Interview on Interest Rates


Posted Apr 14, 2024 By Martin Armstrong 

Congress Plans New Funding Push for Israel and Ukraine as Iran Fires Missiles Toward Jerusalem


Posted originally on the CTH onApril 14, 2024 | Sundance

In a moment of serendipitous timing for Zelenskyy, Iran fired approximately 300 drone missiles toward Israel.   Now Congress is promoting further funding for Israel and Ukraine. Serendipitous serendipity strikes again.

Keep in mind, the flight time over the 1,000-mile distance provided plenty of time for Israel to prepare and respond with countermeasures, making a suspicious type of person wonder why Iran would even go through the exercise.

“Given the events of tonight, it is even clearer that the best way to help Israel is for the House to quickly pass the Senate’s bipartisan national security supplemental next week,” Chuck Schumer said. The House has so far declined to take a vote on the Senate-passed legislation with many House conservatives opposed to sending additional Ukraine and wanted stricter border policies included in an aid package.  (LINK)  Huh, funny that.

As if on cue…

“The House Republicans and the Republican Party understand the necessity of standing with Israel. We’re going to try again this week, and the details of that package are being put together right now. We’re looking at the options and all these supplemental issues,” Speaker Mike Johnson said on Fox’s Sunday Morning Futures. (LINK)  Wow, what a remarkable coincidence. Amazing.

More than anything else, I always appreciate the way Nic Robertson provides the dramatic approach toward the needs and requests of the U.S. Dept of State and CIA.   He’s really good at this. WATCH:

Sunday in the Treehouse


Posted originally on the CTH on April 14, 2024 | Sundance

As a precursor, I am suggesting to all site admins (Ad Rem, Stella, Menagerie and Weed) that we begin instituting stronger commenting moderation controls; not to limit speech, but to eliminate distracting agenda voices. The reason for this is simple, I can see “control operatives” on these pages.

It’s not hard to see because they, some might call them online trolls – I prefer to think of them as DHS compliance officers, all use four basic elements of construct that are not usually visible amid our openly honest community:

  1. They pretend not to know things.
  2. They are arbitrary in the extreme.
  3. They are capricious and combative.
  4. They are intellectually dishonest.

.BACKGROUND CONTEXT

Time and communication bandwidth is at a premium for me.  You will soon understand why in this tech space of my geography, it is more efficient to communicate publicly.

Now, with eyes-wide-open, let’s address the nonsense within our fellowship.  Train yourself to see this stuff, and you will develop a level of instinctual awareness that will drive the DHS folks bananas.

[As a general baseline, RFK Jr. is an intelligence community asset and operation.  All of the assembled data points in this direction. In short, the RFK Jr. tradecraft is visible; start from that assumption, and everything makes sense.]

Pay attention to what KEITH writes.  Note the arbitrary, capricious and intellectually dishonest framework.

To get the Nunes memo declassified, both President Trump and Devin Nunes used the leverage of FISA-702 reauthorization to force the IC to declassify it.  If the ODNI, FBI and DOJ did not agree to declassify the memo and make it public, then 702 would be allowed to expire, and the IC would lose their currency

Trump should have just ordered it declassified. He was the president after all. He didn’t have to placate the ODNI, FBI, and DOJ. If anyone in the leadership voiced an objection Trump should have used his trademark phrase “You’re fired!” on them.

RFK is right. Trump should not have reauthorized FISA 702 but he allowed people around him to manipulate him into capitulating to the deep state. That was the root of Trump’s major failings as President. He never was able to put his hands on the reins of power. Would Trump do better in a second term? Did he learn his lesson? I don’t think so after seeing him commend Speaker Johnson at Mar-A-Lago on the “good job” Johnson was doing just hours after Johnson cast the tie vote to re-authorize FISA 702. (Comment Link)

Keith may be new, or Keith may be acting intellectually dishonest as part of his pretense.  Regardless, all of these issues have previously been covered in depth on these pages; therefore, I view Keith as the latter – intentionally dishonest.

{GO DEEP (problem) and GO DEEP (solution)}

There is no entity outside the Intelligence Branch, and yes that includes the President of the United States, who can supersede the classification authority of the Intelligence Branch. {Go Deep} and {Go Deep} This is something 99.9% of the people on our side get totally and frustratingly wrong.

No one can declassify, or make public, anything the Intelligence Branch will not agree to. Doubt this?  Ask Ric Grenell, John Ratcliffe, or even President Trump himself.

• The classification process is determined inside the Intelligence Branch, all by themselves. They get to choose what rank of classification exists on any work-product they create; and they get to decide what the classification status is of any work product that is created by anyone else. The Intelligence Branch has full control over what is considered classified information and what is not. The Intelligence Branch defines what is a “national security interest” and what is not. A great technique for hiding fingerprints of corrupt and illegal activity.

Similarly, the declassification process is a request by an agency, even a traditionally superior agency like the President of the United States, to the Intelligence Branch asking for them to release the information. The Intelligence Branch again holds full unilateral control. If the head of the CIA refuses to comply with the declassification instruction of the President, what can the president do except fire him/her? {Again, GO DEEPHow does the President replace the non-compliant cabinet member?  They have to go through the SSCI confirmation.  See the problem?

Now let me move on to DHS officer ACE TWITTLY:

“Trump has reauthorized Sec. 702 of FISA when he was President and Nunes has just recently co-signed a letter encouraging the Congress to reauthorize Sec. 702 of FISA again.

They are all playing us.

And by the way, the Sec. 702 is not a problem; a total lack of accountability certainly is. Nobody prevents the government from prosecuting the intel. contractors and firing people at the FBI for the unauthorized use of the gov. databases. They just don’t do it.

The judges could sanction each FBI lawyer for lying to the court. Did they do that? No, they didn’t. Why?

It’s a big corrupt club… and they all hate us.” {Comment Link}

Again, notice the elements of intellectual dishonesty, arbitrary and capricious commentary pretending not to know things.

Nunes did not “recently co-sign a letter encouraging Congress to reauthorize Sec. 702 again“.  Genuine Treehouse readers know the letter that Mike Turner lied in the construct of a letter, apparently the letter cited.

[Source]

If the 702-reauthorization bill that passed the HPSCI committee vote is as bad everyone says it is (which it is), and if the bill completely ignores the reforms that were suggested and advocated for by Kash Patel and Devin Nunes and others (which it does), then how does Kash Patel reconcile his former boss Devin Nunes supporting the bill per Mike Turner?

The reconciliation to this dynamic is found inside the issue I have written about.

Mike Turner is lying about the support from John Ratcliffe and Devin Nunes for the HPSCI FISA-702 reauthorization bill.  Ratcliffe and Nunes do not support the Turner construct.

But wait, if that is true (which it is), then why are Ratcliffe, Nunes, and by extension Patel, silent about Turner’s false support claims?

The answer….  Institutional preservation of the HPSCI compartment, and a desire for access therein.

Yes, that is correct.  They will rage against the outcome of the institutional endeavor, but only so far as the value of the institution itself must be maintained.  Ratcliffe, Nunes and yes, Kash Patel are functionaries of the system.  Their sense of identity is dependent on the system.

To remind….

The CIA director, NSA director, ODNI, FBI Director, etc are not in charge of the compartments they represent. They are simply functionaries -middle men- who operate in the space between where the compass points are directed, where the data originates, and oversight of that data that is ultimately filtered and delivered to the functionaries, who then brief the representatives…. who then create policy… albeit flawed policy…. based on a very specific, controlled, compartmented and skewed information flow. (more)

The value of Kash Patel’s institutional currency is connected to his access – even with Republicans in charge.  The same is true for Devin Nunes and John Ratcliffe.

The institutional leadership, those functionaries in control of the compartment (silo), can block access to the silo thereby devaluing the career currency of other functionaries.  The DC preservation system is contingent upon this process being retained.

Nunes, Ratcliffe and Patel will not speak honestly about the Mike Turner outcome – specifically as it relates to the conniving manipulation therein (ie. it’s a f**king lie) – because they would run the risk of being ostracized from the HPSCI compartment  from which their value is determined.

The institutional corruption is retained, yet they rail against the outcome of the institutional corruption.  See the game?

If this were not the case, Mike Turner would be directly confronted, the lies and manipulations exposed, and a very serious battle would take place publicly.

Unfortunately, that public battle is viewed as too risky.  As a result, the corrupt DC functionaries operate without any accountability, no corrective action takes place, no accountability is metered out, and WORSE…. the oblivious general public cheer on the people like Patel who give the illusion they are railing against corruption.

For those who choose denial and pretending over the brutal reality of the example expressed, your criticism of me is irrelevant.  The truth exists regardless of your comfort level.

Accepting you are an abused victim to professional gaslighting, manipulation and Machiavellian deceit, carried out by those who claim to be your allies, is painful and unnerving.  However, failing to accept the reality of the example cited only retains your status as a victim, a codependent enabler, a battered conservative.

It is a remarkable dynamic.  Many people can see how the functionaries played against President Donald Trump this way, but they cannot see how they, themselves, are continually being played.

In Twitter File release #8, the basic outline showed how the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) and U.S. State Department (DoS) worked with the social media platforms to amplify messaging and create specifically anonymous government accounts intended to spread propaganda globally. [Twitter File Release #8 Here]  The government then asks the platform engineering side to boost the messaging of the government accounts and use the internal tools to promote government users.  Essentially, social media propaganda.

There is no reason to believe this effort was/is limited to Twitter.  Additionally, now they have AI to assist along with 1.1 million previously dormant defense department IP addresses to activate accounts from.

Stay frosty!

26 Barges Break Loose on Ohio River


Posted originally on the CTH on April 13, 2024 | Sundance

Friday night a total of 26 barges, 23 loaded and 3 empty, broke loose from their moorings along the Ohio River near Pittsburgh and floated uncontrolled until they were mostly recovered. There were no reports of injuries, but a marina sustained extensive damage in the incident.

The Pittsburgh Public Safety said in a statement, “At 11:25 p.m., Pittsburgh Fire, EMS, and Police were dispatched for reports of barges breaking loose and floating uncontrolled down the Ohio River. 

In total, 26 barges broke loose; 23 were loaded and three were empty. Those that were loaded had dry cargo such as coal, and no hazardous materials on board. There have been no reports of people injured, but Peggy’s Marina sustained extensive damage. 

Eleven of the barges have been located and pinned against the river bank by Brunot Island and currently being held by a tugboat. Fourteen continued down the river and six have gone over the Emsworth Dam. 

The barges are owned or operated by Campbell Transportation Company located on the left descending bank of the Ohio River, just downstream from the McKees Rocks Bridge.

The West End Bridge was closed in both directions and rail traffic was shut down on the rail bridge to Brunot Island. Both will be reopened when it is determined that it is safe to do so.

The Coast Guard, Pennsylvania State Police, and various law enforcement, EMS agencies, and fire departments in neighboring jurisdictions have been notified.” (LINK

Campbell Transportation Company, Inc. is actively responding to a recent development involving a multi-barge breakaway in Pittsburgh. Our immediate priority is ensuring public safety and minimizing any potential environmental impact,” the statement read. “The incident occurred under high water conditions on the rivers resulting in strong currents due to flooding in the area.” (SOURCE)

Suspicious Cat remains, well, suspicious…

Not Even Central Banks Can Manipulate Markets – NOBODY


Posted originally on Apr 12, 2024 By Martin Armstrong 

Louvre Accord Plaza Accord

QUESTION: Can central banks not even manipulate the markets?

FS

PlazaAccord 1

ANSWER: No.  Here is the track record of the central banks when they created the Group of 5 (now G20) in 1985. I warned them they would create a crash within two years. But look at what happened. The fools assumed the central banks could manipulate the dollar. When the Plaza Accord took place, the dollar had already peaked. Because the fools thought the decline was all because of the central banks, when the dollar had fallen too far, they held the Louvre Accord and came out saying the dollar had fallen far enough. When the dollar moved low again, the 1987 Crash too place BECAUSE the central banks were perceived to have no control.

2015_Martin_Armstrong_is_the_Forex_Person_of_the_Year_About_FXStreet

I was named FOREX Person of the year for calling the collapse of the Swiss/Euro Peg. I even met with the Swiss central bank and warned them, They said they would be able to hold the peg and and said now way. I have met with more central banks than probably anyone – ever. I have been in the room when the red phone was ringing between the G5 on manipulating currencies. I need not engage in conspiracy theories. We have first-hand experience.

IBBPUS Y 1985 1.05

Even go back to the US Civil War. The dollar was collapsing, and the price of gold soared regarding greenbacks. Lincoln did everything. He shut down gold trading on the New York Stock Exchange. They then traded on the curb and created the Gold Room. Nothing worked.

1864 Nov 18 Price of Gold Folly to Regulate It

Here is the New York Times from November 18th, 1864. They observed the “folly of attempting to regulate the price [of gold] or any other article of traffic by forcible interference.” Anyone who claims that gold was suppressed because of manipulation made that up because they do not understand that gold DOES NOT rise linked to inflation. Gold soars when there is a collapse in confidence in government and in times of war, just as it did during the Civil War.

2023_01_09_19_31_04_Federal_Debt_Held_by_Foreign_and_International_Investors_FDHBFIN_FRED_St._
GCNYNF Y 7 7 22

Gold declined for 19 years while inflation rose and the National Debt exploded. Gold has rallied only when the CONFIDENCE in government has declined as we are seeing today. People are getting very tense. In Texas, a guy drove his 18-wheeler into a Texas Public Safety office after being denied a Commercial Drivers License.

Gallup 28 all Institutions 2022

CONFIDENCE has collapsed by about 50% since 1980. The movie coming out tomorrow on April 12th is the Civil War.  Such a movie 20 years ago would have been unheard of.

Opening Your Eyes or Remain as the Fool on the Hill


Posted originally on Apr 12, 2024 By Martin Armstrong 

65d9f5b61b1918cc45e4724d

COMMENT: I just had to say thank you. I kept a copy of your private post What Are the Markets Telling Us? from FEBRUARY 24, 2024. Your model called for a high in January, the false move to retest support in February, and a resumption of the trend into April. You have taught me so much about how markets move. Only a fool buys and holds, expecting every month to be higher.

Keep up the great reports. This is when many say we need you the most.

Jeb


That Post 2/24/24 Was:

The UK has a slightly different pattern from continental Europe. Germany shows a Panic Cycle in June. But the targets are shaping up as May and July. Blending in gold, January was high, and Feb has retested support, yet softly. Volatility should rise now going into March, and April 19/20th is the ECM turning point of the Ukraine/Russia War, followed by the main ECM target of May 7th. Here, too, we see rising volatility in gold from May into August, with a Panic Cycle in September and the peak in volatility in November probably related to the 2024 election.


bulls bears Pendulum

ANSWER: Thank you. Everything moves in a cycle. Many of the great discoveries come only from observing how markets trade. John Law traded on the exchange in Amsterdam and came up with the theory of Supply and demand.

Henry VIII Debased Groats

Sir Thomas Gresham also traded on the floor in Amsterdam, representing the English Crown. He saw how Henry VIII’s debasement of money caused people to hoard the older money, which actually shrank the money supply, forcing the state to debase even more. He came up with the idea that bad money drives good money out of circulation.

I invented capital flow analysis because, in the ’80s, I, too, observed how capital was rushing around the world, driving markets up and down. If you do not open your eyes, you will remain nothing more than the fool on the hill.

Gold False Moves

Only a fool refuses to learn about the markets. If you cannot grasp this basic fundamental principle, forget investment; you are just a fool who will lose everything. There are always false moves. That is how the market is propelled by moving in the opposite direction, creating bull and bear traps. Every rally in gold for 19 years was touted as this time will be different. When they failed, they blamed the bankers. NOBODY but NOBODY can manipulate any market, altering its trend. They can push the market around within the scope of support and resistance. But they cannot change the trend no matter what.

FT June 27 1998
1998 LTCM Crash
WP IMF Dinner

All the bankers and hedge funds were on the same trade with Russia. I was invited down to the dinner they put on to buy influence in the IMF at the National Gallery.  I told them the market would crash and refused to join. When it crashed, they blamed me rather than admit they were all wrong. If they were so powerful, why do they always blow themselves up with Russia, mortgage-backed securities, you name it?

NO BID

No market can be manipulated against its inherent trend. Anyone who claims gold was suppressed because it was manipulated simply was an excuse because their analysis was wrong. That is total BS to claim any market can be manipulated, converting a bull to a bear market.  Everything is arbitraged on a global scale.

The majority is ALWAYS wrong, and that is what creates the crash. They are all long, try to get out, and there is no bid. Look at the Slinky moving down the steps. The opposite side gains the majority of power and then pulls the other side down, and so on. This is how the markets move. It is always a battle between bulls and bears, which is why the markets can never go in one direction. The same is true about everything, including climate change. The climate has always changed the same as markets have always risen and fallen, only to rise again. Marxism did not understand this fundamental, and it, like some gold bugs, tried to make the economy rise and never fall back into recession.

Foucault Pendulum

The French physicist Jean Foucault discovered what is known as the Foucault Pendulum. He proved that the earth rotated on its axis. The pendulum was constantly moving back and forth like markets by its own inertia. In the course of 24 hours, the floor moved in a circle. Since you are standing next to this pendulum at the Houston Museum of Natural Science, the illusion is that it moves in a circle when you and the floor are fixed on Earth.

NOT EVERYTHING IS WHAT IT SEEMS – ONLY A FOOL REFUSES TO SEE

“The FED’s Calling Us Stupid”: Brat On How The FED’s Putting Down Half The Country With Policies


Posted originally on Rumble By Bannons War Room on: Apr 11, 2024 at 02:00 pm EST

4.8.24: The DAY has arrived, DS to receive MSG-days numbered, FEAR is EVIL weapon, TRUTH wins. Pray!


Posted originally on Rumble By And We Know on: Apr 8, 2024 at 11:45 pm EST

Paper Bonds – Another Strike Against Govt Debt


Posted originally on Apr 11, 2024 By Martin Armstrong 

1973 E Series US 25 savings Bond

The US Treasury stopped issuing paper savings bonds in January 2012, switching to online platforms. There is a slight exception where a paper Series I may be purchased with proceeds from a federal income tax refund, but they are extremely rare. What they failed to explain is that US banks are NOT required to cash in these bonds.

A friend’s daughter recently ran into an issue on her 30th birthday when she attempted to cash in a number of bonds that had finally matured. Her bank simply told her, “No. We will not cash them.” She called customer service, and the bank explained that they had no legal obligation to cash government bonds.

USBonds

She was told She was told to mail in the paper bonds to with a completed FS Form 1522 to the Treasury directly along with copies of her personal government-issued identifications. Obviously, this does not seem secure as mail is lost all the time regardless of tracking numbers.

There are currently no options to cash paper savings bonds online. The government has made it deliberately difficult to cash in these bonds. She attempted a loophole where you previously were able to redeem bonds at larger institutions if they were worth under $1,000, but still, she her request was declined.

According to Treasury Direct, “Banks vary in how much they will cash at one time – or if they cash savings bonds at all.” We have seen numerous banks fail and begin to consolidate. Regional banks are struggling with liquidity and larger institutions simply do not want to hand out cash if they’re not required to do so.

Naturally my friend wished those 30-year bonds were invested in equities or anything other than bonds. She would have made far more than the government bonds could ever provide, and now it will be a difficult task to snail mail personal information to the Treasury and await a response. Yet another strike against purchasing government debt.

Violent Crime in Germany Hits 15-Year High


Posted Apr 10, 2024 By Martin Armstrong 
German Refugees

Germany was once a safe nation. Violent crime has reached a 15-year high, with homicides, knife assaults, and rapes drastically increasing. Crime rose by 5.5% last year alone, with 6.6 million incidences reported. Other nations like the UK, US, Canada, France, Sweden, Finland, and everywhere else that permitted, if not encouraged, open border policies have also seen an uptick in crime but no one wants to point out the obvious.

Migrants were responsible for around 40% of violent crimes in Germany last year, but the non-German national population only composes 15% of the population. Angela Merkel sold off Germany in 2015 when she urged all refugees to come to Europe to seek a better life. The migrants never stopped showing up. Germany handled over 350,000 asylum applications in 2023, and that only accounts for those who went through the judicial process.

The left refuses to hold migrants responsible for crimes and will not acknowledge that different cultures simply do not integrate well into Western societies. Lamya Kaddor, a Green Party MP, said that migrants are simply over-represented in crime statistics. “The crime rate is higher among socio-economically disadvantaged groups, which very often include foreign nationals,” she stated. Politicians like Kaddor do not care about the safety of their constituents and will never back away from open border policies.

Merkel Forcing Refugees

The migrant crisis is deliberate and apparent in all Build Back Better nations. These people are living off of the government, are unvetted, and have no allegiance to their new homebase. Southern European nations are in an even worse state as boatloads of new migrants wash upon their shores daily. Merkel humiliated Greece during the bail-out process, and now the European Union as a whole has its foot on the necks of all nations under its control. No one voted to allow these migrants into their hometowns. It is hard to say that Europeans live in a democracy as they are under the control of the European Union, which is following orders from the World Economic Forum these globalists do not merely want a one-European government but a one-world government where the few rule the masses.