Tag Archives: Communism

Nov 16 2018

Turkey looking to Cut Taxes to Fight Inflation?


Armstrong Economics Blog/The Hunt for Taxes

Re-Posted Nov 16, 2018 by Martin Armstrong

Since the beginning of the year, the Turkish currency has lost more than a third of its value against the dollar. As the currency declines, imports rise in cost since they are denominated in foreign currency.  This adds to the inflation problem domestically. Among other things, the sharp criticism of Erdoğan in the markets has cast doubt on the independence of the central bank. In September, it raised its key interest rate from 17.75 to 24 percent in the fight against inflation without success. This too adds to inflation.

There are people starting to look at tax cuts in selected areas to compensate for the crisis in hyperinflation. It is an interesting proposal but Erdoğan is worried about a real coup this time.

Nov 16 2018

Real Estate – Taxes – Currency


Armstrong Economics Blog/Real Estate

Re-Posted Nov 16, 2018 by Martin Armstrong

COMMENT: Dear Martin,

I bought ‘The World Real Estate Report’ at the end of 2016. It stated that Australian real estate was going to fall after the first quarter (March) in 2016. The property prices in Melbourne (where I live) continued to rise in April 2016 so I sent an email to Socrates Support asking them when real estate should peak. I received the reply below, which stated that the peak was either in for global real estate or the latest by the end of the first quarter 2017.

Anyway, since I owned a tiny house in Melbourne, I was facing a difficult decision if I should sell or not since it would be impossible to buy back in if the prices continued to go up.

I have been reading your blog daily since 2012, and I have read all of your forecasts being correct (eg. the Dow continuing to go up, US Index going up, Brexit, Trump winning). I also bought your Gold report in 2014 and watched gold bottom (Dec 2015) correctly for the date and price on the first benchmark, truly an unbelievable forecast.

Based on your track record I decided to sell my property at the end of the first quarter (March 2017), for which I received a fantastic price.

I’m happy to inform you that prices have been falling since the 3rd quarter of 2017.

I just wanted to congratulate you on another correct forecast.

REPLY: We all need a place to live. Governments are attacking real estate thinking it is too high and they need to make it more affordable for others to buy. They fail to understand that when they do that, the wipe out the savings dor retirement for others. Raising taxes to support government pensions is morally wrong and economically a disaster. There really should be some qualification to be a politician who them plays with people’s lives

Nov 15 2018

Raab Resigns from BREXIT negotiations – May is tottering on Losing the PM Post


Armstrong Economics Blog/BRITAIN

Re-Posted Nov 15, 2018 by Martin Armstrong

The British pound has dropped 1% today and is trading in the mid 127 level. The rumor running around the City (the financial sector in London) is that Prime Minister May has called an emergency press conference and she will resign handing power to Michael Grove. However, it may be more likely that  Grove has been offered the job of Brexit secretary in the wake of Dominic Raab’s resignation. Theresa May clearly does not know how to negotiate. Perhaps she should ask Donald Trump to represent Britain in BREXIT negotiations. Thacertainlyin would liven things up and it certainly would end up with a much better deal for Britain.

The pro-BREXIT supporters are demanding a shift in the government’s negotiating strategy first.

Nov 15 2018

Horrific – California ‘Camp Fire’ Death Toll Climbs to 56 – Hundreds of People Remain Missing…


Re-Posted from The Conservative Tree House on November 14, 2018 by

Terrible news from the region just north of Sacramento California where the devastating ‘Camp Fire’ impacted the town of Paradise.  Late Wednesday evening search and recovery workers located another eight sets of human remains bringing the total death toll from this single fire event to 56.   The death toll is anticipated to climb…

Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke and FEMA Director Brock Long visited the devastated area today to thank firefighters and rescue workers.  The search for bodies is gruesome as some human remains are found inside burned structures and others outside.

CALIFORNIA – 9 p.m. ET: As of Wednesday night, eight more human remains have been found, bringing the death toll to 56. Six of them were found inside structures and two were found outside. Statewide, the death toll is 59 (including three from the Woolsey Fire).

There have been more than 10,000 structures destroyed by the Camp Fire, including homes. The total amount of evacuated residents remains at 52,000 people.

The Camp Fire containment remains at 35 percent. Some 138,000 acres have been scorched.

Authorities searching through the blackened aftermath of California’s deadliest wildfire Wednesday released the names of some 130 people who are unaccounted, including many in their 80s and 90s, and dozens more could still be unaccounted for.

As the names of the missing were made public, additional crews joined the search. “We want to be able to cover as much ground as quickly as we possibly can,” Butte County Sheriff Kory Honea said. “This is a very difficult task.”

A sheriff’s department spokeswoman, Megan McMann, acknowledged that the list of the missing was incomplete. She said detectives were concerned about being overwhelmed with calls from relatives if the entire list were released.  (read more)

CBS News

Secretary Ryan Zinke

Secretary Ryan Zinke

Secretary Ryan Zinke

Secretary Ryan Zinke

Secretary Ryan Zinke

Secretary Ryan Zinke

 

Nov 15 2018

BREXIT Nothing Like What the People Voted For


Armstrong Economics Blog/Uncategorized

Re-Posted Nov 15, 2018 by Martin Armstrong

 

The draft deal of Prime Minister May smells really bad. It is clear that politicians are clueless about trade and the U.K. remaining within the (EU) customs union forever is really going to economically tie Britain to the EU without a right to even vote. What they do not get is that trade in the EU is not negotiated with a single government. Every member gets to veto a trade deal which prevents the entire 28 member states from acting in their own self-interest. So Britain cannot cut a trade deal with the USA or China without EU approval. Then the speculation goes that they will have to pay dues with no vote.

If Britain does approve the deal precisely on November 21st, 2018, then out long-term projections for the British pound are most likely going to be right on point. So let’s just hold our breath. Why should this not be absolutely just crazy? That is what we elect politicians with no experience in trading or economics to make major decisions in areas they are unfamiliar with

Nov 14 2018

Perfect – Trump Tells Macron: “They were starting to learn German in Paris before the U.S. came along”…


Re-Posted from The Conservative Tree House on November 13, 2018 by

This is what I call representing the red-blooded patriotic American.  Plain-speak, direct truth; what every middle-American would say to in the same or similar circumstance. And ironically, this is also (almost verbatim) one of the reasons Donald Trump earned my support in 2015:

(link)

The blood of Americans, provided the current freedom of France. Period.

Our inherent American DNA strain is liberty and freedom.  Within that core we achieve, drive, and transfer our united national essence into everything we do.  Even the wealth and economics of our nation are dependent on this cornerstone; it drives our entrepreneurial existence.  We know how to do things, create things, and think completely outside the box on new and innovative ideas for things.

Yes, we are exceptional like that.

Reminder:

  • Florida Power and Light won the prestigious International Edward Demming award for excellence in multi-platform engineering and efficiency superiority. They didn’t blow every global PhD business intellectual out of the water with slide rules, CAD programs and engineering acumen. They did it with hard hats and dirty fingernails.

Because they lost the award, the Japanese spent 6 months studying FP&L and later published a 1,000 page dissertation essentially saying FP&L “wasn’t really good, they were just lucky”….. FPL field leadership laughed, took out markers and wrote on the back of their hard hats: “WE’RE NOT GOOD, WE’RE RUCKY”….

  • When every single Kuwaiti oil field was blown up by Saddam Hussein, they said it would take 5 years to cap them all off and restart their oil pumping industry. The Kuwaiti’s and Saudi’s called Texans, who had them all capped and back in working order in 6 to 10 months.

We are a nation that knows how to get shit done.

  • When the Northern Chile mine workers were trapped two miles underground, they said no-one could save them. Who did they call for help? A bunch of hick miners from USA coal country who went down there, worked on the fly, engineered the rescue equipment on site, and saved everyone of them….

That’s our America.

  • When a half-breed Islamic whack job, armed with an AK-47 and a goal to meet his virgins, began opening fire on a train in France – the Americans on board didn’t run to the nearest safe room and hide themselves amid baguettes and brie. They said “let’s go”, and beat the stuffing out of that little Islamic nut with a death wish.

Legion d’Honneur or not, that’s us.  That’s just how we roll.

Lady Liberty can stroll along the Champs-Elysées with a swagger befitting Mae West because without her arrival they’d be speaking German in the Louvre.  Yet for the better part of the past decade a group of intellectual something-or-others have been teaching an insufferable story-line that it’s better to be sitting around a campfire eating sustainable algae cakes and picking parasites off each other.

Enough.

When I hear Donald Trump say “Let’s Make America Great Again”, I also hear the familiar echo “cowboy up” people.

It’s high time we stop being embarrassed about our exceptional nature, and start being proud of it again.   Because when it matters most, when it really counts, when it’s really needed, there’s a whole bunch of people all around this world of ours that are mighty happy when swagger walks in to solve their problems.

Yeah, “let’s make America great again”.

Swagger on !

Donald J. Trump

Donald J. Trump

Nov 14 2018

The Rise of Nationalism


Armstrong Economics Blog/Civil Unrest

Re-Posted Nov 14, 2018 by Martin Armstrong

Part of the War Cycle we have been warning about since it turned upward in 2014, is not merely international tensions between nation-states.  This particular uptick is the convergence of two cycle – (1) the international tension, and (2) the civil unrest. I previous warned that because the civil unrest would turn up, this should be the most dominant trend. This is always why Trump won the election in 2016. People are really turning against immigration because the economy has been turning down.

Armstrong Economics 2017 Cycles of War Report

We published detailed reports on this cycle with all the backup so it is not resting on just my personal opinion. Doing such research always means we CANNOT begin with an assumption and just allow the evidence to form the conclusion. Anything else is not really worth much. Some people will just simply say they do not believe in cycles. That is fine. We always need someone to trade against. Plus, the cycle is driven by people who say things precisely that. This is why it is also hopeless to try to prevent such events – our curse is really to just what the cycle and others that make it function and history to repeat.

Austria 26%
Bulgaria 9%
Czech Republic 11%
Denmark 21%
Finland 18%
France 13%
Germany 12.6%
Greeve 7%
Hungary 19%
Italy 17.4%
Netherlands 13%
Slovakia 8%
Sweden 17.6%
Switzerland 29%

 

Above is a list of Nationalist Parties and the percentage of the vote they have in Europe (see BBC). This is the trend and we should expect it to now pick up speed after 2018 going into particular 2020. Even in the United States, there is a rise of nationalism that the left keep calling “racist” but it is a natural trend when people fear they will be losing jobs and benefits to those migrating in. I have shown before that during the Depression of the 1840s, there were gun battles on the street of Philadelphia concerning the Irish Immigrants taking jobs. They could not call that racism, but it was part of the old English Civil War that never really healed – the Protestant v Catholics. They were burning down Catholic churches in Philadelphia as they have started to do with Mosques in Europe.

History repeat! It is really nothing new

Nov 13 2018

Poland to Break with EU by 2020?


Armstrong Economics Blog/Eastern Europe

Re-Posted Nov 13, 2018 by Martin Armstrong

QUESTION: Mr. Armstrong; When you were here last giving lectures in Poland, you said that we should leave the EU, retain our currency, and focus of your ties to the United States and Asia. You said if we did that, Poland would be one of the most imp[ortant economies in Europe. Have you updated that forecast at all?

Thank you

It was a tremendous honor to shake your hand in Warsaw.

JF

ANSWER: Poland is and will remain at the center of economic growth within Europe and it will still experience increasing political influence. Poland’s population won’t decline as much as those of the other major European economies and that is critical moving forward economically. Poland is also the most prosperous European state on Russia’s western border. That will mean that it will expand its position as a regional leader with political and economic prestige.

The Zloty has strengthened against the dollar and the Euro. The critical time where Poland may see this break with the EU could come in 2020.

Nov 12 2018

Italy Refuses to Yield to Brussels – Is Another Exit in the Works?


Armstrong Economics Blog/Italy

Re-Posted Nov 12, 2018 by Martin Armstrong

Italy is arguing that it will retain its budget and refers to how both France and Germany exceeded their budgets and the Commission disregard the Maastricht treaty rules in the case of both countries. In the budget dispute, the Italian government was not deterred by the threat of penalties from the European Commission. Finance Minister Giovanni Tria said last week that Italy would commit “economic suicide” to stick to the plans of the previous government to reduce the deficit. Once again, anyone who really reviews the EU structure in an unbiased manner will see that the crisis stems from the plain fact that the FAILURE to consolidate the debts from the outset means that the EU Commission sticks its nose into every budget of each member.

In the USA the result of a federal budget and debt means that each state is on its own. Their budget is of no interest to Washington. In the case of the EU, each member state prints its own Euros – not the ECB. That means the EU Commission acts like a dictator applying the same rules to everyone regardless of the local social needs. This is why the Euro will fail. It is NOT a structure remotely similar to the USA despite they pretended it would reap the same benefit by just a single currency.

Eventually, Ital will be forced to choose between its people and the dictatorship of Brussels. That will be another whole level of political chaos next year.