Tampa 1921

QUESTION: Marty, You said in Orlando last year you ran your models on where to locate in Florida and said a big one was due in 2017. Now with your target coming into play for the week of 9/11 and the storm about to hit your area, do you think this target of 9/11 pinpointed both?

ANSWER: It is an interesting coincidence if such things really exist. I suppose we will not know until this week is over. As far as the storm, yes I ran the models and the best area was the Tampa West Coast of Florida. It is not immune. When I grew up, my uncle lost his house on the beach in New Jersey twice during the 1960s. New Jersey is also not immune.

As far as Catagory 5 Hurricanes, as I explained this was the 32nd since 1924 and it should have been the biggest (Pi Cycle). They were forecasting it would run up the East Coast and avoid Cuba. Without using their weather models, cyclically Cuba should have been hit. Likewise, the hit should have been on the West Coast. I did not select Tampa because it is one of the lowest 5 lying cities at virtual water level and is prone to flooding during a flash summer rain storm. I think Tampa would get hit perhaps more so than St Petersburg with respect to flooding.

However, the last direct hit was the Tampa Bay hurricane of 1921 which was a Category 3 (111 mph to 130 mph) hurricane.  In 1921, the combined population of Pinellas, Hillsborough, Pasco, Hernando and Citrus counties was 135,000. Today, it is 2.7 million. The Tampa Bay hurricane of 1921 (also known as the 1921 Tarpon Springs hurricane) is the most recent major hurricane to strike the Tampa Bay Area.

Our office is not on the ground floor. My home is concrete and elevated up one floor. We will just have to see what happens. I agree, it is coming the same target week we had in markets and North Korea. I suppose this is a reflection on Murphy’s Law – whatever can go wrong will go wrong all at the same time.

Welcome to the reality of the Digital World and there are those in government who want to eliminate cash and force everyone into electronic deposits. Well the new data breach at credit bureau Equifax appears to have affected up to 143 million U.S. adults. On top of that, Equifax has been slow to deal with the issue. This is reminiscent of the real Insider Trading from the 1930s when directors realized the company was broke so they sold their stock before any announcement. Here we have the company’s chief financial officer and two other senior executives cashing in on almost $2 million of Equifax stock once they learned about the hack, according to Business Insider’s Mohammed Hadi and Bryan Logan.

The Equifax data breach may have really profound lasting effects . Because they may have access to your information on consumers’ credit reports, including their Social Security numbers, credit card numbers and driver’s license numbers, they could open credit accounts in consumers’ names. They then could file an income tax return and get a refund before you even file your taxes. The Federal Trade Commission warned consumers last Friday to file their taxes early — “as soon as you have the tax information you need, before a scammer can.”

The IRS doesn’t initiate any contact with taxpayers by email, text message or social-media channels requesting any information. If anyone is contacted, be very concerned and do not answer and questions or validate anything. Call an account ASAP.

There are a lot of people claiming that price gouging should be criminal. What they fail to take into consideration is that price gouging is the only way to really allocate resources. The critics will claim that this is people taking advantage of others. However, gasoline prices were fixed and what happened was that everyone ran out and filled their cars just to have it and really did not use it. Those who wanted to leave couldn’t because there was no gasoline. I myself could not buy gasoline. I had a quarter tank and it was enough to get me to the airport only. So many others could not leave and many who tried ran out of gas and were stranded.

Had gasoline prices been allowed to rise, then those who were just hoarding gasoline would have thought twice if they were not going to use it. The same was true with water. When I went to the store last Monday, people were buying everything. There were people with two carts filled with water.

The view that price gouging will deprive some who cannot afford it fail to actually leave the theories behind and go into the real world during one of these things to watch how people truly behave. Price gouging will prevent people from hoarding which then deprives others at any price.

QUESTION: Hello Martin,

QUESTION: Mr. Armstrong, I have been following you for all my adult life and that has exceeded 20 years by now and am shocked to say, I found your article on how things evolve GOLD-Oil-Dollar.  I must say this is a eye-opening evolution you are talking about. Has this always been the case with things changing coming into play and then vanishing?

ANSWER: Absolutely. I have written about how gold vanished from use with the Dark Age following the fall of Rome. Gold did not reappear in coinage for nearly 600 years. The first gold coin to reappear in Britain came during the 13th century issued by Henry III.

The Gold Cups of Mycenae

The same thing took place with the Dark Age in Greece. This is when the Mycenae ruled known as the Heroic Period of which Homer wrote. Scholars thought it was just fiction written by Homer until the ancient city of Troy was discovered. Troy VIIa appears to have been destroyed by war around 1184 BC. However, scholars did not believe the writings of Homer because Homer was born sometime between the 12th and 8th centuries BC. He remains famous for his work The Iliad and The Odyssey. So once again there is about 600 years separating the Heroic Age and the Hellenistic Age.

If we turn to Japan, here too we find that the emperor abused his power to issue money and once again we find money vanish for about 600 years. Each new emperor devalued all previously issued coinage to 10% of his new coinage. People simply refused to accept coins because they were devalued and were no a store of value.

Therefore, throughout economic history we always have long-term structural reform. Do not expect either gold or oil to always be a valuable component. If you go all the way back to a Dark Age, governments collapse as does money because civilization reverts back to a tribal state and then the only value becomes food once again.

Naturally, both the dollar will vanish and oil will ultimately be replaced. Hence, the concept of the “petro dollar” has little to do with the value of the dollar itself. As I have stated before, people who keep talking about oil and the dollar are living in the past. The USA is now a net exporter – not an importer. That has completely reversed from the 1970s and the OPEC embargo. OPEC is just not really relevant any more for they have been unable to manipulate the price of oil.

I have stated many times, we have a counter-trend rally against the dollar as to be expected going at least into the German elections, which could carry on into the first quarter 2018. Nevertheless, ONLY a rising dollar will break the world monetary system. A lower dollar will buy everyone a lot more time because most foreign borrowing is in dollars. When that happens, then we will see the Monetary Crisis Cycle revise once again what we call money. Nothing is ever permanent. Remember that!

QUESTION: Mr. Armstrong; You said at your Frankfurt the ECB policy of negative interest rates is actually creating a wider gap between the poor and the rich. Could you elaborate on that comment?

Thank you. Hop you come back to Frankfurt. You do realize that you get twice the crowds here than anyone.

OT

ANSWER: Lowering interest rates to negative was really brain-dead. The rich can move their move and export it to the USA. The poor, lack the sophistication and cannot export their labor no less their meager savings. The people who drive the economy have different roles. The rich provide the capital and create jobs. The middle class to poor are the people who form the foundation and it is their consumer spending that create the underlying economic growth. Attacking the rich always reduces investment and jobs, but lowering the interest rates to negative causes the rich to leave and the poor to middle class suffer lacking the sophistication export both their labor and savings.

The key message from President Mario Draghi’s press conference of the ECB was ro say he was getting ready to slow its QE stimulus, but he’s not in a rush.

Draghi tried to be as vague as possible, because he is trapped. He knows this cannot go on forever. He realizes that once he stops, the bond market crash and there is a risk that the Eurozone government are forced to pay real interest rates and that will blow out the entire EU budget system. Draghi does not know what to do. He confirmed that the governing council had begun ‘very preliminary’ talks about how the quantitative easing might be changed; how much longer it might run, and how much it might pump into the euro economy. He actually said:

“We will announce when we are ready. We think we are going to be ready for much of what we have to decide in October … if we are not then we postpone.”

This idea of lowering interest rates envisioned by Larry Summers, demonstrates that he knows absolutely nothing about economics. He has only read books and never rolled up his sleaves and had to work in the real world to be able to see what I am writing about. Why economic professors are ever allowed to play with the economy is beyond me. You would not ask someone to operate on your brain if they have never practiced surgery.

Nothing has yet changed. We are still 500 points away from the start of important resistance. Keep in mind that the ONLY way to break the bank of the monetary system will be a STRONG DOLLAR – not a weaker on. People far too often make a serious mistake and believe that a strong currency reflects a strong economy. Trump wants a lower dollar to reduce the trade deficit, increase sales of US products, and hence create more jobs.

Europe remains caught up in the postwar thinking when the higher the currency the more they were recovering from World War II. A rising Euro is deflationary – not inflationary. It reduces the price of imports from energy to manufactured goods and food.

The counter-trend rally should have been in play going into the German elections due September 24th, 2017. Keep in mind that the Monetary Crisis Cycle begins NEXT YEAR not now. We have the correction in the dollar and the potential pull back in the Dow in dollar terms.

When we look at the Dow in terms of Euros, the peak was the week of 02/27 and we have not yet reached out target to retest the key technical support. This just takes some patience, but we MUST suck everyone in on these counter-trend moves in order to set everything up for the slingshot in the opposite direction next year.