Tag Archives: Communism

Sep 11 2018

Who was the Richest Man in Ancient History


Armstrong Economics Blog/America’s Economic History

Re-Posted Sep 11, 2018 by Martin Armstrong

QUESTION: Mr. Armstrong; You are a history buff. Who was the richest person in ancient times? Has there ever been a trillionaire?

PD

ANSWER: The Roman Emperor August. He is believed to have been worth in current dollar terms nearly $5 trillion. The only other person to have reached the trillion dollars net worth status was King Solomon of Judaea. After Octavian/Augustus defeated Marc Antony and Cleopatra, he then possessed the entire wealth of Egypt. In this respect, the wealth really did belong to him. Some have attributed the entire wealth of nations conquered and argued that Genghis Khan was worth probably 100 trillion dollars. However, the Roman system was rather different. Even taxation for a governor of a province would be owed by the governor to the state so whatever he would collect fell to him personally.

Marcus Licinius Crassus was perhaps one of the richest private men in Roman history. He amassed an enormous fortune through real estate speculation buying confiscated property seized by Marius from the supporters of Sulla. Crassus’s wealth is estimated by Pliny at approximately 200 million sestertii. Plutarch says the wealth of Crassus increased from less than 300 talents at first to 7,100 talents. An Attic (Greek, Athens) talent was the equivalent of 60 minae or 6,000 drachmae. A silver Drachm was generally 15mm in diameter with a weight of 4.20 grams. In Roman terms, this was about 26 kilograms (57 lb). If we take Plutarch’s measurement of wealth, that would be 42.6 million denarii.

A Roman soldier earned 225 denarii a year. Today, the average soldier in the US army earns $48,538 per year. That would approximately be $9.189 billion. If we take Jeff Bezos who is reported to be worth $164 billion based upon his stock in Amazon, that works out to the annual salary of 3.4 million soldiers compared to Crassus’ worth being 189,333 soldiers. However, the real difference is that Crassus’ wealth is cash whereas Bezos’ wealth is the current value of a stock. If he tried to sell it for cash, the value would be significantly less.

Crassus’ son, Publius Licinius Crassus (c 86BC – 53 BC), served under Julius Caesar. He did issue coins during the Republic as a “moneyer” who was a person authorized to issue the coins during the Roman Republic. The Senate actually controlled the quantity of money to be produced. There would be a “State of the Union” type of address to the Senate where they would be given the account of money on hand and what they expected the annual expenses would be. The Senate would then authorize the number of coins to be issued that fiscal year. The Quaestors handed the raw bullion and they would turn that over to the official who was the “moneyer” for that year. The moneyers would decide on the design to be issued which often celebrated his ancestors. The coinage would be struck and then handed back to the Quaestors for the expenditure of the government. The office of a moneyer continued into the Imperial period.

Sep 10 2018

Barack Obama is BACK and still Wrong about Everything!


He’s back and conservatives should be delighted. Barack Obama is stumping for the Democrats and his arrogance and condescension are on full display. Obama’s recent speech provides evidence that he still lives in a vacuum of ignorance that requires that he claim that all Republicans are racist, they hate women and the roaring Trump economy is thanks to him. This is the same guy that doubled our national debt, whose policies did great damage to America’s middle class and he assured us that a 2% growth in our GDP was the new normal. President Trump erased this myth early in his presidency.

Let’s not forget the catastrophic effect Obama had on the Democratic Party during his failed presidency. Thanks to Obama and his leftist policies the Democrats suffered huge loses during the 2010 and 2014 mid-term elections. During his reign of incompetence the Democratic Party lost over 1,000 local and statewide seats. Although he won two elections Barack Obama was toxic to his party. Like all narcissists his winning was always more important than anything else.

So the patriots of this country pray to God that Mr. Obama stays on the stump through the mid-term elections. In fact, lets pray that Barack stays on the campaign trail right through the 2020 presidential election. Then we can say that even Barack Obama helped “Make America Great Again.”

Jeff Longo
North Royalton, Ohio

Sep 10 2018

Pattern Repeats – Political Imprisonment followed by Leadership


Armstrong Economics Blog/Greece

Re-Posted Sep 10, 2018 by Martin Armstrong

I really do not think people realize that they are just extras in a political film which is an endless struggle for freedom. There is a book written by Oriana Fallaci which began as an interview of Allesandro Panagoulis. Oriana was a journalist who was interviewing fourteen contemporary political leaders, which included Henry Kissinger, Meir, Arafat, Indira Gandhi, and the Shah of Iran. She sought to understand their personal attitudes and propensities that brought them to such status. She called this an Interview with History.

In the course of her investigations, she wrote A Man about Allesandro Panagoulis who stood up against the dictatorship and oppression of the Greek people. He was imprisoned and tortured for years. Most were stunned that he even survived this treatment. Like Nelson Mandella, the same pattern of imprisonment was followed by the fall of the government and a rebirth back to democracy. Panagoulis took an active role in the fight against the Regime of the Colonels (1967–1974) in Greece. He became famous for his attempt to assassinate dictator Georgios Papadopoulos on August 13th, 1968, and the subsequent endless torture. However, following the collapse of the dictatorship government, democracy was reborn. This is when Panagoulis was elected to the Greek parliament as a member of the Center Union.

Panagoulis discovered that the very people who had tortured him were then pretending to be democrats. Allesandro systematically began to investigate the corruption in the police and the political government. Just two days before all the files of the junta’s military police (the “E.A.T.-E.S.A. file”) he announced would be released, he was assassinated.  One of the methods to assassinate a leader so he is not made into a hero is to create what appears to always be an accident. On the 1st of May 1976, a car accident was staged on Vouliagmenis Avenue in Athens. A car drove extremely fast and directed its path to impact Panagoulis. Without a choice and counting on a human reflex, Panagoulis’ car and forced to divert and crash in which he was said to have been killed almost instantaneously. The files never materialized to support the collaboration of corruption of the police in league with Greek officers who worked with Nazi Germany in World War II. These men who killed Greeks served in the Security Battalions who fought for the Germans in 1943-1944. These very people were those who were the leaders of the Colonels’ Regime of 1967-1974 and were torturing Panagoulis. There are no such coincidences in these types of affairs.

Sep 10 2018

Swedish Elections Shift to the Right


Armstrong Economics Blog/Scandinavia

Re-Posted Sep 9, 2018 by Martin Armstrong

The Swedish election has shifted to the right thanks to the Refugee Crisis. The Social Democrats came in with the worst result in decades and the right-wing populists have risen to their best results since their inception. Although the Social Democrats escaped a complete disaster in the parliamentary elections, they have lost a lot to the right-wing populists. The party of Prime Minister Stefan Löfven appears to remain in place. Meanwhile, the currency still appears lower as we move forward in time.

Categories: Scandinavia
Sep 9 2018

Influence & Ranks


Armstrong Economics Blog/Economics

Re-Posted Sep 9, 2018 by Martin Armstrong

COMMENT: Marty; Did you know that your site is listed in the top 20 economic sites in the world? You are in the top 20 with Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, London FT, and even  Brookings Ben Bernanke’s Blog. The rest of the list includes the Economic Policy Institute, Economics & Statistics Administration, and The Berkeley Blog Business & Economics. You may be a lot more influential than you portray.

JS

REPLY: Perhaps. But keep in mind that your enemies always read you because they need to know what you are saying now to feed their hatred. Aside from that, every intelligence service reads our work. They understand there is a cycle to everything and ever since the London FT reported I warned Russia would collapse just before the 1998 Long-Term Capital Management collapse on Russian bonds, they all pay close attention.

Sep 8 2018

Trump Threatens to Cancel NAFTA If Congress Interferes


Armstrong Economics Blog/World Trade

Re-Posted Sep 8, 2018 by Martin Armstrong

QUESTION: Mr. Armstrong; Do you agree with Trump that if he canceled NAFTA, the United States would be better off?

SN

ANSWER: Ironically – YES from a jobs perspective, not the consumer. What you have to understand is that these trade deals are all nonsense. They are NOT Free Trade in the least. They are compromises so politicians can pretend they have accomplished something.

Take the deal with Europe. France’s position was that nothing can be called “Champagne” unless it comes from that region in France. Every trade negotiation is a compromise that maintains protectionism. In that regard, if Trump actually canceled NAFTA, his boast that the US would be better off is meant that all products would then be subjected to tariffs and all of the American industry would be protected.

Now, that said, this view is that of the worker – not the consumer. All of these trade negotiations are one-sided. They are always focused only on jobs and not producing the best price for the consumer which in turn raises our standard of living. I have never encountered even one politician who has EVER defended the consumer in trade deals. This violates the principle of Comparative Advantage put forth by David Ricardo. It’s true that Saudi Arabia could grow lettuce but the cost of irrigation in the desert would make the cost 10 times more than simply buying it from Europe or North America. It would cost the consumer far more to simply grow that product in the desert than importing so it is best to buy it elsewhere and focus on your productive capacity in which you have some comparative advantage over others.

Sep 8 2018

A Reality Check of society from 9/11/2001 to next Tuesday (9/11/2018) seventeen years later!


Sep 6 2018

France’s Dream of Europe without NATO


Armstrong Economic Blog/War

Re-Posted Sep 6, 2018 by Martin Armstrong

QUESTION: Mr. Armstrong; The French have never been real supporters of America and NATO. They have always wanted to be seen as a world power since Charles DeGaul. What is your view on Macron’s answer to Trump’s demand that they pay their fair share of NATO to turn to Russia?

JE

ANSWER: The French President Emmanuel Macron has urged European states to work with Russia and construct new security architecture, in a bid to strengthen defense capabilities within the European Union and thus rely less on America. This is a question of power. NATO exists because of a view that Russia would invade Europe to end capitalism. Those days are gone. Nonetheless, the idea of empire still haunts us to this day. That is the idea in reality behind the European Union to take Europe and recreate the old Roman Empire of one federalized government. Putin may harbor that same view of reestablishing the Russian Empire. However, it is no longer to spread communism. It may take another 50 to 100 years before we end this idea of empire. Macron is still displaying the view that Europe should stand together against America. It has been the Frech who have blocked free trade and trade negotiations because they are the origin of communism where the idea was born and this is reflected in the poor economic performance of France as a whole