Something very interesting is unfolding. Included in the new year-end spending bill was a waiver of the Foreign Investment in Real Property Tax Act (FIRPTA), which had been implemented during the late 1980s when the Japanese were buying everything. They claimed to have focused on buying U.S. farmland, but it also applied to buying trophy U.S. property like Rockefeller Center in New York City.

This position has been reversed in the new year-end spending package. While some attribute this to a grand conspiracy, giving far more credit to those in Congress and in the White House than they deserve, our sources simply tell the plain story of lobbying to allow foreign buyers, who are supporting the real estate market in key areas, to purchase properties. Especially after London basically kicked every foreigner out of town by telling them their money was not welcomed, and with lightning speed they instantly turned to New York City.

High properties, even in Florida, are being sold to the Chinese largely in cash deals whereas Canadians are buying the greatest number of properties. The lobbying has been from the real estate and banking industry who see a market they want to service. Slipped into the $1.1 trillion spending measure, which was passed to avoid a government shutdown, were tax breaks for Americans that simultaneously treats foreign pension funds the same as Americans. There has been lobbying from foreign pension funds because they see no hope in Europe and have been pleading for permission to enter the U.S. market in a big way. For the first time this provision waives the tax imposed on foreign investors under FIRPTA.

This is perfectly in line with our cyclical models because the DOLLAR has become the world reserve currency for real and by default. The dollar bears, who keep claiming it will crash, are looking only domestically. They have no peripheral vision and thus remain blind to the trend globally. They may sell stocks, assuming lower oil means more deflation. What if they are wrong?

COMMENT: Dear Mr. Armstrong,

Dear Mr. Armstrong,

What you wrote concerning the possible repeated start of the banks collapse from Austria, once again, is right. The biggest lenders in Romania are some Austrian banks, among some Greek ones which are already in a coma.

A new law has been passed and violent attack started from banks, including the National Bank of Romania. Today, 4 European mother-banks having subsidiary in Romania appealed an threaten with lawsuits in a letter addressed to the Romanian President, asking/demanding him not to endorse this law. My guess is they are Erste, Raiffeisen, Societe Generale (French) and either Alpha Bank (Greek) or UniCredit.
One IMF Director met one week ago with the Romanian President but agenda was not disclosed – guess what…

Pressure and lobby is huge. If this law is promoulged, banks are quite in shit, cause the estimated no of families who’ll give back homes to banks is 30 -100 000.
If not, President’s career and image goes in the toilet – so it comes political instability and next year are scheduled local and general elections.
Best Regards,
AI

REPLY: The crisis throughout Eastern Europe has been selling mortgages in Swiss francs without disclosing the currency risk. This law, passed by the Romanian Parliament, is actually fair. The banks would have to take back the property and end the debt. That is how Caesar resolved the debt crisis, for then too the bankers would not accept property and would take the borrower’s children and sell them into slavery to pay off the debt.

Romania’s National Bank (BNR) has asked President Klaus Iohannis to send back to the Parliament the recently approved law, which defines making payment on a mortgage by allowing the mortgage debtors to hand back to banks the mortgaged assets to terminate the debt. The bankers want no risk and will screw the people every time. This law is fair as the banks sold mortgages without guidance.

The bankers are demanding that Parliament amend the bill based on a financial, legal, and ethical perspective to their benefit without acknowledging the issue. What is not understood here is that at the moment a loan is given, the bank values the property to be in balance with the value of money. When the value of money rises (DEFLATION) then assets decline. The same amount of money might even buy two houses. This is an economic gain for the lender and a loss for the debtor.

The bankers warn that this will affect even local banks’ financial stability. Local bankers say that the law violates the constitution and that it will bring them big losses and limit access to financing. The rumor is that Parliament will review the law and limit it to loans under €250,000, according to political sources.

This is the paradox of the business cycle. It needs to be examined and understood for this has often resulted in civil unrest and revolution.

Those in power never understand markets. They are very myopic in their view of the world. The assumption that lowering interest rates will “stimulate” the economy has NEVER worked, not even once. Nevertheless, they assume they can manipulate society in the Marxist-Keynesian ideal world, but what if they are wrong?

By lowering interest rates, they ASSUME they will encourage people to borrow and thus expand the economy. They fail to comprehend that people will borrow only when they BELIEVE there is an opportunity to make money. Additionally, they told people to save for their retirement. Now they want to punish them for doing so by imposing negative interest rates (tax on money) to savings. They do not understand that lowering interest rates, when there is no confidence in the future anyhow, will not encourage people to start businesses and expand the economy. It wipes out the income of savers and then the only way to make and preserve money becomes ASSET investment, as in the stock market — not creating business startups.

So lowering interest rates is DEFLATIONARY, not inflationary, for it reduces disposable income. This is particularly true for the elderly who are forced back to work to compete for jobs, which increases youth unemployment.

Since the only way to make money has become ASSET INFLATION, they must withdraw money from banks and buy stocks. Now, they are in the hated class of the “rich” who are seen as the 1% because they are making money when the wage earner loses money as taxation rises and the economy declines. As taxes rise, machines are replacing workers and shrinking the job market, which only fuels more deflation. Then you have people like Hillary who say they will DOUBLE the minimum wage, which will cause companies to replace even more jobs with machines.

Democrats, in particular, are really Marxists. They ignore Keynes who also pointed out that lowering taxes would stimulate the economy. Keynes, in all fairness, did not advocate deficit spending year after year nor never paying off the national debt. Keynes wrote regarding taxes:

“Nor should the argument seem strange that taxation may be so high as to defeat its object, and that, given sufficient time to gather the fruits, a reduction of taxation will run a better chance, than an increase, of balancing the budget.”

Keynes obviously wanted to make it clear that the tax policy should be guided to the right level as to not discourage income. Keynes believed that government should strive to maximize income and therefore revenues. Nevertheless, Democrats demonized that as “trickle-down economics.”

Keynes explained further:

“For to take the opposite view today is to resemble a manufacturer who, running at a loss, decides to raise his price, and when his declining sales increase the loss, wrapping himself in the rectitude of plain arithmetic, decides that prudence requires him to raise the price still more–and who, when at last his account is balanced with nought on both sides, is still found righteously declaring that it would have been the act of a gambler to reduce the price when you were already making a loss.

This is the logic employed by those in power. They are raising taxes and destroying the economy; when revenues decline, they raise taxes further. The evidence that politicians are incompetent of managing the economy is simply illustrated here. Now, we have Hillary claiming that she will raise taxes on corporations, but that will reduce jobs for she will only attack small businesses and never the big entities and banks who fund her campaign.

So when it comes to sanity on interest rates or taxes, we really need to throw out of office anyone who is a professional career politician before they wipe out everything. The balance sheet is, as Keynes said, “ZERO on both sides.”