Tag Archives: Cartels

Mar 29 2023

Paris on Verge of Revolution?


Armstrong Economics Blog/Civil Unrest Re-Posted Mar 28, 2023 by Martin Armstrong

We have been getting readings in France keeping us up to date in this huge Pension Protest and many see this as rising tension toward Revolution. While politicians dump money into Ukraine with no accountability whatsoever, they turn on their own cities and tighten the economic screws.

There is no question that Socrates has correctly forecast the rise in civil unrest. But this is just the first quarter. Things are going to get much worse. From April on, we are looking at rising volatility in many areas. The mega protest in Paris over the Pension Crisis has not even touched on the war that these people are planning as a distraction from the fiscal mismanagement.

The government will always paint protesters are violent. In the USA, the Democrats called the January 6th protest an “insurrection” when there were no guns. The prosecutors who are always against the people, want to imprison anyone in the building for 5 years just for being there. In Canada, the government called the truckers terrorists, and again they had no weapons. In Paris the government instructed the police that they ate there “to destroy, to injure and to kill” to make sure the police do not switch sides. When the police join the protester, as in Ukraine in 2014, the government falls. The same took place in Moscow during the coup and the military refused to shoot the people so the coup collapsed.

There is always a pattern where the government at the end of the day will always view the people as the ultimate enemy. As long as we remain quiet, pay our taxes, and go off to war when they order us to die on foreign soil, then they are happy. When people rise up, then there is a problem. Revolution is ONLY successful when the police/military support the people.

Mar 28 2023

Leaked Texts – Liberal Govt Plotted to De-Bank Freedom Convoy Protestors Before Invoking Emergencies Act


Armstrong Economics Blog/Corruption Re-Posted Mar 28, 2023 by Martin Armstrong

Tyrant Justin Trudeau gave the green light to the Western world to begin de-banking citizens based on political beliefs. New text messages emerged that show the Liberal government pressured banks to freeze accounts long before the Emergencies Act (EA) was invoked amid the Freedom Convoy (also known as the Trucker Convoy).

Trudeau invoked the Emergencies Act on February 14, 2022, but plans to punish protestors began weeks prior. Senior advisers at the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) Ben Chin and Tyler Meredith began discussing plans to de-bank protestors on February 7. “But we are talking with banks and insurance companies about how they can act on their own and what helpful signals we might be able to send,” one text message stated.

The Liberals wanted to “keep the heat off the bank branches,” as many were reluctant to freeze accounts. The government was also concerned that people would retaliate directly against the banks. So how could they “safely” lock out hundreds of people from the economy? “One thing I should add- from what we hear most of the big banks are actually doing a lot of work already within the terms and conditions of existing account agreements to manage flow of funds if they suspect someone or something. That’s an angle we are looking at,” another text exchange stated. They looked at every angle possible to justify their actions.

The day that the Emergencies Act was invoked, Canadian Minister of Finance Chrystia Freeland happily froze C$8 million from 267 people, as well as 170 crypto wallets. She was able to act quickly because the plan was already in place. Freeland demanded an “economic incentive” to end the peaceful protests. Freeland also ordered the blacklisting of over 200 trucking companies. Not only did she blacklist companies, but she shared their personal data with foreign entities:

“According to the Inquiry, the RCMP shared this blacklist with Canadian contacts at foreign banks, including the Bank of China, BNP Paribas of France, State Bank of India, Habib Bank of Pakistan, Citibank of New York, ICICI Bank Limited of India, Hana Financial Group of South Korea, Mizuho Financial Group of Japan and Wells Fargo & Company of San Francisco.”

Yes, she even shared information with China. This was the first time in Canadian history that the EA was invoked to freeze bank accounts. Since his government experienced zero backlash as there are no checks and balances, other governments have since begun freezing the bank accounts of protestors, journalists, average citizens, and anyone who dares to disagree with Big Brother. This is yet another reason why people do not trust the government or banks. Our computer model indicates that the volatility in the banking sector is far from over.

Mar 28 2023

Pfizer and EU Corruption Out of Control


Armstrong Economics Blog/Vaccine Re- Posted Mar 28, 2023 by Martin Armstrong

The confidence in the entire EU government is rapidly collapsing. They desperately need a war with Russia to retain power. Here is a video of the speech on the floor of Parliament by the Croatian MEP Mislav Kolakušić with respect to the EU contract with Pfizer. It was done in secret and nobody was allowed to even vote on this issue – so much for our FAKE NEWS which sois hand-in-hand with our FAKE DEMOCRACY. They then ordered that we could even leave out home or work without a Pfizer vaccine. There will be a special place reserved in hell for both Urlsula von der Leyen and Albert Bourla – who is not even a doctor. He is only a vegetarian. I would let him even pet my dog.

Back in 2021, I warned that Socrates was suggesting that Pfizer would peak out and begin a serious decline. Many people wrote in and said I would be wrong. How can that happen when they bought every government on the planet? Even in August 2021, I warned, despite the criticism, that Pfizer would peak out and it did not look like the stock would continue a rally.

I’m sorry, but Socrates does not listen to MSNBC the most extreme left-wing propaganda machine destined to ruin every life in America if not the planet by supporting vaccines from Pfizer and of course war against everyone a Neocon can think of. Socrates was right. The glory days for Pfizer are over. I think whatever vaccines are left over, Pfizer should refund the money to all the taxpayers of the world and close the doors. It has become a corrupt organization and I for one would NEVER now agree to ANY vaccine produced by this evil empire. Senior management belongs in prison for life. Bankers may hurt people financially, but Pfizer, in my opinion, killed people to make money and physiologically damaged people forever. I still see some people wearing a mask in a car and driving by themselves.

Mar 28 2023

TikTok Blamed for Ukraine Ammunition Shortage


Posted originally on the conservative tree house March 27, 2023 | Sundance

Put this in the ‘how far can we stretch a narrative’ file.

According to multiple sources, Ukraine is running out of ammunition in the war against Russia.  However, according to Newsweek who is pushing the message from the Nordic Ammunition Supply Company, TikTok cat videos are to blame.   Yes, you read that correctly…

(Newsweek) – One of Europe’s largest ammunition manufacturers has said it’s unable to expand to meet new quotas and respond to Ukraine’s increased demand because a nearby data center is using up all the electricity in the central Norway region to store TikTok videos.

The Norwegian group Nordic Ammunition Company, better known as Nammo, told the U.K. newspaper Financial Times that there’s no surplus of energy for its Raufoss plant, where the new factory was planned.

The electricity of the region is being used up by a data center whose bigger client is TikTok. The embattled social-media platform has come under increased scrutiny in the U.S. for its ties with China. “We are concerned because we see our future growth is challenged by the storage of cat videos,” Nammo chief executive Morten Brandtzæg told the newspaper.

Local energy provider Elvia confirmed to the Financial Times that the network has no electricity to spare, and that the energy is allocated on a first-come, first-served basis. Should Nammo require more energy, it will take time to make this available to the ammunition manufacturer. (read more)

Europeans must immediately stop watching cat videos, in order to protect Ukraine.

ZeroHedge has more information about the ammunition shortage:

[…] The very fact that Ukraine is out of ammunition proves that the West’s defeat in its self-declared “race of logistics” with Russia might already be a fait accompli by this point since it’s clear that Kiev can’t keep pace with its opponent despite being backed by all of NATO’s military-industrial capacity. Zelensky almost certainly didn’t realize that his candid admission essentially amounted to this, but it’s presently unclear whether the MSM will inform their audience about this or not.

On the one hand, doing so could contribute to his forthcoming begging campaign, but it could also backfire if taxpayers start asking whether it’s worth ponying up even more money if Ukraine already ran out of ammo despite the over $100 billion in aid that it’s received thus far. After all, if that astronomical sum wasn’t enough to keep their guns firing, then there’s no telling how much will be needed for Kiev to reconquer more of its lost territory like it intends to do. (more)

Mar 27 2023

Are Markets Irrational or Analysts?


Armstrong Economics Blog/Forecasts Re-Posted Mar 27, 2023 by Martin Armstrong

QUESTION: Mr. Armstrong; Who is being irrational? The markets or the analysts?

KE

ANSWER: That’s simple. It is the analysts. The markets are ALWAYS correct. When you have bank failures unfolding, people will withdraw money out of caution. It is the very same reason there are ancient hoards of coins. You find coins in times of economic stress and uncertainty. This is a purely RATIONAL human response to uncertainty. It consistent for thousands of years. For any analyst to claim the markets are acting “irrationally” only proves they should look for another profession.

Sir Thomas Gresham began his career in 1543 working at Mercers’ Company at the age of 24 years old. He left England for Antwerp/Amsterdam which was the financial center of the day much like Wall Street. That was where he became a merchant businessman which was where banking existed in those days. He became an agent for King Henry VIII in the Antwerp/Amsterdam market. He became a trader and in so doing, he began to observe how capital moved.

The interesting aspect was that he was called in as a sort of crisis manager as I have been during financial upheavals. In 1551, Sir William Dansell, who was King’s Merchant there in the markets, ended up putting the English Government into a financial crisis thanks to his mismanagement.  The English turned to Gresham for advice since he became quite astute at trading. They adopted his proposals. It was then that Gresham proposed a very ingenious tact. He advocated a FOREX intervention to push the pound higher on the Antwerp change. His intervention proved so successful that in just a few years King Edward VI had discharged almost all of his debts. By pushing the pound higher, he was able to repay the previous debts by devaluing them.

Therefore, the English Crown sought Gresham’s advice in all their finances until Mary came to the throne in 1553. Gresham was instantly pushed aside for  Alderman William Dauntsey, who lacked trading experience and quickly sent the Crown into financial stress. Gresham was called back to deal with the mess once again.

Under Queen Elizabeth’s reign (1558–1603), he continued as a financial agent of the Crown and also became the Ambassador Plenipotentiary to the Governor of the Netherlands. This was the period of civil unrest in Antwerp which compelled him to return to England in 1567. This is also when the English had the founding of the Royal Exchange to compete with the Netherlands. It was Gresham who made the proposal to build, at his own expense, a bourse or exchange. This demonstrated that Gresham was a trader and understood how capital flowed.
Apart from some small sums to various charities, Gresham bequeathed the bulk of his property (consisting of estates in London and around England giving an income of more than 2,300 pounds a year) to his widow and her heirs, with the stipulation that after her death his own house in Bishopsgate Street and the rents from the Royal Exchange should be vested in the Corporation of London and the Mercers Company, for the purpose of instituting a college in which seven professors should read lectures, one each day of the week, in astronomy, geometry, physic, law, divinity, rhetoric and music.[1] Thus, Gresham College, the first institution of higher learning in London, came to be established in 1597.

Gresham’s Law (stated simply as: “Bad money drives out good“). He concluded this from his observations that foreign exchange back then was based on the metal content and weight of the coinage. Therefore, as debasement took place, people would hoard the old coinage of higher quality and spend the debased.  Thus, the bad money drove out the good and actually shrunk the money supply in circulation.

He urged Queen Elizabeth to restore the debased currency of England. In so doing, you got to repay old debts with debased currency. Governments to this day practice that same trick. Repaying a 30-year bond today the bondholder cannot buy what the money was once worth 30 years ago. The interest does not really compensate for the loss of purchasing power over long periods of time.

Mar 26 2023

Till the Last Ukrainian – A Must See


Armstrong Economics Blog/Ukraine Re-Posted Mar 26, 2023 by Martin Armstrong

Mar 26 2023

Why Bank Bailout of Depositos is Critical


Armstrong Economics Blog/Banking Crisis Re-Posted Mar 26, 2023 by Martin Armstrong

QUESTION: Hi. I do not understand why you keep advocating over and over how the depositors should be bailed out over 250k. It makes no sense from a moral hazard perspective. It is fact that should they do that, in spite of depositors signing agreements acknowledging that deposits over 250k would not be guaranteed, the Fed will also need to cancel all outstanding debt instruments, whose borrowers also signed an agreement that if they don’t pay they lose the asset. The moral hazard is so severe as to bloody the eyes. Why do you keep endorsing the bailout which will have to be at least initially funded by taxpayers even if they get the money back? The money to shore up bank reserves in exchange for collateral has to come from somewhere. What is the real fear, that people will move deposits direct to T-bills and in so doing, set up funding for a US CBDC? Please address the moral hazard aspect of your position. So far, I’ve heard nothing to defend the immorality of it.

FO
ANSWER: Do not confuse a bank depositor with (1) an investor in a fund, or (2) bank shareholders & Management. A bank depositor is NOT an investor. The $250k is by NO MEANS sufficient for small businesses. They need to keep large amounts on hand for payroll etc. You do business and accept credit cards and they deposit that into your bank account.

Bank depositors are unsophisticated average people. The sophisticated investor moves their, money to a hedge fund or money market fund and fully understands that there is a risk associated with that investment. The bank depositor accepts no risk on any investment the bank makes. It does not give them, a piece of their profits. That goes to shareholders. It is a bailout of the entity and thus the shareholders which presents the moral hazard perspective.

If deposits in excess of $250 are NOT covered, you wipe out small businesses, they cannot pay employees and the ripple effect will be the total destruction of the entire economy. Your house will become worthless for its value will drop to only what someone can pay in cash.

There is a HUGE difference between investing and losing and simply depositing your money in a bank because we are moving to an electronic monetary system that there will be no way for a depositor to even demand money from a bank. Some are restricting wires to $3,000 and limiting the amount of cash one can withdraw. There is also not enough paper currency to facilitate bank withdrawal on a grand scale. Bank robbery will come to an end without cash.

None of that will unfold if a hedge fund fails. We must look deeper into this entire question.

Mar 26 2023

Are Brenner & Kondratieff Waves Valid in Commodities?


Armstrong Economics Blog/Understanding Cycles Re-Posted Mar 25, 2023 by Martin Armstrong

QUESTION: Hello Martin,
I have been reading you since your handwritten and from memory letters were getting out from your incarceration. You are truly an amazing man sir.
I realize that both the Kondratieff and the Brenner cycles are mostly just coincidental to market cycles today but my question is are both the Kondratieff and the Brenner cycles still accurate for agriculture goods and the farm economy to this day?
Thank you for your consideration of this question as well as for all the good you have done for mankind.
Thank you.
Respectfully,
Mark

Heisenberg

ANSWER: I think your question is very important. I have in my library Brenner’s actual publication. They are very rare, to say the least. Overlaying Brenner onto Wheat, we can see that during the 20th century, they did not work. The question then became why?

People are far too often confused when observing a market. They think that that instrument itself possesses some inherent trading character all by itself. I have often said that when I went to Economics class, the professor said there is no definable business cycle because everything is random. Then I went to Physics class and was told that nothing is random. I came to the conclusion that it was the economics professor who was wrong.

In Physics, we have two separate principles that are far too often confused as the same. The Uncertainty Principle was articulated by the German physicist Werner Heisenberg (1901-1976). It states that the position and the velocity of an object cannot both be measured exactly at the same time, even in theory. The very concepts of exact position and exact velocity together, in fact, have no meaning in nature. Effectively, if we increase the precision in measuring one quantity, we are forced to lose precision in measuring the other.

The Uncertainty Principle has been frequently confused with the Observer Effect whereby the disturbance of an observed system by the act of observation takes place as the result of utilizing instruments that alter the state of what is being measured. To put this in common terms, let’s say you take a gauge to test the tire pressure on your car. The very act of measuring the air pressure results in some air escaping. Hence, the act of observing changes the actual pressure in the tire even minutely.

This is one of the most fascinating aspects of Physics. Here is my favorite cartoon explaining an important aspect of cyclical analysis as well.

So what does this have to do with analysis in markets? What are we actually observing? The innate object be it gold, wheat, or the stock market. If a tree falls in a forest and nobody is around, does it make a sound? That all depends on your definition of a sound. If you define “sound” as requiring it to be heard by a person or animal, the answer is no. Yet is that the proper definition?

This brings us to Kondratieff and Benner waves. Were they actually measuring commodities, or were they measuring the cyclical interference of climate, war, and 70% of the GDP being confined to agriculture? We clearly have a problem with the human interpretation of an observation. We are then confined by our own prejudices formed in life. If we have NEVER read about war or experienced war, then is it possible to look at the 19th century and realize that there was an interference in the market behavior by war?

This is why fundamental analysis always fails. Claims that this is the guy who forecasts whatever based upon his opinion or fundamental analysis is simply nothing more than a broken clock is also correct twice a day. The vast array of fundamentals that are taking place simultaneously can never be sorted out by any human being. It depends upon the experience of the observer. I have often explained that people focus only domestically and often on whatever the Federal Reserve wants us to do. They do not see that in turn the Federal Reserve is influenced by international events. Thus, those who focus domestically, are blind to global trends. This is primarily why I developed Socrates for it is humanly impossible to monitor absolutely everything. No human being can do this and then it is impossible to sort out the fundamentals in advance – only hindsight. Many have ignored the fundamental approach and turned to Technical Analysis. Then the third branch is cyclical analysis focused on TIME.

CombiningCycles

Cyclical Analysis must also incorporate physics to achieve accuracy. Otherwise, someone who then identifies some cycle of 25 units and says see, it worked 5 times in a row, will lose the house for that relationship will change. This is the question of the Kondratieff and Brenner cycles. Kondratief saw broad cyclical trends throughout history. But they were averages and he did not seek a definitive time frequency. Brenner focused on sunspots and agriculture for he was a farmer and saw the cyclical patterns unfolding before him.

However, the complexity of the market and economic behavior is much like the double-slit realization. A single particle moving through a single slit produces a linear output. But when a second slit is introduced, then cyclical waves emerge. This illustrates the complexity. Each market is like a separate particle in that cartoon. By itself with a single slit, the outcome tends to be linear as expected. But adding that second slit produces complexity and cyclical wave interference. Thus, in analysis, we must consider the entire global basket of particles to approach the cyclical waves and interference.

There are so many layers to price activity each displaying a unique frequency. This once again comes down to human interpretation and can the analyst even see the complexity. Our arrays are the best shot at accurate cyclical forecasting and there are 72 models inside that – not a simple one-time frequency of a linear cycle. It is the computer that projects the outcome, not any human interpretation. Then you have to have a database that is unprecedented to back-test the entire analysis. Without recreating the monetary system of the world, it would be impossible for the computer to forecast war, the collapse of communism, or the 1929-style even in Tokyo in 1989.

Fundamental analysis can ONLY be used to explain AFTER the fact – not to forecast the future. Consequently, the Kondratieff and Brenner cyclical waves are not accurate in trying to predict the economy or the next great crash in markets. We must respect that they observed the top layer of cyclical activity, but behind that mask was climate change coming out of the last ice age, the wave of innovation that brought the Industrial Revolution which diminished the commodity influence, and war.

It is not that their work was wrong. They were the leaders in cyclical analysis and pointed the way. It simply required more exploration to understand the complexity and wave interference from the impact of everything, everywhere. The analysis of Benner failed during the 20th century because what he was observing was the complexity of the times and one really needed to sort out each and every component that produced the wave structure during the 19th century to be able to accurately forecast the 20th century.

Mar 26 2023

Dick Morris, The Machinery of the Deep Administrative State is Trying to Bait Trump and the MAGA Movement into an Angered Reaction


Posted originally on the CTH on March 25, 2023 | Sundance

Dick Morris is a man who knows the machinery of the leftist state.  As a life-long democrat operative, control agent and emissary of the Clinton machine, he is fully aware of the scheming and conniving ways of the Alinsky tribe.

Morris accurately encapsulates the leftist motive in their targeting of President Trump {Direct Rumble Link}.  The accusations, charges, indictments and full-throated targeted efforts are intended to create a weaponized self-fulfilling prophecy.  The abusers shout incessantly and condescendingly at the target, trying to provoke a reaction so that as soon as the angered response is delivered, they can say “see, we told you how violent and threatening you are“…  WATCH:

.