Armstrong Economics Blog/Trading Re-Posted Aug 27, 2023 by Martin Armstrong
COMMENT: Marty, I just wanted to thank you. I attended your 1985 World Economic Conference, and you taught me how to hedge. That made my career, and now I am about to retire. Nobody was teaching hedging in the early 1980s. You have impacted the world far more than you realize.
I will be at the WEC this year in my official capacity. Next year, it will be for me personally. I sincerely wanted to thank you, and you should post this. The newbies need to know you were there decades before anyone else.
God bless.
GK
REPLY: George, it has been a long journey. I am glad I helped you in your career. You have always been there for me and I appreciate old friends. BTW, they still do not teach hedging in universities. Just amazing.
Posted originally on the CTH on August 26, 2023 | Sundance
Comrade rebels, for his weekly monologue UK pundit Neil Oliver reviews the ever-controlling, increasingly totalitarian, western political landscape, and then gives his perspective on how the BRICS formation seems to be benefiting from it. It is an interesting contrast worth review. WATCH:
One of my mentors told me about you 6 months ago. Since that time, I have been an avid reader of your public and private blogs. Additionally, I’ve incorporated the Socrates arrays into my trading strategy.
First and foremost, thank you so much for everything you do. The world needs a voice like you during these difficult times as we are descending into darkness. You are helping so many people wakeup to the truth. Your integrity from within, courage in adversity and service above self have helped me to find my own voice. It is time for humanity to rise against our oppressors and take back our freedoms.
My question this morning is what happens to Socrates after you’re gone? I have watched several interviews as well as your documentary where you talk about how the CIA desperately wants the technology. Do you have a plan in place for protecting this powerful tool?
Wishing you many more years of health and happiness!
Best,
Evan
ANSWER: Thank you. I do not regret what they did to me. I survived but emerged with a deeper understanding of how corrupt the system is. Having a working knowledge of law, I went toe-to-toe with my oppressors, who were clearly taking orders from those who sought to take over Russia and strip it clean of its wealth. I watched how they rigged trials, selected judges, and pretended it was random, and then saw how they altered transcripts to change the very words spoken in courts only to find the Second Circuit Court of Appeals to be as fake as a $3 bill. I helped others in their legal defense. I told one black kid to go to trial. He won. My own court-appointed counsel dared to say I helped a criminal escape. He said the jury did not find him innocent, only that there was insufficient evidence. That was the view of even these fake lawyers who pretend to defend people but are paid for by the court to make sure they lose 99% of the time. His mother hugged me and said I was the first white person who ever helped her family.
I have seen it all. I watched them prosecute three separate Italian Mafia families for “conspiracy” to murder the same alleged murder using three different theories, and no corpse was ever found. It was as if your spouse vanished, and they then charged you with conspiracy to murder them without any corpse ever found whatsoever. All they had was a car parked at the airport and nothing more. They found them all guilty and sentenced to 20+ years for nothing. I have ZERO respect for our legal system anymore. It is so corrupt I cannot even recant all the horror stories I witnessed. My own real lawyer warned me they would try to kill me. They did; I was in a coma but survived, to their dismay.
When the Rule of Law collapses, so does society. Lady Margaret Thatcher explained that Britain, in its golden age, brought the rule of law to the world. Civilization exists ONLY when everyone benefits. What is going on now is that when the LEFT seizes control, they seek to force their view on everyone else. This is simply an economic religion that has doomed the world, and we will not revitalize civilization until this collapses and people see what it really is. Communism collapsed in 1989. Ironically, this is just one Fibonacci count of 34 years later – it’s our time.
As Maggie said, when you run out of other people’s money, that is when it all falls apart. We have reached that point in history. That is why they are now pushing for CBDCs for total control because the debt system is collapsing. They are indeed, running out of other people’s money.
We are descending deep into this darkness. However, there is a light at the end of the tunnel. We will emerge from this stronger, just as I did. When you see the system for what it truly is, that is when it will all change. Thirty years ago, the system was corrupt, but they at least tried to hide it. Today, they no longer care because they control the elections, and only a fool thinks they are fair. They will do as they like, for the government has undergone a silent coup and nobody seems to care in Washington. It’s like J. Edgar Hoover who had files on every politician, and they did as he said, or else. The Neocons are doing the same.
As for Socrates, it will survive me. The government canceled all the visas of my programmers from around the world. This is a worldwide effort to preserve this for posterity. People have always tried to infiltrate my operation to grab whatever they can because they are corrupt and greedy. All they ever see is money and screwing the world. Their greed blinds them, and they cannot fathom that they will not have the life they dream about because they are just corrupt in character. I have seen the evil inside the belly of the beast as well as on the outside. My goal is for Socrates to survive and help post-2032. It is my gift to humanity.
Posted originally on the CTH on August 26, 2023 | Sundance
Discussing the implementation of the Digital Services Act (DSA), Ireland’s Media Minister defends the decision that a government appointed entity will ultimately decide what speech is permitted by citizens. This is the next phase in the control of opposition to the expansion of government controls. We are all traveling at the front of one long continuum toward tyranny.
Are the people of Ireland so weak and pathetic they cannot make decisions or formulate opinions for themselves? Of course not. This is not what government control of information is about. Government control of information is about CONTROL of the people. WATCH:
CTH has encountered criticism for our position on information. Perhaps it is important to step back and explain exactly why we should not be playing by rules established to control us while engaged in the battle of ideas. First, my position:
…”There is no such thing as “disinformation” or “misinformation”. There is only information you accept and information you do not accept. You were not born with a requirement to believe everything you are told; rather, you were born with a brain that allows you to process the information you receive and make independent decisions.”…
There are only two elements within the public discussion of information, truth and not truth.
In an era filled with “fact-checkers” and institutional guardians at the gates of Big Tech, let me explain exactly why it is important not to accept the speech rules of the guards.
When you accept the terms “disinformation”, “misinformation” or the newest lingo, “malinformation,” you are beginning to categorize truth and lies in various shades. You are merging black and white, right and wrong, into various shades of grey.
When your mind works in the grey zone, you are, by direct and factual consequence, saying there is a problem. You are correct; however, this is where people may make a mistake. The problem is supposed to be there.
It is not a solution to the problem to try and remove the grey simply because it takes too much work to separate the white pixels from the black ones. You were born with a gift, the greatest gift a loving God could provide. You were born with a brain and set of natural instincts that are tools to do this pixel separation, use them.
If you define the grey work as a problem you cannot solve on your own, you open the door for others to solve that problem for you. You begin to abdicate the work, and that’s when trouble can enter.
The sliding scale of Pinocchios is one of the most familiar yet goofy outcomes.
Put more clearly, when you accept the terminology “disinformation”, you accept a problem.
The problem is then the tool by which authorities will step in to make judgements.
Speech, in its most consequential form, is then qualified by others to whom you have sub-contracted your thinking.
When you willingly sub-contract information filters to others, you have lost connection with the raw information.
CTH was founded upon the belief that truth has no agenda, nor does it care about you, your feelings, or your opinion of it. It just sits there, empirically existing as evidence of information in its most pure form.
The search for truth, in all things, is the mission objective of this assembly. Often, we don’t like the truth; often, the truth is bitter, cold, challenging and even painful to accept. However, the truth doesn’t care. Information in its most raw form is ambivalent to your opinion. If you struggle to accept these things, that’s when you need grey. The New York Times is not called the “grey lady” accidentally.
Personally, I am an absorber of information – perhaps on a scale that is unusual. But I do not discount information from any form until I can put context to it and see if the information makes sense given all the variables present. When something doesn’t feel right, it’s almost always because it isn’t right.
Often, I find myself struggling in the grey and complex. It is not unusual to spend days researching, digging, clarifying a situation, only to discover the path to finding the truth is in another direction entirely. Erasing everything and starting over is frustrating, but it is genuinely the only approach that works; and often finding truth is supposed to be difficult, that’s why it is rewarding.
In the digital information age, we are bombarded with information. It is easy to be overwhelmed and need to find something or someone who has better skills at separating the black grains from the white ones. All opinions in this quest should be considered; thus, it is important to allow the free flow of information.
There is some language that needs to be constrained if we are to participate in a respectful society, with grandma’s rules and knowing the audience. CTH has guidelines for comments for this exact reason. However, those constraints need to be based on a set of inherent values. When it comes to information, it is important to draw a distinction from speech.
There needs to be an open venue for all information. Unfortunately, when we begin to apply labels or categorization to information, there’s an opportunity for information to be manipulated – even weaponized. Saul Alinsky spent decades pondering the best techniques to weaponize information and speech. Alinsky’s intentions, in the endeavor to change society by changing how language and information was used, were not good. He devoted his completed rulebook book to Lucifer.
Be careful about anyone saying we need to label or categorize information in order to control or remove speech from the discussion.
You were not born with a requirement to believe everything you are told; rather, you were born with a God-given brain that allows you to process the information you receive and make independent decisions.
There are a number of factors that do not add up regarding the Maui fires. I am refraining from speculating, but based on the facts, the government allowed people to die. I reported that the fire hydrants were dry and the top official refused to use water reserves. The notification system and sirens mysteriously failed, leaving many clueless as to what was happening. Now it has been reported that the authorities barricaded residents within the fire zone.
Maui Police Chief John Pelletier said that the barricades were intended to prevent residents from coming into contact with over 30 downed power poles. Yet, they prevented the public from accessing Highway 30. Pelletier insists that the barricades were merely a suggestion, but first-hand reports state that people were forbidden to leave. Those who disobeyed and bypassed the barricades narrowly survived.
Another resident by the name Nate Baird was not aware of the fires until his two young sons said they smelled smores. He fled with his family but was told to turn around and go back to Lahaina. He disobeyed and lived. “Nobody realized how little time we really had,” Baird said. “Like even us being from the heart of the fire, we did not comprehend. Like we literally had minutes and one wrong turn. We would all be dead right now.”
What would you do if you were in the car with your family? Would you be obedient to authority or defy the law and save yourself? Stanley Milgram conducted a famous study that showed most people would blindly listen to an authoritative figure. COVID was a mass social experiment that also proved most people will blindly listen to authority figures. Even now, after knowing the damage that COVID caused, people are potentially willing to go back to masks and boosters despite it being ineffective the first time around. It is now more important than ever to think independently. No one is coming to save you and the authorities are not there to protect you.
As Stanley Milgram said:
“It may be that we are puppets – puppets controlled by the strings of society. But at least we are puppets with perception, with awareness. And perhaps our awareness is the first step to our liberation.”
COMMENT: The Other Plan? | Trudeau, his Dad Pierre Elliot and Selfsame Joe Biden Socialist Goals. | “Every Time I Think of it I Get Mad.” “Many Years Ago there was a book entitled Social Purpose for Canada, each chapter was written by a different person, one chapter was written by Pierre Elliot Trudeau. And this book was outlining how they could socialize Canada. Make it a social nation. You know what the plan was? Here’s what they said, “We can’t socialize Canada as long as Canada is strong and united.” “We must Balkanize Canada before we can socialize Canada.” That was the plan; and Trudeau worked at it. You know when he was giving millions of dollars to various groups in Canada he wasn’t doing it from the write motive. His motive was to socialize Canada and that’s really what went on. The average Canadian doesn’t know that. I heard about this book, got it at a library and read it and I was shocked to see what the plan was and how they’re working this plan [to] Balkanize Canada split it into small groups. Then they said we can socialize these small groups one by one and eventually get the whole country. This was the plan. Every time I think of it I get mad.” Bill McLeod, Canadian Revivalist (1919-2012) comment on Trudeau re: Social Purpose for Canada by Michael Oliver. Published: December 1961.
RB
REPLY: The LEFT knows very well how to take over a country. They did that in Russia and China. You divide the people into groups and turn them all against each other. The transgengers in the US are 0.04%, yet you would think that they are the majority. Here you have a male coach going into the girl’s locker room to change because he claims he identifies as a woman. If I did that, I would be arrested. So if I say I identify as a woman, that means it’s OK? What about the rights of privacy of the girls in the locker room? They already can no longer dream of getting to the Olympics because some guy claims he is now a woman.
As I have said, there are plenty of transgenders in Thailand since it is the sex-change capital of the world. It is no big deal because they are also respectful and call themselves ladyboys. Here, they are being used to actually divide the country and create the exact opposite of what they have been manipulated to do – create disunity – not equality. Here we can no longer define a woman, and soon Mother’s Day is to be Birthing Person Day. This is part of the LEFT agenda. Divide the nation into race, genders, left, right, and PREVENT unity. When everyone is divided, then they will not join together to rise up against the real enemy – those manipulating society pretending to be elected officials.
This is the oldest strategy. If you divide the people, then they can be conquered. It is as simple as that. Julius Caesar was able to conquer Gaul despite being outnumbered more than 10 to 1 because the Gauls never united until it was too late. Even in the final battle during September 52 BC, Julius Caesar sealed his fate as a legendary military commander at the Battle of Alesia, where his army of 50,000 Romans defeated 200,000 Gauls in what is now modern-day Burgundy, France. The Celtic tribes were never united. Caesar defeated the Belgae tribes as well as the Helvetia. Had they all united, Caesar surely would not have conquered Europe. Hence, keep your opponents divided, and you will win.
Even Amazon’s internal documents exposed that the company rates their stores using a “diversity index” and determined the threat of unionization is “higher” at stores with “lower diversity.” This is what the WOKE movement is all about — DIVIDE & CONQUER! This is the entire object of the woke movement — divide and create hatred between the groups. This is the strategy of how the LEFT is taking the United States, Canada, and Europe.
Have you heard of the duck curve? When Solar Power & Wind kick in, suddenly fossil generation must cease and when solar & wind collapse, fossil machines must suddenly generate putting enormous stresses on the machines.
History repeats largely because those in power NEVER consult history before they hand down some decree. The scheme behind letting all these migrants infiltrate the country is that they will vote Democrat and keep them in power forever. As I have said before, I was asked by Hong Kong to negotiate with Australia to try to buy land because it was being handed back to China in 1998. I met with the former Prime Minister Paul Keating. who at the time was the Treasurer. I explained I had a blank check and could pay off the national debt of Australia. The answer was always no. Out of frustration, I finally asked if this was a racist thing. He said no. He was Labour, and if they let these people into Australia, they would all vote conservative and change the politics of Australia.
This is why the Democrats are allowing the country to be flooded with migrants with ZERO skills and handing them $2200 a month, which is more than many get on Social Security. This is all politics. The migrants will be told who to vote for in 2024. After that, they intend to draft these people and send them to fight Russia in Eastern Europe.
During the 1840s, that is when the Sovereign Defaults were taking place at the State level. This unleashed what was called the “Hard Times,” coinciding with the migration from Ireland to America in the wake of the Great Famine of the 1840s. The proximate cause of the famine was a potato blight that infected potato crops throughout Europe during the 1840s, causing an estimated 1 million deaths in Ireland from famine and an additional 100,000 deaths outside Ireland. This also contributed to the civil unrest in Europe that became widespread and evolved into the European Communist Revolutions of 1848. This would eventually also influence Karl Marx (1818-1883) and his first edition of the Communist Manifesto in 1848.
We must refer to history to see society’s past mistakes and understand what will unfold. The United States’ emerging market was engulfed in a Sovereign State Debt Crisis of the 1839-1844 period because Andrew Jackson wanted to destroy the central bank because his opponents had borrowed from the Bank of the United States. He moved the federal government funds to his “pet” state banks, unleashing what became known as the broken banknote era. Without a central bank, all the individual banks began to issue their own currency. The frauds were enormous. Nobody knew if the banks were solvent or not or where they even existed. Brokers in NYC would buy notes at a discount from questionable one-branch banks and place them into circulation.
The Panic of 1837 began the Sovereign Debt Crisis, unfolding into the Hard Times period. This economic event also destroyed the credit standing of ALL states and the Federal Government. Because people were already suffering from the economic crisis, the immigrants pouring into the United States sparked a real uprising, for they would work for little pay, taking jobs from the Americans. This became the Nativism movement (native American residents), which was anti-immigrant. On top of that, the old English feud between the protestants v. Catholics merely resurfaced in America since the immigrants were Irish Catholics.
The population of Philadelphia more than doubled during the 1840s from 161,410 to 388,721. It spilled beyond the original city limits (from South to Vine Streets between the Delaware and Schuylkill Rivers) in all directions, which put a strain on the city not designed to accommodate such rapid growth. There was also no professional police force in Philadelphia at the time. Previously, during the 1830s, there was also the national abolition movement. Many blacks migrated to Philadelphia, taking jobs from the locals, which was the origin of the Navitism Movement. This manifested in the Pennsylvania State Constitution of 1838, which rescinded the right to vote among the free Blacks. This was not racist; it was sparked by the economic decline and the rising unemployment. The Democrats today intend to give the new migrants the right to vote in 2024 so they can keep Biden in place.
In 1844, the rise of Nativism appeared because of the economic depression taking the form of a political position of demanding a favored status for certain established inhabitants of a nation as compared to claims of newcomers or immigrants. Nativism typically means opposition to immigration and support of efforts to lower the political or legal status of specific ethnic or cultural groups because the groups are considered alien to the natural culture, failing or unable to assimilate, taking employment from native sons.
Then the migration of the Irish Catholics sparked the Nativist/Protestant sentiment to explode in 1844. The Catholics objected to having their children use the Protestant King James Bible in public schools. The Nativist groups spread a false rumor that Catholics were trying to remove the Bible from public schools. The old hatred from the English Civil War rose again. On the evening of Friday, May 3rd, 1844, a Nativist organization called for a meeting in the Kensington district. They reconvened on the following Monday, and this turned violent as gunshots were exchanged and a riot ensued. Nativists converged on the Irish Kensington district over the next three days and burned more than thirty buildings, including a Catholic school and St. Augustine’s Catholic Church at Fourth and Vine Streets.
Order was restored only by the government calling in the military to suppress the riots. As always, once the first blood is drawn, vengeance follows. Again, riots broke out on July 6th and 7th, 1844. It was really about people migrating to Philadelphia during the hard times and rising unemployment. Just with the blacks previously, this was with the Irish, and this too was manifesting in anti-Catholic sentiment at the growing population of Irish Catholics.
Nativist Riots broke out again in July after it was discovered that St. Philip Neri’s Catholic Church in Southwark dared to arm itself for protection against the protestant mobs using religion as an excuse for violence. This time, fierce fighting broke out between the Nativists and the soldiers who were sent in to protect the church. The protestant Nativists attacked the soldiers, and numerous deaths and injuries took place. The violence helped nationally fuel criticism of the Nativist movement, which claimed to be victims. The Nativist Riots also exposed the need for local police rather than troops to maintain order. Eventually, the police department was formed and consolidated in Philadelphia in 1854.
With all the immigration both into Europe and the United States, this Soros theory of an Open Society is purely an academic fantasy. They totally ignore culture, which is the key to understanding that such a mixture undermines the unity of the state. The Civil Unrest that our computer is projecting, especially from 2024 onward, will be accelerated as it was during the 1840s by the economic downtrend from May 7th, 2024, to 2028. When the Democrats grant voting rights to these migrants in 2024, the election results will only add to a massive uprising of civil unrest, and we may yet face a separatist movement on a major scale.
QUESTION: Marty, How the hell are you? It’s been too long. This case of charging manipulation of precious metals being “spoofing” is the end of the free markets. This eliminates the locals, and trading will never be the same. I remember when the lawyers over the insider trading cases with Michael Milken came to you, and you wrote about that back then and how they turned it upside down. Do you think turning spoofing into manipulation is the death knell of trading as we head into 2032?
Pat
ANSWER: Yes, it has been a long time. I don’t know how you trade size anymore. I would not want to trade a major fund in this atmosphere. I probably should explain why Milken and all those charged with insider trading were really innocent. During the Great Depression, insider trading was defined as a director who knew the company would go bankrupt, and he sold his shares BEFORE releasing that information. That is what REAL insider trading indeed was.
The problem with our law is that a prosecutor gets to create a new theory of the law and then charges you, and it can be precisely the opposite of what the law was intended to do. I saw them charge Muslims after 9/11 with money laundering because they paid off one credit card with another. That certainly was not the intent of money laundering. If you have cash now, they will consider it money laundering because you are trying to avoid taxes.
The theory they used against Milken was that, let’s say, you and I intend to take over General Motors. The legal theory was that we defrauded the person reading this from the same OPPORTUNITY to make money. They did not lose anything. They turned inside trading upside down. The various lawyers came to me because I had written about what real inside trading was back in 1986.
Trading has always been just a poker game. When I would call a bank for a quote, they would always try to read what I would do and move the spread in that direction. Sometimes, you have to pretend to be a buyer if you really have the size to sell. If “spoofing” is now manipulation, trading is finished. You cannot call Goldman Sachs and say, gee, I want to sell $1 billion. They will clip you.
John Maynard Keys wrote in 1926 “The End of Laizzez-Faire” which was the piece that argued that the government can MANIPULATE the economy by using interest rates to manage demand. It was the “New Economics” which completely failed. Before he died, he admitted he was wrong and that not even central banks could manipulate the trend of the economy, no less a single market. Paul Volcker, back in 1979, wrote about the failure of Keynesian Economics in his Rediscovery of the Business Cycle. I remember Paul and I had a conversation about that back in 1998.
Even Larry Summers, the father of NEGATIVE interest rates, admitted that economists cannot forecast the future trend of the economy. Absolutely NOBODY can manipulate any market that changes its direction. Yes, locals could gun for stops and move the quotes on the London Fix, so it kicks off the stops. But that does not change the trend. Those who have pushed this theory that the metals are manipulated have been wrong in their analysis. They push this theory that the metals rise with inflation when they have not done so for centuries.
Gold declined for 19 years, from 1980 to 1999, while the national debt kept rising so much for the debt and inflation theories. Gold does NOT rise with inflation – it rises with geopolitical uncertainty. And when we were on a gold standard, gold declined with inflation. Moving to some gold standard will NOT defeat the business cycle and prevent inflation. There is far more to inflation than just the nonsense of the quantity of money. Most of the theories these people push to sell their gold are false, and as a result, they then have to claim that gold has been manipulated to keep it suppressed to cover their ass, for their analysis is biased.
Even the propaganda they put out about the Great Depression is false. Commodities peaked in 1919 with the shortages thanks to World War I. Silver declined and made its low in 1932, with the stock market collapsing from its 1919 high. Then there is the propaganda that gold and the share market are supposed to decline because of Keynesian Economics raising interest rates. Sorry! That is also a myth and fake news, yet they preach that every time. The stocks soared, and they called it the Trump Rally while the Fed kept raising rates. Gold also rose with rising interest rates.
Welcome to the chaos and misinformation that has plagued investors since the Great Depression.
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