The Edelman Trust Barometer shows collapsing Trust in Government!


ECM-1970-2084

I have stated that Trump is the symptom and he is soaring because confidence in government is collapsing. The 2016 Edelman Trust Barometer, an annual global survey that assesses various levels of trust, reveals this shift from public to private as reported by Forbes.

The EU is now past the point of No Return and will began to implode in March


ECM-Euro

QUESTION: Mr. Armstrong; The World Economic Conference was outstanding. Your theme that Europe was the focal point for the coming chaos has been proven valid with each passing day. You have mentioned this is the time that will begin the collapse in public confidence within the EU even surviving. I must ask. Do you believe if they call you in and followed everything you have said, is it just too late to save Europe?

Thank you so much

PB

ANSWER: Unfortunately, I know how to restructure Europe so it would function, but I do not believe that would even be sufficient at this stage in the game. We have probably reached the point of no return. All that is now left is the crash and burn. Only then will society reform. I simply believe we crossed that line last year. We began a new declining cycle in 2008 and that was the peak in the Euro as well. The start of the real decline in the Euro where mainstream capital begins to question when negative rates can really reverse or stimulate the economy unfolds after 2016.202. This comes into play March 13/14, 2016. This is not my personal opinion. This is just the modeling.

This seems to be so important we will try to put together a video on this matter.

Almost all Income Inequality is caused by Government Taxes!


Social Inequality

QUESTION:

Dear Martin Armstrong,

I appreciate very much your economic analysis and read your blog nearly daily although I disagree with some of your political statements.

In your last blog about Schengen you mention that “Everything is connected and nothing takes place in some isolated vacuum”.  Obvious.

According to me, and many others re-known economists like Joseph Stiglizt or Paul Krugman, one of the problems in the current world is the exponential increase of social inequality and  massive collection of wealth in few hands.

How is it possible that barely the 60 richest people can have the same wealth as half of the population (3.6 billion)? Is this acceptable? What would be the solution in your opinion? Because just free markets will reinforce not decrease the actual trend and you seem to be “socialist”-averse although some sort of redistribution of wealth should be done, I suppose, but how?.

Thanks for your great work

BR

ANSWER: This is a Marxist diversion. It focuses only on the “rich” and ignores the fact that government continues to expand and consume wealth. The “wealth” that everyone points to for the richest people is by no means a product of WAGES, rather it is created on paper valuations of investment. At the same time, that “wealth” dropped $1 trillion just in the January decline this year. It is NOT actual “money” in that sense. It is no different than your home being worth $500,000 one day and then $200,000 a month later.

Total-Government-Expenditure-as-a-Percent-of-GDP-vs-Growth-Rate

“Social inequality” remains the headline grabber, yet the larger government becomes, the lower the economic growth. The OECD itself illustrates this. Higher taxes reduce economic growth, plain and simple. Then we have the average person who is robbed by about 50%+ between income taxes (federal and state), property taxes, fees, tools, and sales taxes. All of this goes to sustain government; it does NOT raise the living standard of the average person. Europe is even worse.

I tried to save Social Security on Capitol Hill. I argued to convert it to a wealth fund and allow it to invest exactly as the “rich” employ their money rather than stuffing it with depreciating government bonds. When I DONATED my time on Capitol Hill, the Dow was 1,000. That would now be 17 times more and amply enough to retired on. Social Security goes bust next year, and with interest rates manipulated lower you will get nothing.

Then the government charges payroll taxes on the average worker. Sure, they hand you a refund check at year-end. So they are borrowing from the average person and NOT paying them any interest. The government robs your ability to save and grow “rich” by stuffing your money in government bonds under Social Security.

Government creates “social inequality” by robbing the poor and middle classes while pretending to care. If we eliminated government federal income taxes, most people would take home at least 30% more.

Tax RobberyThe problem is NOT that the “rich” make money from investment; it is that the rest of society is DENIED the right to invest to get ahead because the government is bleeding everyone dry. Take all the money from the “rich” and we end up with communism, which will not improve your life in the least. So you do not stand a chance of surviving the future unless we start looking at the real culprit here. This is like a baseball game: the pitcher only focuses on the batter while those on base are stealing the next one unnoticed. We need to pay attention before there is no future for our posterity. Thank God I am not 18. I really do not want to live in a world run in this manner. This is not like Star Trek: “Scotty. Beam me up PLEASE!

Analysis of Global Temperature Trends, January, 2016 What’s really going on with the Climate?


The analysis and plots shown here are based on the following: first NASA-GISS temperature anomalies (converted to degrees Celsius so non-scientists will understand the plots) as shown in their table LOTI, second James E. Hansen’s Scenario B data, which is the very core of the IPCC Global Climate models (GCM’s) and which was based on a CO2 sensitivity value of 3.0O Celsius, lastly, a plot based on an alternative climate model designated ‘PCM’ based on a sensitively value of 0.65O Celsius.

Note: I am making a revision to my model based on some new information that will make my climate model more accurate; even with the NASA/NOAA data manipulation which is in full force now. I expect to have this work completed by the next post for January 2016 data. This change has been completed and this paper uses the new a revised model. This change was to link the developed patterns to multiples of Pi which did in fact make an improvement and reduced errors from NASA observations.

An explanation of the alternative model designated, PCM, is in order since many have interpreted this PCM model as a statistical least squares projection of some kind. Nothing could be further from the truth. A decade ago when I started this work the first thing I did was look at geological temperature changes since it is well known that the climate is not a constant; I learned that in my undergrad geology and climatology courses in 1964.

The following observations give a starting point to any serious study. First, there is a clear movement in global temperatures with a 1,000 some year cycle going back at least 3,000 to 4,000 years; probably because of the apsidal precession of about 21,000 years for a complete cycle. However about every 10,000 years the seasons are reversed making the winter colder and the summer warmer in the northern hemisphere. 10,000 years from now the seasons will be reversed. Secondly, there are also 60 to 70 year cycles in the Pacific and the Atlantic oceans that are well documented. Lastly we also know that there are greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide. The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) estimated that carbon dioxide had a doubling rate of 3.0O Celsius plus or minus 1.5O Celsius in 1979.

The core problem with the current climate change theory is that the IPCC still uses the NAS 3.0O Celsius as the sensitivity value of carbon dioxide and a number in that range is required to make the IPCC GCM’s work. The problem with using this value is it leaves no room for other factors and hence the need of the infamous hockey stick plots of the IPCC from Mann, Bradley & Hughes in 1999. The PCM model is based on a much lower value for carbon dioxide consistent with current research that places the value between 0.65O and 1.5O Celsius per doubling of carbon dioxide. If the long and short movement in temperatures and a lower value for carbon dioxide are properly analyzed and combined a plot that matched historical and current (non manipulated) NASA temperature estimates very well can be constructed. This is not curve fitting.

The PCM model is such a construct and it is not based on statistical analyses of raw data. It is based on creating curves that match observations (which is real science) and those observations appear to be related to the movement of water in the world’s oceans. The movements of ocean currents are well documented in the literature. All that was done here was properly combine the separate variables into one curve which had not been previously done, to my knowledge. Since this combined curve is an excellent predictor of global temperatures unlike the IPCC GCM’s, it appears to reflect reality a bit better than the convoluted IPCC GCM’s, which after the past 19 years of no statistical warming have been shown to be in error.

Now, to smooth out highly erratic monthly variations a 12 month running average is used in all the plots. This information will be shown in four tables and updated each month as the new data comes in about the middle of the month. Since no model or simulation that cannot reasonably predict that which it was design to do is worth anything the information presented here definitively proves that NASA, NOAA and the IPCC just don’t have a clue.

Note, starting in late 20014 and continuing to the present NASA has made major changes to the way they calculate the values used in their table LOTI. These changes have significantly increased the apparent global temperatures (political reasons) and these changes are not supported by satellite data; so they are probably not real. For example in the report issued in April 2010 the following temperatures were reported March 2002 102, January 2007 108. The January 2016 report shows March 2002 90, January 2007 95 and January 2016 as 111 but was it and will it say there? This paper uses the questionable NASA data since it is all that is available at this time. Prior to this “change” the PCM plot showed almost no error for NASA data as can be seen in the plots posted here last year.

Four Charts

The first plot, UL is a plot of the NASA temperature anomaly converted to degrees Celsius and shown in red with a black trend line added. There has been a very clear reversal in the upward movement of global temperatures since about 2001 and neither the UN IPCC nor anyone else has an explanation for this 13 years later. Since CO2 has continued to increase at what could be argued an increasing rate, this raises serious doubts about the logic programmed into all the IPCC global climate models.

The next plot UR, also in red, shows the IPCC estimates of what the Global temperature should be, based on Hansen’s Scenario B, with the NASA actual temperatures’ subtracted from them. Therefore this plot represents a deviation from what the Climate “believers” KNOW what the temperature should be; with a positive value indicating the IPCC values are higher than actual and a negative value indicating the IPCC values are lower than actual, as measured by NASA. A black trend line is added and we can clearly see that the deviation from expected is increasing at an increasing rate. This makes sense since the IPCC models project increased temperatures based primarily on the increasing level of CO2 in the earth’s atmosphere. Unfortunately, for them, the actual temperatures from NASA are trending down (even as they try to hide the down ward movement with data manipulation) since other factors are in play, therefore each year the gap between them widens. Since we have 13 years of observations’ showing this pattern it becomes hard to justify a continuing belief in the IPCC climate models, there is obviously something very wrong here.

The next plot LL shown in blue is based on the equations in the PCM climate model described in previous papers and posts here and since it is generated by “equations” a trend line is not needed. As can be seen the PCM, LL, there is a 69.1 year cycle that moves the trend line up and then down a total of 0.29O Celsius and we are now in the downward portion of that trend (-.01491O C per year) which will continue until around 2035. This short cycle is clearly observed in the raw NASA data in the LOTI table going back to 1868. Then there is a long trend, 1036.7 years with an up and down of 1.65O Celsius (.00396O C per year) also observed in the NASA data. Lastly, there is CO2 adding about .007O Celsius per year so they basically wash out at -.0039 O C per year, which matches the current holding pattern we are experiencing. After about 2035 the short cycle will have bottomed and turn up and all three will be on the upswing again. These are all round numbers shown here as representative values.

The last plot LR in blue uses the same logic as used in the UR plot, here we use the PCM estimates of what the Global temperature should be with the NASA actual temperatures’ subtracted from them. A positive value indicates the PCM values are higher than actual and a negative value indicates the PCM values are lower than expected. A black trend line was added and it clearly shows that the PCM model is tracking the NASA actual values very closely. In, fact since 1970 the PCM model has rarely been off by more than +/- 0.1 degrees Celsius until the last few months where the manipulation showed up and has an average trend of almost zero error, while the IPCC models are erratic and are were approaching an error rate of over +0.4O C above expected until the last few months.

Note: Since I first started posting this monthly analysis a year and a half ago NOAA and NASA were directed make the global temperatures fit the political narrative that the planet was over heating and something drastic need to be done right now. The problem was as shown in this analysis the “real” world temperatures were not at the level that the IPCC GCM’s said they should be. Major adjustments to the data have been made that give the illusion that temperatures are going up even though they are not. However, as this analysis shows even with the manipulation that has destroyed all credibility from NOAA and NASA they cannot get the global temperatures even close to what their false theory claims they should be.

The next Chart shows the PCM model and all the various government plots related to climate change from 1875 through 275. Clearly within the next dozen years we will know one way or the other which kind of climate model works. One based on observations and the other based on questionable science. There is no disrespect meant against the real climate scientists that have been marginalized this disrespect is meant for the political scientists who are the worst kind as they work for money not for the truth.

Present

In summary, the IPCC models were designed before a true picture of the world’s climate was understood. During the 1980’s and 1990’s CO2 levels were going up and the world temperature was also going up so there appeared to be correlation and causation. The mistake that was made was looking at only a ~20 year period when the real variations in climate move in much longer cycles. Those other cycles can be observed in the NASA data but they were ignored for some reason. By ignoring those trends and focusing only on CO2 the models will be unable to correctly plot global temperatures until they are fixed.

Lastly, the next chart shows what a plot of the PCM model, in yellow, would look like from the year 1400 to the year 2900. The plot matches reasonably well with history and fits the current NASA-GISS table LOTI data, in red, very closely, despite homogenization. I understand that this model is not based on physics but it is also not curve fitting. It’s based on observed reoccurring patterns in the climate. These patterns can be modeled and when they are, you get a plot that works better than any of the IPCC’s GCM’s. If the conditions that create these patterns do not change and CO2 continues to increase to 800 ppm or even 1000 ppm than this model will work into the foreseeable future. 150 years from now global temperatures will peak at around 15.75 to 16.00 degrees C and then will be on the downside of the long cycle for the next 500 years. The overall effect of CO2 reaching levels of 1000 ppm or even higher will be about 1.5 degrees C which is about the same as that of the long cycle. The Green plot shows the pattern with no change in CO2 from the pre-industrial era of ~280 ppm.

Carbon Dioxide is not capable of doing what Hansen and Gore claim!

Future

The purpose of this post is to make people aware of the errors inherent in the IPCC models so that they can be corrected.

The Obama administration’s “need” for a binding UN climate treaty with mandated CO2 reductions in Europe and America was achieved as predicted at the COP12 conference in Paris in December 2015. To support this endeavor NASA will be forced to show ever increasing global temperatures that will make less and less sense based on observations and satellite data which will all be dismissed or ignored. Within a few years the manipulation will be obvious even to those without knowledge in the subject.

 

Sir Karl Raimund Popper (28 July 1902 – 17 September 1994) was an Austrian and British philosopher and a professor at the London School of Economics. He is considered one of the most influential philosophers for science of the 20th century, and he also wrote extensively on social and political philosophy. The following quotes of his apply to this subject.

If we are uncritical we shall always find what we want: we shall look for, and find, confirmations, and we shall look away from, and not see, whatever might be dangerous to our pet theories.

Whenever a theory appears to you as the only possible one, take this as a sign that you have neither understood the theory nor the problem which it was intended to solve.

… (S)cience is one of the very few human activities — perhaps the only one — in which errors are systematically criticized and fairly often, in time, corrected.

How NASA manipulates the numbers to give the result that they want


NASA-GISS publishes a table Land Ocean Temperature Index (LOTI) of temperature values around the middle of each month that gives their estimate of the global temperature in anomalies. This table shows the current month and it goes back, by month, all the way to January 1880 which represented 1,626 values with the January 2016 report. Anomalies are calculated by taking the estimated temperature say 15.2 degrees Celsius and subtracting 14.0 degrees Celsius from it leaving 1.2 degrees Celsius which is then multiplied by 100 giving us an anomaly of 102; it’s their system not mine. The 14 degrees Celsius was calculated back in the 1980 as the average temperature for the period from 1951 through 1980 or 30 years. Why that period I don’t know as it has no scientific significance. My guess is it was the period that the people working on this project like James E. Hanson grew up in, but whether that is true or not using those years as a base for anything makes no sense. This paragraph is required so anyone looking at the Chart that follows will be able to understand what the numbers mean.

When I started this climate research 10 years ago it was the result of work I was doing in the field of electric vehicles and I needed to find the amount of fossil fuels that were available to determine if electric vehicles were viable. Also prior work I had done at General Electric had indicated that there were many problems with actually trying to switch to electric cars from petroleum based. Progress has been made but there are still many issues that prevent a total conversion to electric. However this subject dragged me into the changing climate issue which at the time I had no reason to believe what NASA and James E. Hansen were saying was not true. That assumption proved to be very wrong after only a few months of studying the issue and that started me on seeing what the real reasons for the changing climate we had was.

My research during 2005 through 2007 was in collecting information on the subject and it soon became obvious that there was something wrong; the IPCC hockey stick graph and geological temperature records were at odds and one or the other was wrong. The key was the sensitivity value of Carbon Dioxide CO2 which tells us how much of an effect CO2 has on temperatures. The science is far from settled on this key value and from 1979 to the present the published papers have lowered the estimate of that key number from 3.0 degrees Celsius to closer to 1.0 degrees Celsius per doubling of CO2. The higher value is required to make the man made part of the changing climate real but the lower value appears to be the correct one; which then seems to show that there are other factors effecting climate than CO2 and this became obvious 12 years ago when the increase in Global temperature appeared to slow down or even stop; and this was called the ‘pause’. And this pause was supported by satellite data so it was hard to hide

However, politics came into play as many uneducated policy makers were tricked into supporting the claim that CO2 increases were going to be the world’s biggest problem ever. This belief had much support from various political factions that provided money and ground troops to get the message out. So, now today, with so much political capital invested in the concept facts could not be allowed to stand in the way and so NOAA and NASA were directed to adjust the global temperatures to support the movement and that culminated with the Paris climate treaty signed in December 2015 at COP21. The following Chart shows how this was done by changing all the values in the NASA LOTI table and an explanation follows the chart.

NASA MANIPULATION

This Chart was made from 14 different NASA LOTI tables as downloaded from the NASA-GISS web site over the past 8 years and listed by date on the x axis. Each LOTI report has a temperature value for each month from the date of the report going back to January 1880 and since these values are recalculated every month in software there are variations in those values and so to remove the random changes blocks of values were averaged i.e. the first one in green January 1880 through December 1899 is 20 years containing 240 values. Then that block was plotted for each of the 14 different reports up to the base period. This block is very erratic moving first down and then up so there must be something in the software that causes that based on what they programmed in to all the other periods. I left it in here only to show the strange movements in the published temperatures provided by NASA. The next block is from January 1951 to December 1980, 30 year period, is the base period that NASA which was described in the first paragraph of this short paper. In the above chart it shows as a solid black line at the 0 point on the chart. Starting in 1940 we move to 10 year blocks of 120 values to see greater resolution. The most current block 2010 to 2019 shows the most manipulation.

Now what stands out in this chart are two things the first is that the plots for the blocks of years move up and down which means that the temperatures for that block of years is moving which doesn’t seem reasonable as they are in the past so how is that possible. Further, random fluctuations would be averaged out when considering 120 or 240 values. In general as shown in the straight red trend line above the black base line which moves up and the blue straight trend line below the black base line which moves down we can see that the past gets colder while the present gets warmer; both after they are first published. Each point on the chart is for the same time period and the same number of values with the exception of the most current block labeled at 2010-2019 which is currently at 60 values since we are only half way through that period. This last period is the most interesting since we can see a very large increase in the values in the first few months of 2015, black oval.

The second point is not so obvious and this that the base period black plot of 30 years from 1951 through 1980 is very stable and does not move. With what happens to all the other periods moving all over the place that is not possible unless it is not allowed to move. This is one of the reasons why that period should not have been picked as the base, however now that they did they are forced to make those 360 values, when averaged, equal zero or their system falls apart. A base period cannot fall in the middle of the measurements you are analyzing when you don’t have hard values to measure against.

Since the past can’t change except in Orwell’s 1984 the current movement of temperatures that support the myth of manmade climate change can only be by manipulation of the NOAA and NASA data sets. What this administration is currently doing is no different than what The Catholics did to Galileo in 1633 when he was sentenced to house arrest after a long battle proposing that the earth moved around the sun not vice versa. Today any work questioning that man is causing the temperature of the planet to rise to unheard of levels is ridiculed and banned and some have even proposed prison to utter that thought.

Since it is now 100% certain that NOAA and NASA are changing data to support a political view those organization are now nothing more than propaganda organs of the political class and have become high priests of a cult which has nothing to do with true science.

Monopoly Goes Cashless — The Coming New World Totalitarian Order


Monopoly-Cashless

Well, Monopoly is going cashless. It looks like the game company sees the writing on the wall and are preparing the kids for the new world order — a cashless society.

Is The Pending Euro Collapse on Target From Our 2011 Forecast of March 13/14 2016?


Draghai Euro Crisis

The euro crisis appears to be unfolding right on target rather amazingly. Our target was published in “The Rise and Fall of the Euro” back in 2011. The target for the collapse in confidence was 2016.202. This comes into play March 13/14, 2016. It is rather amazing that we can target a specific event within time, years in advance, and watch these things unfold. This illustrates that TIME remains everything and humanity repeats a process that results in the same response over and over again throughout history. This also demonstrates that our forecasting is not based upon OPINION. With the euro unable to reach 116 of a rebound, this does not look very good in the next few weeks.

Here is what we published in that report:

27th

 

From a timing perspective, the Bretton Woods System actually began with the operational start of the IMF on March 1, 1947 (1947.164). The euro began officially on January 1, 1999 (1999.002). The birth of the euro essentially completed the 51.6-year cycle between 1947 and 1999. The collapse of the euro appears to be due no later than 17.2 years from its birth, making the ideal target 2016.202, just 23.5 weeks ideally AFTER the peak on this current Economic Confidence Model wave 2015.75.

Larry Summers Calls to End $100 Billis — Here Comes the Totalitarian State


Summers Larry

 

$100 2013Larry Summers, the father of NEGATIVE INTEREST RATES, is so against a free society and looks upon us as dumb cattle to be herded and corralled for his pleasure. His ideas are just beyond belief. Now Mr. Pro-Government-Anti-Democracy is advocating killing the $100 bill. He is moving to electronic money so that government can get all the taxes it ever dreamed of. We are rapidly being converted from milk cows to just beef cows. This is creating a completely totalitarian future. With people like this who never had a real job but knows how to dictate to the world, our future looks very bleak.

Summers actually reveals this is really about taxes by arguing that the U.S. government should stop issuing new $100 bills and recall the old ones out of circulation. Keep in mind the government will comply because this is the balloon he is floating at their direction and the press cheers our demise. There is nobody in the press willing to call him out. They prefer to lick the ground he walks on. They give him air-time because that is their role.

Summers went further and suggested that even the $50 bill should be examined. In support of the ECB ending the €500 note, he slandered Luxembourg who objects to ending the €500 note by saying that this minuscule country has a “long and unsavory tradition of giving comfort to tax evaders, money launderers, and other proponents of bank secrecy.”

This proves that withdrawing the €500 note in Europe and the $100 and $50 bills in the U.S. is all about taxes — not crime or terrorism. They are moving to end money as we know it. The problem is that the $100 bill circulates predominantly OUTSIDE the USA. They will take a step closer to eliminating the dollar as the reserve currency, and eventually we will end up with a new one-world currency as early as 2018 but probably by 2020. This is really part of the 2017 G20 accord to tax everyone everywhere.

Thank you Mr. Summers for your persistent dedication to eliminating our freedom and converting the world into a giant totalitarian state, despite admitting the government is incapable of forecasting the business cycle. That means that they are too blind to even comprehend the consequences of their actions today.

$10000-100 - R

Glass-Steagall Signing-Repeal ClintonTIP: Swap your $100 notes in the sock-drawer for $20s. We went from $10,000 to $100 without terrorists or money laundering laws (which now means hiding money from government). Summers will take us down to $1 at best and he wants that gone as well. This guy should be in prison for what he has done to society. He was the cheerleader to get rid of Glass Steagall under the Clintons.

Summers is in the top 10 people who have created the destruction of all our rights and the world economy. The press treat him as royalty. In my book, he is in the class of Adolf Hitler within the Financial arena. Hitler actually began terminating the handicapped because they were a burden to the state. They happened to be veterans from WWI. This is the same attitude of Summers. Eliminate all our rights for his efficient mind to be at peace. What happens when he controls everything, and government is still unable to survive? He will be first among the elite to advocate sending in troops to hunt anyone who dissents from his will. Yes I am being harsh. But this guy has ZERO respect for that cattle he sees out his window any more than Germany terminating veterans because it was a burden to take care of them. Our society which he cannot figure out how it works because he admits it is too “complex” for his mind, never prevents him from trying to manipulate us to his desire. He seems more like a two-year old who get mad they cannot play with a toy and do not like to share. If the economy is too complex to forecast, it is too complex for his manipulation games.

Plagues & Changes in Economics — The Hunt for Taxes


Justinian

QUESTION: Mr. Armstrong; I assume you have studied this hunt for money government goes through. Has it always ended in the collapse of government?

Thank you

PD

ANSWER: No. It really depends upon the economic system in place. There are two comparable plagues that devastated the world population. One ended in oppression and the other gave birth to capitalism. It is like the battle between public and private. It depends on what side you reside when it hits. In a public wave, taxes rise to compensate for the decline in population, whereas in the latter we find the birth of taxation applied to individuals who suddenly are free to earn money.

One of the worst such events coincided with the Justinian Plague (541-542AD) and was a pandemic involving Yersinia pestis, the organism responsible for bubonic plague. This hit the population on a monumental scale, creating a wave of devastation comparable to the Black Death that came about 600+ years later (2 x 309.6), which created capitalism by killing about 50% of the people and ended serfdom by reintroducing wages during the 14th century. It is estimated that about 25 million were impacted on its first wave but recurrences struck, bringing the total death toll to perhaps 50 million. The primary source describing this as a worldwide event in history has come to us from the noted contemporary historian during the 6th century, Procopius of Caesarea (Procopius Caesarensis; c. 500-560 AD).

Justinian-I-solidus follis - r

The Justinian Plague (541–542 AD) resulted in 5,000 deaths per day in Constantinople, but the Emperor responded with massive taxation as the pestilence swept through the known world; notably the Roman Empire. Justinian is remembered for his legal code reforms, but also for massive taxation for trying to restore the fallen glory of ancient Rome by waging a series of military campaigns to retake lands that had been overrun by barbarian tribes. The plague wiped out most of the farming community and impacted the tax revenue of the government. It was taxation that was different from the Black Death. Here taxation was applied to individuals, whereas latter taxes were minimal and applied only to landlords. Justinian showed no mercy whatsoever when it came to the collapse in his tax revenue. Despite the human desolation, Justinian hunted the ruined freeholders. He not only demanded they pay his annual tax even if they had no income, but he increased the tax on those living to compensate for the amount of taxation their deceased neighbors were liable to pay.

Justinian I was rather ruthless when it came to taxation. There was a tax revolt that boiled over on January 13, 532 AD, known as the Nika Revolt, which emerged when an angry populace arrived at the Hippodrome in Constantinople to watch the chariot races. The Hippodrome was next to the palace complex where Justinian could watch from the safety of the palace. The spectators were hurling insults at Justinian for his taxes. Initially, it was a contest between two opposing teams known as the “Blue” and “Green.” After race 22, the chants began to change to Nίκα (“Nika”, meaning “Win!” or “Conquer!”). The crowds became violent, and for the next five days the palace was under siege. They set fires that destroyed most of the city including the church, the Hagia Sophia, which Justinian would impose harsh taxes to later rebuild.

Therefore, in this instance, Justinian I raised taxes on the 50% who survived so his revenue would not decline. Since this was a period of capitalism where individuals earned money for their labor (in socialism/communism the state earns the profit from the labor of the population), taxes were raised on the people. The Black Death ended serfdom as labor became scarce and landlords had to offer more than 20% of the food and a free housing to work their land.

Draghi Lied; Claims the ECB Is Withdrawing the €500 Note for Crime and Not Taxes


500_Euro_Banknotes - R

Mario Draghi has claimed that the European Central Bank would withdraw its €500 highest-denomination banknote only to combat crime— not to curb the use of paper money — but you really cannot expect him to tell the truth. If he really told the truth, he would set off a panic withdraw from banks.

$10000-100 - R

The USA use to print $10,000 notes in 1934. That stopped with Roosevelt and the birth of socialism to prevent people from storing cash to escape taxes. There was no excuse of terrorism or crime. Crime has actually declined. Draghi is simply engaging in political bullshit by denying the truth so he can quietly remove cash from society. Teddy Roosevelt even used recorded speeches for people to listen to during the election of 1912 to press the socialist agenda under the Progressive Party. The night of the election in 1932, there were rumors that Roosevelt would close the banks and devalue the dollar. Hoover begged him to come out and say he would not for the rumor set in motion a banking panic. Those with money withdrew it. Roosevelt came out of the high of the election and lied to the public by saying he would never do such a thing. In fact, if he told the truth, people would have poured into the banks and withdrew their deposits in gold. So he lied, and then demanded all gold be turned over to the Treasury, and then he devalued the dollar in 1934.

So never pay attention to the words of politicians or central bankers. They can never say what they will do for the public will act in a counter-trend move. Draghi is withdrawing the €500 notes for the same reason FDR stopped the Treasury from issuing high denomination notes — taxes; not crime nor terrorism. It has always been about money.