Tag Archives: Hunt for Taxes

Jul 21 2017

Spain & the Rise & Fall of Empires, Nations, City States & Feudalism


Armstrong Economics Blog/Understanding Cycles

Re-Posted Jul 21, 2017 by Martin Armstrong

QUESTION: Mr. Armstrong; I suppose when you said that the marriage of Isabella and Ferdinand the the final stage of unifying Spain rather than the beginning. Correct?

ANSWER: Yes. The idea of a nation state began to emerge in Europe during the 10th century. This is reflected even in the coinage which to a large extent move from feudal to city state and then finally into nation states.

For example, the nation state concept was taking place in Scandinavia and in England before it really emerged in France and Spain. The first king in England to become dominant was Alfred the Great (871-899). Yet he was still really just the king of Wessex. In the early 10th century the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms, united by Æthelstan (927–939), but then England was conquered and became part of the North Sea Empire of Cnut the Great, a personal union between England, Denmark and Norway.

The Norman conquest of England in 1066 led to the transfer of the English capital city and chief royal residence from the Anglo-Saxon one at Winchester to Westminster, and the City of London was established as England’s largest and principal commercial centre. This was the beginning of England as a nation state.

During the 13th century, Aragon controlled Barcelona before there was a nation state. In the case of Spain, Ferdinand I was the first Castilian monarchs whose reign began in 1037. The list of separate regions and kingdoms of Spain were

Kings of the Visigoths
Kings of Asturias
Kings of Navarre
Kings of León
Kings of Galicia
Kings of Aragon
Kings of Castile

You must understand that we moved from Provinces under the Roman Empire, to feudalism, then city states, and then back to nation states. There is a cycle to everything.

Jul 21 2017

Bankers Get Their Criminal Convictions Overturned


Armstrong Economics Blog/Corruption

Re-Posted Jul 21, 2017 by Martin Armstrong

The Second Circuit Federal Court of Appeals overturned the convictions of two former Rabobank traders in the LIBOR London interbank market manipulation scandal saying the men’s Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination had been violated. Former Rabobank traders Anthony Conti and Anthony Allen, was sentenced to a year and a day in prison by Judge Rakoff who said that he was “mystified” that prosecutors only went after institutions since punishing individuals has a deterrent effect on others in a profession.

Nevertheless, the three-judge panel of the Second Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals in New York dismissed the charges against the two former Rabobank traders who were convicted on conspiracy and wire-fraud charges in November 2015. In a unanimous 81-page ruling, the Second Circuit Judge Jose Cabranes wrote that the two men’s convictions were tainted because a witness against them had been aware of testimony authorities in the U.K. had forced them to provide.

Clearly, this was an excuse since what happens outside the USA is usually considered different since it is the law where the act takes place that determines its legality. Applying the 5th Amendment suddenly applied was not equal protection of the law so it obviously was necessary to protect the New York Bankers personally from any prosecution. The Court of Appeals wrote it was “not harmless beyond a reasonable doubt.”

The ruling is obviously to prevent prosecutions of bankers in New York on a personal level. Judge Rakoff’s observation that he was “mystified” that prosecutors only went after institutions rather than individuals has proven not to be a deterrent to unethical practices in New York, in which he hit the nail squarely on the head.

More than a dozen major banks allegedly rigged Libor to benefit themselves and have paid billions of dollars in fines and settlements. But these manipulations are not changing the trend, it is moving the market within a trend to clip people by electing stops. In this case, Rabobank agreed in 2013 to pay more than $1 billion in settlements to U.S., U.K. and Dutch authorities, including a $325 million settlement with the U.S. Justice Department. Individuals do not have these types of fines that the government can enrich itself. So the fines grow ever bigger and the individuals walk. If individuals are prosecuted, then the fines will decline and the banks can claim they were “rogue” traders to escape big fines.

The Second Circuit had to overturn these criminal prosecutions to maintain the policy of too-big-to-ja

Jul 20 2017

OMB Director Mick Mulvaney Discusses ObamaCare, CBO, Tax Reform and MAGAnomics…


Re-Posted from The Conservative Tree House on July 20, 2017 by

Short interview with Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Director Mick Mulvaney discussing ObamaCare and the potential for Tax Reform.  Unfortunately, one of the key budgetary issues with the failure of ObamaCare reform is the downstream effect on any middle-class tax reform.

Within ObamaCare’s current -mostly political- structure, the expansive growth of Medicaid means tax-paying workers will pay more for insurance premiums and will also be held captive to the need for additional revenue to pay for medicaid; a double whammy.

The increasing taxpayer costs to keep big government ObamaCare operational, for non-taxpaying medicaid recipients, means the middle-class is once again sacrificed at the altar of the Big Club.

American workers on the individual market will not only see increased insurance rates, but their income tax rates will also be higher as the need to subsidize the lower-income non-working group (medicaid) remains.

Jul 20 2017

Judiciary Committee Unanimously Approves Christopher Wray’s FBI Nomination…


Re-Posted from The Conservative Tree House on July 20, 2017 by

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee on Thursday unanimously approved the nomination of Christopher Wray to be FBI director following the dismissal of the agency’s former chief, James Comey, by President Donald Trump.

All 20 members of the committee voted to approve Wray, a white-collar crime lawyer and former assistant attorney general under President George W. Bush, sending his nomination to the full Senate for a vote. (read more)

Jul 20 2017

Suspicions Confirmed: Murdoch Told Ailes To Tilt Coverage Toward Anyone But Trump, Even Clinton…


Re-Posted from The Conservative Tree House on July 20, 2017 by

A recent article written by Roger Ailes confidant Michael Wolff affirms one of the more transparently obvious hidden secrets in the 2015/2016 presidential race and election.

Fox News owner/mogul Rupert Murdoch was intensely against the candidacy of Donald Trump. So much so that Murdoch instructed former President of Fox News, Roger Ailes, to shape favorable coverage toward anyone other than Donald Trump, including a request to tilt toward support for Hillary Clinton.

New York – […] It was Ailes’ tacit support of Trump that, in part, made his removal from Fox all the more urgent for the Murdochs. And it was not just the liberal sons who were agitated by Ailes’ regard for Trump, but also the father, whose tabloid, the New York Post, helped create Trump, but who found him now, with great snobbery, not of “our” conservative class. (“When is Donald Trump going to stop embarrassing his friends, let alone the whole country?” Murdoch senior tweeted the day after Trump officially declared himself a candidate.)

Murdoch instructed Ailes to tilt to anyone but Trump, Ailes confided to me before he was fired, even Hillary. (Ailes, for his part, characterized Murdoch’s periodic efforts at interference as similar to Nixon’s instructions to bomb this or that country — best ignored.)

After the election, a confounded Murdoch had to call on his ex-wife Wendi’s friends, Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner, to broker a rapprochement with the disreputable Donald. Now, to Trump’s great satisfaction, a humbled Murdoch is a constant caller. (read more)

All intellectually honest media and political observers already knew this was the basic premise for Fox News in the 2015 and 2016 presidential race.   Murdoch supported Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio as the frontrunners.

The August 2015 ambush by Murdoch’s princess Megyn Kelly was merely a highly visible example of Murdoch’s aversion. Kelly was later paid $10 million by Harper Collins, another Murdoch company, as advance payment on her book deal.

After Jeb Bush dropped out, the executive in charge of Fox News debates was Bill Sammon. Sammon’s daughter, Brooke Sammon, was head of Marco Rubio’s communication team.  Murdoch was furious at Chris Christie when he took Rubio to the woodshed in the New Hampshire debate.

 

Jul 20 2017

Euro Rally


Armstrong Economics Blog/Euro €

Posted Jul 20, 2017 by Martin Armstrong

Once the Euro closed above the Weekly Bullish Reversal last week, we have rallied strongly simply on comments from Draghi that a strong Euro is good. It is hard to contemplate his reasoning since this increases the debt burden of Southern Europe and reduces German export competitiveness. His comments that changing police will come September. So we have the 99% bullish sentiment acting still in anticipation.

We have exceed the 2016 high of of 11616 intraday reaching 116574. The Quarterly Bullish Reversal stands at 11694 and this is the key area to watch. Exceeding that allows the rally to reach the Downtrend. With this middle target on our objective reached, technically we have an outside reversal to the upside which has cleaned out the stops. This is setting the stage for the Monetary Crisis that begins in 2018. The higher we move in one direction, the worse it swings in the opposite.

We times timed the Frankfurt seminar with this move as well as our meetings with institutions over the next two weeks.

Jul 20 2017

Mark Your Calendars: First Round of NAFTA Renegotiation August 16th – 20th…


Re-Posted from The Conservative Three House on July 20, 2017 by

If you alert your family not to schedule anything important on round-one NAFTA days, well, you might just be a trade and economics nerd.  LOL  Seriously, this is one of the biggest economic processes that falls almost exclusively outside of the reach of lobbyists.

And within this entire NAFTA trade construct there is little to zero downside to walking away. If Team Trump don’t get what they want from a completely reworked trilateral agreement, they can always just eliminate NAFTA and work on bilateral agreements with Mexico and Canada as individual trade partners. Team USA hold all the leverage.  

USTR is anticipating seven rounds of talks which will take place at three week intervals.

The first round is scheduled for August 16th through 20th in Washington DC.

Washington, D.C. – United States Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer today announced arrangements for the first round of negotiations for the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).

The first round of the negotiations between the United States, Canada and Mexico will take place in Washington, D.C. from August 16 – 20, 2017.

The negotiations immediately follows the 90-day consultation period with Congress and the public initiated on May 18, 2017. On that day, Ambassador Lighthizer notified Congress of President Trump’s intent to renegotiate NAFTA to get a better deal for America’s workers, farmers, businesses and manufacturers.

Ambassador Lighthizer also announced that John Melle, Assistant U.S. Trade Representative for the Western Hemisphere, will serve as Chief Negotiator for the NAFTA negotiations. In his role as Chief Negotiator, Melle will be responsible for the day-to-day negotiations at the staff level.

Since joining USTR in 1988, John Melle has held a number of positions covering Mexico, Canada, the Caribbean and Central America. As Assistant USTR for the Western Hemisphere, he is responsible for developing, coordinating and implementing the United States’ trade policy for the region.  (read more)

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Jul 19 2017

The Unconstitutionality of the Income Tax the Supreme Court Ignores


Armstrong Economics Blog/The Hunt for Taxes

Re-Posted Jul 19, 2017 by Martin Armstrong

QUESTION: I read that the income tax violates the Fifth Amendment against self-incrimination. It seems logical on the surface, but nobody has gotten away with that that I have ever heard. Would you can to comment of how they got around this issue?

ANSWER: The way to get around such issues is to be a word smith and break it down to the absolute minutest detail. That is what the Supreme Court did back in United States v. Sullivan, 274 US 259 (1927). They essentially avoided the application by saying that there was no right against self-incrimination to simply write things on a form to thus avoid filing anything. They did not decided whether you could raise the 5th Amendment as to a specific item. Let’s say you are a drug dealer and your income is all illegal. To declare that you made money as a drug dealer would raise that issue. But it does not prevent you from filing a form in general.

“If the form of return provided called for answers that the defendant was privileged from making he could have raised the objection in the return, but could not on that account refuse to make any return at all. We are not called on to decide what, if anything, he might have withheld. Most of the items warranted no complaint. It would be an extreme if not an extravagant application of the Fifth Amendment to say that it authorized a man to refuse to state the amount of his income because it had been made in crime. But if the defendant desired to test that or any other point he should have tested it in the return so that it could be passed upon. He could not draw a conjurer’s circle around the whole matter by his own declaration that to write any word upon the government blank would bring him into danger of the law”

I personally disagree with the Supreme Court which has held it does not violate the Equal Protection Clause to charge disproportionate levels of taxation. In a recent case where some people were given tax amnesty and others paid the tax, the Supreme Court used another rule to escape the logic of a constitutional violation. They wrote in Armour v. Indianapolis (2012):

“This Court has long held that ‘a classification neither involving fundamental rights nor proceeding along suspect lines … cannot run afoul of the Equal Protection Clause if there is a rational relationship between the disparity of treatment and some legitimate governmental purpose.’”

Class warfare is the essence of socialism/communism. There is no other discrimination throughout history that has resulted in the slaughter of more lives than class warfare. It has been responsible for killing tens of millions of people far more than race or religious discrimination. To ignore this is ethically dishonest by the Supreme Court and is clearly a ruling in favor of government because it seeks to extort money from people in violation of equal justice for all

Jul 19 2017

Italy Threatens to Blow Up the Refugee Crisis


Armstrong Economics Blog/Refugees

Re-Posted Jul 19, 2017 by Martin Armstrong

If you are against the refugees, many will call you a racist even though the refugees are not of a single race. The problem is they are economic migrants – not refugees from exclusively Syria, which the West can stop in a heartbeat. The crisis is economic. These people coming in are getting the benefits of unemployed workers without work and are breaking down an economic system at the worse possible moment.

Nicolas Sarkozy of France says immigrants should ‘speak French’ and attacks ‘medieval’ burkini revealing the culture clash. This influx is even starting to change fashion gradually. There is little assimilation, but the West is bending over backwards to accommodate them and in so doing is starting to change itself.

The crisis is economic. Italy cannot afford to pay for all these people benefits when the State is in serious economic trouble to begin with. They are now threatening a ‘nuclear option’ to migrant crisis by giving EU visas to 200,000 incomers and sending them north as the country struggles with the sheer cost of human warehousing.

Jul 19 2017

Judges Changing Transcripts in Federal Court Manhattan


Armstrong Economics Blog/Rule of Law

Re-Posted Jul 19, 2017 by Martin Armstrong

A lot of people have in inquiring about changing transcripts by judges in federal court in Manhattan. Some have reported it is taking place in other courts now. Corruption is consuming the Judiciary and we have no power to stop it. The rule of law has been so destroyed that those in the legal profession do not grasp what they are doing to the nation. Once you becomes biased and starting playing with court rules, documents, and evidence to win convictions and protect local industry, you have destroyed property rights. How can anyone do business in New York City with confidence that they can sue a bank and actually win? This is part of the decline and fall of the West. We are sealing our own fate with judicial corruption.

The proof that this was not just a typo was the fact that the Associated Press was thrown out that day in court. They walked right up to the bench and said “We are the Associated Press. You cannot throw us out of court.” The judge ordered the marshal to removed her. They then reported the fact that the court was closed and finished the article states there was a question if I could receive a fail trial in New York City. It was after that incident when the press flipped and were no longer being negative on me. The word spread quickly that something was rotten in NYC. That was extraordinary for the AP to even print. Despite submitting that as part of an appeal, the Second Circuit ignored the appeal and refused to even docket it.

I submitted an affidavit of all the changes Judge Owen made to the transcripts changing the words spoken in court. The courtroom was packed that day to watch what would happen when I confronted Judge Owen in public for his crime. He just admitted to changing my transcripts, denied he did anything material, refused to allow me to cross-examine him, and refused to step down. Again the Second Circuit refused to docket the appeal and once again denied Due Process of Law – the right to be even heard.

The Second Circuit Court of Appeals is by far just corrupt and is a disgrace to the dignity of the nation and all the people who died in war to defend our Constitution. They should stand trial for treason.