Posted originally on May 19, 2025 by Martin Armstrong
Senator Ted Cruz of Texas believes that the federal government should provide each child $1,000 at birth to be invested in the stock market. “Every child in America will have private investment accounts that will compound over their lives, enhancing the prosperity and economic participation of the vast majority of Americans,” Cruz said. Around 3.6 million children were born in the US last year, meaning that the federal government would need to set aside $3.6 billion a year to fund this program.
Cruz’s program would permit family and friends to add $5,000 annually to these private investment accounts, with the hope that the compounding interest will give these kids a head start in life. “What I’m interested in is giving these kids the ability to climb the economic ladder much, much faster to accumulate wealth,” Cruz told CNBC. “I think there’s a real power to making them investors and stakeholders in the economy.”
This is not a completely new concept. Senator Cory Booker of New Jersey proposed providing newborns with funds for investing that would be worth up to $2,000, but rather than investing in the private sector, they would hold treasuries or “baby bonds.” Hillary Clinton also proposed a “baby bond” worth up to $5,000 during her first presidential campaign, costing the public $18 billion annually.
Future generations pay for social programs and the surmounting national debt. Cruz, Clinton, and Booker fail to realize that these programs require funding which comes from these future taxpayers. In a December 2024 interview, Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell stated, “We’re borrowing from future generations. And every generation really should pay for the things that it needs.” Massive spending packages are detrimental in the long run and cause more harm than good.
There’s a strong chance that many parents would simply pocket the funds or not know how to properly invest it in the market. Around 62% of Americans currently hold equities, but the majority own through retirement accounts. Only 21% of American families directly own stocks. The public education system should begin teaching future generations about investment and personal finance, as one in four Americans are financially illiterate.
Suppose lawmakers actually want to improve the lives of future generations. In that case, they need to stop adopting policies that saddle the American public with debt that they then forcibly collect through increased taxation.
Posted originally on May 19, 2025 by Martin Armstrong
Nordic nations have been leading the cashless society revolution. Masked as a manner of efficiency, digital transactions are not demanded by governments globally as they seek to rake in all money off the grid for taxation purposes.
Sweden is nearly a cashless society, with less than 2% of transactions occurring in physical currency as of 2020. Some estimates believe cash transactions have risen to 10% as of 2025, but it is becoming less commonplace. Swish transfer, launched in 2012, is a mobile payment system that enables users to transfer money in real-time. Accounts are linked to bank accounts, and transactions are authorized by Mobile BankID. As of February 2025, Swish had over 9 million users with 8.9 million private accounts and 318,000 business accounts. Only 10.5 million people currently live in Sweden.
The governor of Risbank declared in 2017 that “half of Swedish traders believe they will stop accepting cash by 2025” and Swish would be used for “Transaction that used to be mostly cash based.” In 2010, around 40% of transactions occurred in cash compared to 2-10% today.
Norway is also close to becoming cashless. Similar to Swish, Norway uses a program called Vipps that is owned by DNB Bank. Around 90% of Norwegian bank customers are using this program. Vipps began accepting crypto last year as well.
The National Bank of Denmark reported that cash was used in only 11% of transactions in 2024. Finland has seen a drastic drop in cash transactions, accounting for under 20% of payments.
Customers across Nordic nations report having a high level of trust in their banking institutions and government. Polls and reports vary, but the aforementioned nations typically have a higher level of confidence in their national government compared to other OECD nations. The 2024 OECD poll found 48% of Norwegians had high or moderately high trust in their national government, exceeding the OECD average of 39%. Yet, that figure has declined 16% since 2021. Around 77% of Finns reported having a high level of trust in their government, and 43% of Swedes felt similarly.
Using a credit card or mobile pay option has become the new normal everywhere. Cash transactions are becoming increasingly rare. Cash is still legal tender, and governments have not banished physical currencies—yet. It will be easier for governments to mandate CBDC as the majority of citizens have already gone digital.
Posted originally on May 18, 2025 by Martin Armstrong
QUESTION: Well, here we are at the 15th, right on schedule. Your model turns up, and it looks like no deal. Would you care to comment?
Uri
ANSWER: Putin said their purpose would be “to remove the root causes of the conflict and move towards creating a long-term, durable peace in a historical perspective”. Zelenskyy said he was prepared to attend, but only if Putin also showed up, because “everything in Russia depends” on the Russian leader as if that is not the case in Ukraine. Trump also was not attending.
Zelensky is a Neo-Nazi and he takes orders from the EU and NATO. He wants every Russian dead. What would he do if Russia left the Donbas? He has outlawed them from speaking Russian, denied them any right to vote, outlawed Orthodox Christianity, and outlawed them from even celebrating Christmas. The Ukrainian people have a choice. Either to die for the Neocons, or rise up and overthrow Zelensky. Contacts in Romania realize the EU is trying to orchestrate them into war with Russia. The strategy here is to send the Eastern Europeans in to kill as many Russians as possible, and then Macron can invade Russia like Napoleon.
Our model peaked intraday in the last quarter of 2024, with the third quarter of 2024 as the highest quarterly closing. The correction was to be into the first Quarter, and then the second quarter was a Directional Change. We will now head into the third quarter of 2025, which should reflect the failure of any peace deal because any ceasefire is only to regroup and rearm Ukraine. There is no resolution to this, and the EU will NEVER allow Ukraine to have peace.
There was a peace deal. Putin withdrew his tanks around Kiev, and Boris Johnson flew to Ukraine and instructed Zelensky not to sign any peace deal. More than one million Ukrainians are now dead. My sources in the US military confirm that all the claims that Russia has lost 1 million are fake news. This is all to push for war. Europe does NOT want peace. They are broke, and without war, the people will be storming their parliaments with pitchforks to hang these politicians on the street, for everything they were promised will vanish in a sovereign default. They NEED a distraction, and that is war with Russia, the same as Carney ran against Trump in Canada and avoided all domestic economic damage carried out by the Liberal Party.
Posted originally on May 17, 2025 by Martin Armstrong
QUESTION: Some claim that the entire strength of the dollar is oil, which backed it after the gold standard fell. I know you said that was a convenient theory, and some now claim Trump’s trip to Saudi Arabia is Petrodollar 2.0. You managed money for OPEC and were even in an OPEC meeting, so who better to address this issue than you? I was at your 1985 conference in Princeton, and there were all the Arab nations attending in their white robes, while the Hasidic Jews were attending from the NY garment industry in their black garb. That was an eye-opening conference. So my question is, does oil have any basis for supporting the dollar, or is this another conspiracy theory, like gold going up with inflation?
Yours truly
SM
BTW, Anyone who refuses to interview you is part of the Deep State propaganda.
REPLY: Sam, it’s good to hear from you. You bring up old memories. We have grown old together. If I recall, you were there with your father. I remember when he died. To start with, the percentage of world trade attributed to oil and petroleum products is approximately 8-10% based on the 2022 data. Merchandise Trade in 2022 globally totaled around $25 trillion (WTO data). Of that, crude oil and refined petroleum product exports worldwide were estimated to be between $2.2 and 2.5 trillion (depending on price fluctuations and trade volumes). This includes contributions from OPEC, which are only 40% of crude exports, and non-OPEC exporters like the U.S., Russia, and Canada.
Therefore, if we take the $2.5 trillion and filter out OPEC, this comes to $1 trillion. Now let’s look at just Saudi Arabia, with Nixon’s secret deal (memo) made in 1974 was a negotiation not to support the dollar, but to deal with the Oil Embargo of 1973. Saudi Arabia’s annual oil sales can be measured in both volume (barrels) and monetary value (revenue), which fluctuates based on production levels, OPEC+ agreements, and global oil prices. Even if we look at the numbers from 1974, OpPEC was only about 13% ($112 billion) of world merchandise trade ($846 billion). This significant share was a direct result of the 1973 oil crisis, during which OPEC member countries imposed an embargo and drastically increased oil prices, leading to a quadrupling of oil revenues.
Saudi Arabia typically exports 6.5–7.5 million barrels per day (bpd) of crude oil and petroleum products. In 2023, Saudi Arabia’s oil revenue was estimated at $211 billion (based on ~7 million bpd and ~$80/barrel). This means that Saudi Arabia’s total petro sales amount to .0084% of world trade. The Petrodollar 2,0 is sophistry and just another conspiracy theory. If they priced all the oil in yuan, it would not alter the world economy.
Given the number of emails pouring in on this subject and people claiming Trump’s trip is Petrodollar 2.0 or whatever, I will lay out the truth. This appears to come from the perpetual dollar bears who never look outside the United States and constantly forecast the demise of the dollar since the 1970s. Why anyone listens to them shows that the old saying fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me! They have been wrong for more than 50 years. They never look at the facts and have ZERO understanding of international investment flows.
Yes, we were all dealing with OPEC money in Geneva during the Wild ’80s. That is where all the OPEC money was being managed. Even the Saudi oil minister had a house in Gstaad, Switzerland. That’s where I learned to ski, besides attending exciting parties. Yes, I even participated in OPEC meetings by phone. They would put me on the speaker box. So, I think I know more from the inside out rather than cooking up theories from the outside. This is all tied into this de-dollarization theory as well. I will try to put this together ASAP.
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