again or 125-128? This will be the topic for the upcoming Frankfurt Seminar on July 22nd. We reached our minimum target of 114.

QUESTION: Mr. Armstrong; Are you aware of the 1988 Economist article predicting that in 30 years from then we would all be using the same currency?  That is strangely your target of 2018 when you have warned that the Monetary Crisis will begin then. I met an attendee from your 1985 WEC there in Hong Kong. He said you gave that date of 2018 way back at that conference. Did the Economist take your work for that article?

PH

ANSWER: The Economist did not really make a forecast. They were just generalizing what might happen in 30 years from then. I do recall speaking to them back then, but I disagreed with the concept that everyone would be shopping with the same currency around the world. I was one of the people called in back in 1985 when they were creating the G5 (now G20) at the Plaza Accord. I had originally proposed back then that we adopt the SDR at the IMF as the new reserve currency.

After dealing with many governments at that time, it became crystal clear that this idea of a single world currency that people would be using in everyday commerce was not practical. It was at the Plaza Accord in 1985 when the idea of the Euro was born. This article in the Economist was inspired by this idea of surrendering monetary authority to a single government in Europe. We can see how screwed up the outcome has been. After working with governments in Europe and America, it was abundantly clear that a single currency that would be used in daily commerce by everyone would never exist without monumental collapse in governments and a new one world government. But that would not last very long as we see the rebellion in Europe against Brussels. It demands also the surrender of one’s culture.

This idea of a one world government where everyone willingly surrenders their sovereignty and culture to some central power is the stuff of movies. Here is a letter from the White House. The chief objection is universal. It requires the surrender of domestic policy objectives to international.

There is no possible way this is happening without the entire world collapsing and a single government emerges by FORCE. Politics as we know will could no longer function. Politicians argue vote for them and they will tax the rich and hand it to the poor. How can that take place in such a system? They could not promises nonsense against the global trend as they do currently. The policy would be determined at the central power and politicians would be subordinate in every country unable to offer anything to get elected.

I do not support the corruption that has engulfed the world. However, this idea that everyone will be using the same currency is a pipe-dream with no basis in reality for the amount of political change would require a bloodbath in revolution. It could NEVER unfold willingly with the political system we currently have. Even then, counter-revolutionary forces would emerge. It will not be just BREXIT, it will be countless civil wars against a central political institution.

The very best will be a single new reserve currency to replace the dollar. But every country would still need to retain its own currency because the business cycle cannot be defeated so while some countries benefit, others must suffer. The entire world cannot possibly have a trade surplus all simultaneously until we begin trading with other planets.

The Economist wrote:

Title of article: Get Ready for the Phoenix
Source: Economist; 01/9/88, Vol. 306, pp 9-10
THIRTY years from now, Americans, Japanese, Europeans, and people in many other rich countries, and some relatively poor ones will probably be paying for their shopping with the same currency. Prices will be quoted not in dollars, yen or D-marks but in, let’s say, the phoenix. The phoenix will be favoured by companies and shoppers because it will be more convenient than today’s national currencies, which by then will seem a quaint cause of much disruption to economic life in the last twentieth century.
–
At the beginning of 1988 this appears an outlandish prediction. Proposals for eventual monetary union proliferated five and ten years ago, but they hardly envisaged the setbacks of 1987. The governments of the big economies tried to move an inch or two towards a more managed system of exchange rates – a logical preliminary, it might seem, to radical monetary reform. For lack of co-operation in their underlying economic policies they bungled it horribly, and provoked the rise in interest rates that brought on the stock market crash of October. These events have chastened exchange-rate reformers. The market crash taught them that the pretense of policy co-operation can be worse than nothing, and that until real co-operation is feasible (i.e., until governments surrender some economic sovereignty) further attempts to peg currencies will flounder.

…
The new world economy
The biggest change in the world economy since the early 1970’s is that flows of money have replaced trade in goods as the force that drives exchange rates. as a result of the relentless integration of the world’s financial markets, differences in national economic policies can disturb interest rates (or expectations of future interest rates) only slightly, yet still call forth huge transfers of financial assets from one country to another. These transfers swamp the flow of trade revenues in their effect on the demand and supply for different currencies, and hence in their effect on exchange rates. As telecommunications technology continues to advance, these transactions will be cheaper and faster still. With unco-ordinated economic policies, currencies can get only more volatile.
….
In all these ways national economic boundaries are slowly dissolving. As the trend continues, the appeal of a currency union across at least the main industrial countries will seem irresistible to everybody except foreign-exchange traders and governments. In the phoenix zone, economic adjustment to shifts in relative prices would happen smoothly and automatically, rather as it does today between different regions within large economies (a brief on pages 74-75 explains how.) The absence of all currency risk would spur trade, investment and employment.
–
The phoenix zone would impose tight constraints on national governments. There would be no such thing, for instance, as a national monetary policy. The world phoenix supply would be fixed by a new central bank, descended perhaps from the IMF. The world inflation rate – and hence, within narrow margins, each national inflation rate- would be in its charge. Each country could use taxes and public spending to offset temporary falls in demand, but it would have to borrow rather than print money to finance its budget deficit. With no recourse to the inflation tax, governments and their creditors would be forced to judge their borrowing and lending plans more carefully than they do today. This means a big loss of economic sovereignty, but the trends that make the phoenix so appealing are taking that sovereignty away in any case. Even in a world of more-or-less floating exchange rates, individual governments have seen their policy independence checked by an unfriendly outside world.
–
As the next century approaches, the natural forces that are pushing the world towards economic integration will offer governments a broad choice. They can go with the flow, or they can build barricades. Preparing the way for the phoenix will mean fewer pretended agreements on policy and more real ones. It will mean allowing and then actively promoting the private-sector use of an international money alongside existing national monies. That would let people vote with their wallets for the eventual move to full currency union. The phoenix would probably start as a cocktail of national currencies, just as the Special Drawing Right is today. In time, though, its value against national currencies would cease to matter, because people would choose it for its convenience and the stability of its purchasing power.
…..
The alternative – to preserve policymaking autonomy- would involve a new proliferation of truly draconian controls on trade and capital flows. This course offers governments a splendid time. They could manage exchange-rate movements, deploy monetary and fiscal policy without inhibition, and tackle the resulting bursts of inflation with prices and incomes polices. It is a growth-crippling prospect. Pencil in the phoenix for around 2018, and welcome it when it comes

Believe it or not, Australia has a Black Economy Taskforce that hunts down citizens in every possible way. They look at where they send their kids to school and then inquire at the school who pays the bills and how. They are using technology to hack people’s phones of anyone suspected of hiding money to get all their messages and emails as well as where they call overseas. Their own website says:

The Black Economy Taskforce has been established to develop an innovative, forward-looking whole-of-government policy response to combat the black economy in Australia, recognising that these issues cannot be tackled by traditional tax enforcement measures alone.

The black economy refers to people who operate entirely outside the tax and regulatory system or who are known to the authorities but do not correctly report their tax obligations.

Michael Andrew, the head of this 1984 style Taskforce to spy on citizens, has proposed that the government should keep track of your $100 and $50 notes by implanting hi-tech nano-chips. He could simply scan your house to see where you are hiding money that the government can confiscate.

What I have been warning about is that government will not reform. Instead they will push us up against the wall and do everything against a free society to survive. This is simply how government responds every time throughout history. It is all about them paying their own pension at the expense of the citizen. They will always pretend the problem is the rich do not pay their fair share, but in reality, the crisis is the government will simply consume everything until it collapses.

So just recognize these bureaucrats are drunk with power for they look upon the people as stupid cattle to be slaughtered for their survival – them against us. Everything that was worth fighting for to preserve our way of life have been eliminated not by some foreign enemy, but by our rulers.

Government bureaucrats connive ways to gain power as they treat the people like mushrooms — they keep  us in the dark and feed us mountains manure and mainstream media conspire to make sure we remain buried so deep we cannot reach the surface for air. They foam at the mouth of the through of creating a cashless society. The abolition of cash would be absolutely “absurd” and it is interesting how they argue against creating voter ID requirements saying it will prevent minorities from voting because they are backward and do not live in the modern world. As stupid and racist as that argument really is by the left, can you imagine eliminating cash from people who are so backward according to their arguments?

The Bureaucrats love their slogan – “Cash is for Criminals” and will distort every possible instance to support the elimination of cash. There was terrorism and then there was drugs. Eliminate cash, they say, and you will eliminate all crime.

So on the one hand they are against any requirement to prove who you are to vote, but then they want to eliminate cash from people they also claim cannot even find where to get ID in a city. Interesting conflicts.

ANSWER: Yes. We can see from the Global Market Watch that the current year if it closed right here would imply a temporary high. That can change since it is based upon a dynamic view assuming each day that passes were the last trading day of the year. Nevertheless, it warns that we must stay on point.

There are two separate objectives – TIME and PRICE. With regard to PRICE, our three targets given back in 2011 were 18500, 23000, and 40,000. The minimum TIME objective was 2016/2017. Our next target in TIME becomes 2020 followed by 2022. This appears to be setting up for a major vertical move. This is why we will be reviewing how to trade a vertical market.

The markets are far more precise than anyone could have ever imagined. It is unfortunate that the analytical field is plagued by people pretending to be prophets or gurus like the old snake-oil medicine salesmen of the 19th century. Nobody can forecast anything from as personal opinion perspective on a consistent basis. Sure, everyone can make a single forecasting call based upon a gut feeling. But they cannot accomplish that on any consistent basis. This is all about a journey into a world of hidden order – the chaos theory. It is not being a prophet, guru or physic. Such titles reduce the analyst to a snake-oil salesman.

The Seattle City Council has run out of things to tax so they have unanimously voted to impose an income tax upon the “rich”, and of course we all know that will eventually move to include everyone. The city claims it will raise $140 million and it will cost $10-13 million to set up, and you can bet that does not include pensions for the new employees. The slogan is “Time for the rich to pay their fair share.” Of course, what is fair? If someone does not use any public services, then paying incomes tax is still fair? Americans have to pay income taxes if they live overseas and use nothing. Fairness is never judges upon what someone uses from the government, but when other people want to rob those who have more then it is suddenly fair. To a homeless person, someone earning just $25,000 a year is rich. It is always relative.

We have not yet broken gold for all the people writing in. So far we have elected three Weekly Bearish Reversals from the July 2016 high in gold and three Monthly Bearish Reversals. We have elected two Weekly Bearish Reversals from the high in June and fallen into the target week of July 10th and last week was the Panic Cycle. We now look to the week of July 24th for the next turning point.

We are getting ready to relaunch Socrates. This is what it wrote for the Detailed Analysis today:

“Focusing on a trading perspective, the market has declined after making its high back in July 2016 at 137750. We did elect 3 Monthly Bearish Reversals warning that we have a more serious bearish shift in trend in play. Subsequently, we have formed a low at 112430 during December 2016 from which we have seen a bounce for the past 6 months. We have also elected 2 Monthly Bullish Reversals from the reaction low of December 2016 and we have now dropped back penetrating last month’s low implying we will retest support. A month-end closing below last month’s low of 123650 will be a technical warning of weakness ahead. Any long position should use a protective sell stop on a monthly closing basis at 121420. Keep in mind this is just a trading suggestion given it is merely a trading observation rule. Buy or sell signals take place on Reversals and Cycles. “

QUESTION: