Politicians Start to Run Away from Global Warming


Politicians have been confronted with the real cost of their support for global warming. France has suddenly come out in support of diesel because of the jobs that could be lost. The diesel crisis may have started in Germany, but there are more diesel car owners in Europe as a whole.

Suddenly, when confronted with the loss of jobs, the politicians are turning against global warming and revealing that the scientists have been WRONG on their timing. The actual study claims we will need another 30 years to reach a level of carbon to raise the temperature by 1.5 degrees C. It still only addresses the level of carbon in the air to raise the temperature and does not address that carbon has been significantly higher historically before cars. It simply employs linear analysis and assumes whatever trend is in motion will remain in motion. They ignore even the laws of thermodynamics.

Indeed, the politicians were eager to jump on the global warming theory because they have been able to raise taxes without providing a corresponding cost. The estimated cost to the private sector for global warming has reached about $1 trillion globally. The price of everything from electricity to gasoline has risen due to global warming taxes. Not to mention, it is driving the cost of meat and dairy products higher with claims that cows, the second-leading culprit behind cars, produce damaging gas to the environment. Look at the taxes on air travel. On average, 50% of the price goes toward taxes.

We are starting to now see more and more articles in the major press exposing that global warming is a fraud (see Sun; Independent; Australian; National Geographic).

ECB Negative Rate Experiment May Lead to the Worst Financial Crisis in Modern History


QUESTION: Mr. Armstrong; Your proposition that the quantity of money theory is dead seems to be a true earth shattering perspective. It certainly disproves the Austrian School and the events post 2008 support your statement.

The European Central Bank is supposed to traditionally pursue the goal of monetary stability. The Germans have followed the Austrian School of Economics religiously. However, the ECB has used monetary policy instruments attempting to create an annual depreciation of the euro of just under 2 per cent without success. Since the outbreak of the financial crisis in 2008, the function and importance of the ECB has changed fundamentally and drastically.

In order to avert a core meltdown of the global financial system, the ECB went beyond the American Federal Reserve and other major central banks, launching an extremely expansive monetary policy lowering the key interest rates to negative territory. This has never been done in history and the ECB experiment has created tremendous problems moving forward. Moving the deposit rate for commercial banks parking money at the central bank to the negative range of minus 0.4 per cent combined with began buying up large amounts of government bonds and later corporate bonds of the worst quality, has completely failed to stimulate the economy.

My question is this. Have the measures taken by the ECB resulted not in averting a crisis, but transforming it into a far greater risk and simply extended the entire deflationary process?

Thank you

GK

ANSWER: Absolutely. This entire policy has failed to create inflation and has proven that inflation is not driven purely by the quantity of money. Confidence is the critical factor. The rich can move their capital to foreign lands. However, the average person cannot move their labor or money offshore. They have withdrawn their cash from the banks to place in their safes at home reducing bank deposits. The negative interest rates have hurt the pension funds and the elderly who once upon a time were able to support their retirement upon interest income have been seriously devastated by the ECB and nobody talks about them – the real lost generation added to the unemployed youth.

The ECB has seriously hurt the European economy and is now trapped. It owns 40% of Eurozone debt and an uptick in rates will devastate its portfolio holdings and probably create the biggest loss in the history of any central bank. Meanwhile, governments have been on life support and never reformed. When the ECB cannot buy more government debt, watch how fast rates rise. We are looking at a crisis that has no historical precedent.

Teaching Courses


QUESTION: Mr. Armstrong, I would like to begin by expressing my appreciation for what you are doing. I have learned far more about economics reading your blog than I did earning a degree in the field. Will you ever consider teaching a course by internet?

ANSWER: Perhaps. I have been asked to teach at several universities, but I just do not have the time for that. I have no problem doing a guest lecture, but teaching a course, sorry no. However, we are building a new office where we will incorporate a studio for videos. It has been suggested that we provide an economic and trading course. I will consider it, but only after Socrates fully launches

WARNING MAJOR FRAUD ALERT


Warning there is a major fraud with a pretend sight Traders Offer offering everyone’s research for pennies on the dollar. They pretend to have a PayPal Account, get you to put in a credit card, and you will be taken for a ride.  This is the message you will get from PayPal stating they cannot process the payment to the vendor. Your credit information will be stolen in the process.

UK Pension Fund Insolvency Soars by 30% in a Single Year


The London Sunday Times business section headline demonstrates what is really facing us and governments implode. Public sector pensions liability surged 30% in a single year due to low bond yields. It is not possible for the UK to fund £1.8 trillion. The first course of action will be, as always, raise taxes. That is the path California has taken. Government only looks to solve a problem for the immediate day. They will NEVER look forward because a politician is EXCLUSIVELY concerned with the next election.

Something must give. How long until pensioners receive notices advising them that their pension can no longer be paid? We are facing rising civil unrest because government will not act in the best interest for the nation. Watch how fast taxes now start to rise in Germany after the election.

Ice Core Samples Prove CO2 Levels Lag Behind Temperature Increases


QUESTION: Are you saying there is no direct correlation between CO2 and a rise in temperature?

ANSWER: Correct. We have data going back 800,000 years that was gathered from drilling core samples from deep underneath the ice sheets of Greenland and Antarctica. Detailed information on air temperature and CO2 levels disproves that a rise in CO2 will cause a rise in temperature. The core samples from EPICA Dome C ice core on the Antarctic Plateau establish that temperature rises first and CO2 level follow in a lagging manner. All of this was well before human kind (see ScientifAmerican). So is it the chicken or the egg? Which comes first?

Data has also established that the cooling of the Earth seemingly begun 200 years ago in the North before it spread to the South. Changes in the ocean currents appear to have been the catalyst for the major ice ages.

Government Confusion = Incompetence (Politics v Bankers)


QUESTION: Dear Martin Armstrong

About The post, “Is There a Way Out of This Financial Mess? “
In the second last paragraph you write, “Taxes have risen as deficits expand because government thinks inflation is the danger.” Link:
Shouldn’t that be Deflation?
Thank you for doing what you do.
U

 

ANSWER: No. I agree it makes no sense but logic is not a talent of government. You have central banks trying to stimulate by increasing the supply of money, but then you have politicians worried about their deficits and being criticized so the they raise taxes. The two placed in the same room could never have a true dialog of any meaning.

The bankers are worried about deflation and the politicians, like Merkel, are worried about inflation. It is confusing, but hey, anyone who actually thinks electing people without trading experience is the way to run an economy should ask the parking attendant who parks a car if they are free to fix a cavity in your tooth.

Identifying Complexity


QUESTION: Marty, I have followed your Global Market Watch and it is really amazing. I notice on IPE gas it came up and warned it was about to breakout to the upside. You said this is purely a pattern recognition system. Are there patterns that precede events and this is what your model is picking up on?

great-waveANSWER: In many fields there are these sudden Phase Transitions which are extreme events. I have explained that sailors always told of rogue waves that rise up from calm waters and sink ships. The rogue wave appears out of nowhere in the eternal sea of global economics just as it does the oceans of the world. They are caused by the synchronization of many trends suddenly coming together to produce a giant wave.

There is an instability inside a gas turbine that suddenly appears, or a sudden extinction of a previous ecosystems – mass extinctions of which there have been five so far with another one due probably at the end of the next 309.6 year cycle in the 2300-2400 time period.

These extreme Phase Transitions or extreme events occur without warning to the untrained eye. It’s often impossible to predict when such bursts of instability will strike in markets where there are a huge amount of variables from news to players from a human perspective. The GMW identifies key patterns that precede an extreme event. The framework is being applied to all markets and economies and allows us to see things through complexity that the human eye will never see.

Climate Change & Economic Activity


QUESTION: Hi Martin,

I was wondering why a cold period would result in a commodity rise?
Thank you in advance for your time.
MG

ANSWER: When the climate turns cold, that is when food shortages takes place. When the climate turns warm, that is when economic activity starts and empires expand. The cold period we are entering will be on time for the shift in empires going forward.

global-warming-cyclical

All the great empires expanded during warming periods – not cold.

Is There a Way Out of This Financial Mess?


We need to open the door to the future but that is only possible by understanding the past. Paul Volcker back in 1979 in his Rediscovery of the Business Cycle “Not much more than a decade ago, in what now seems a more innocent age, the ‘New Economics’ had become orthodoxy. Its basic tenet, repeated in similar words in speech after speech, in article after article, was described by one of its leaders as ‘the conviction that business cycles were not inevitable, that government policy could and should keep the economy close to a path of steady real growth at a constant target rate of unemployment. … But it was not until the events of 1974 and 1975, when a recession sprung on an unsuspecting world with an intensity unmatched in the post-World War II period, that the lessons of the ‘New Economics’ were seriously challenged.”

It gives me no please to point out all out problems. My objective is straight forward. If we understand what is unfolding and why, then we can apply the correct solutions rather than turn toward more government authoritarian control. Make no mistake about this, we are in a battle for our freedom. This era of “New Economics” was set in motion by Karl Marx who advocated that government could control the economy and thus create Utopia. While Russia embraced the Communism of Marx, the West adopted his position trying to be just a little bit pregnant. We rejected everything that Adam Smith discovered and the Invisible Hand, rushing into Socialism for it empowered government rather than the private sector and Laissezfaire.

Our crisis therefore originates with government. Of course we need government which provides a stable rule of law and is benevolent rather than authoritarian. This is a battle to the death of Marxism which in all its various flavors empowers government which seeks to turn people against one another in order to retain power. Because government just keeps growing consuming an ever larger portion of GDP, it has sharply reduced economic growth which is now colliding with the new age of technology reducing employment. Constantly arguing class warfare and pretending that they can raise the minimum wage as if this will somehow benefit society, only furthers the dangers we face ahead. The rising taxation upon labor creates the incentive to replace workers with robots. Even the government is trying to replace soldiers with robots. This is a trend that is on all sides. Russia has its robot soldiers, and the USA has been following suit. Using drones carrying machine guns is a dangerous development for they can be turned against the people in civil unrest. Those who think that would never happen need only look at Barcelona where the Madrid government just sent in 16,500 soldier to invade Catalonia  and stop any Independence Referendum.

Unfortunately, we are in a battle for our freedom and that of our posterity. Governments are broke. Everything is moving against them from every possible angle. They borrow with no intentional of paying anything off and are blind to the trend they have been caught up in. How can we make them see that this is not going to work nor will it end nicely?

We need to stop the borrowing, we need to drastically reduce the size of government and various departments should be PRIVATIZED because government is incapable of managing anything. At least then any pensions offered would actually be there for private companies cannot default and then refuse to prosecute themselves as does government. There is simply no checks and balance when prosecutions are a political decision and judges are political appointments. When paper money first began, it paid interest to entice the people to accept it. Then we adopted the idea put forth in this New Economics was that government could “stimulate” by borrowing and that would be less inflationary than printing. This became the Quantity of Money Theory, which has been proven to be complete wrong.

While Draghi has expanded the money supply for almost 10 years, deflation has prevailed.  This entire idea of borrowing would be less inflationary is just insane. We have reached at time 70% of the entire national debt was composed of accumulative interest expenditures. So the money never went to build roads, schools, or help the poor as politicians pretend. So we are only fooling ourselves. Taxes have risen as deficits expand because government thinks inflation is the danger. They have been systemically reducing the standard of living and job creation.

Until we are ready to review this theory of “New Economics” and deal with it, our future is doomed. If we cannot start a dialog, there is no hope. The press is bought and paid for and is no longer truly free to protect our rights. There is hope, but only if we start to push the right issues.