Elizabeth Warren’s Wealth Tax is now moving forward in the leftmost Democratic States – California, Connecticut, Hawaii, Illinois, Maryland, New York, and Washington state. Naturally, Pennsylvania, Delaware, and New Jersey are paying very close attention as they lick their lips at the thought of untold billions in new revenue to cover faltering government employee pension plans caused by artificially low interest rates. Even federally, the US has bumped its head on the debt ceiling. Without question, the ceiling will have to be raised again but with a lot of pomp and circumstance and perhaps a few fistfights on the floor. Yet the primary dealers cannot handle all the debt pouring out and there is a declining appetite for anything long-term as the Bide Administration wages direct proxy war against Russia until the last Ukrainian falls on the battlefield and NATO troops then revenge their deaths.
Socialism is collapsing and governments will fight to their last breath until the politicians are dragged out and hung on the streets as is typical in such cases of economic malfeasance. What is emerging at the state level is simply versions of Warren’s Wealth Tax which will be applied to WORLDWIDE assets. The hated rich policies, who have provided all the jobs over the centuries by creating industries, are to be stripped mined.
SELL YOUR HOUSE WHILE YOU STILL CAN AND MIGRATE NOW!
Once these Wealth Taxes enter the game in 2024, that will be the peak of the ECM and only a braindead person would want to buy your house in those states! The Year 2024 will be the Decline and Fall and you better pay heed to what is unfolding on this level. The Wealth Tax will be a permanent property tax you will pay even when you are losing money. It will NOT recognize a decline in the value of assets until they are sold.
COMMENT: The Fed….why would anyone put a greedy fox in charge of the hen house. Mr. Armstrong, you, of all people have more than a passing acquaintance with the corruption of the big banks. And these are the kindly gentlemen that have been appointed to “guide” monetary policy for our greater good. Simply don’t understand why you continue to extend respect & credibility, to a gang of thieves.
HS
REPLY: There is a HUGE difference between the New York Bankers and the Federal Reserve. In fact, I am in favor of barring CEOs from Goldman Sachs to head the Fed, Treasury, or any government agency. The Fed has its own agenda and it is not to flood the economy with money for Biden. Powell has said the Fed will not be into the climate change business which is the opposite of ECM and Christine Lagarde, who is a politician, and why the ECB cannot survive. The Feb may have bankers, but their self-interest is against that of the politicians. Additionally, do not paint all the bankers with the same brush as Goldman Sacks which I agree is a giant squid and I believe is a major threat to the world economy.
The Fed was originally intended to be a private bailout entity to replace J.P. Morgan and what he did during the Panic of 1907. Stimulation occurred through buying corporate paper – not government!
The Fed would expand the money supply during periods of economic decline and it would contract the money supply as the corporate paper was repaid. There was no such authority to perpetually create money at will on some covert perpetual basis. A banking crisis, as we have now in Europe, occurs when banks cannot meet the demand for withdrawals because they lent the money long-term. They would have to sell their portfolios at discounts to raise cash to meet the demands of depositors. Elasticmoney would meet the demands of depositors without having to liquidate the portfolios.
Elastic money was not some evil conspiracy. It was to keep money flowing when banks were contracting. Keep in mind there were also limitations on banks to regions. The Clintons removed all restraints and allowed interstate banking which siphons money from local regions and deploys it someplace else. If we returned the central bank to performing its original function, then the economy would be much more stable. Our problem is we live in a political economy where politicians just cannot keep their fingers out of everyone’s pockets.
There have been such shortages of cash even during Fed expansion policies because people will hoard their cash in times of economic uncertainty. This is why there are still hoards of Roman coins discovered. Human nature has not changed. During the Great Depression, over 200 cities issued their own money because there was such a shortage commerce could not continue.
We have exchanges even issuing Depression scrip backed by the financial markets. There just was not enough money to facilitate the economy. That is why the Federal Reserve has the authority to create money – not the treasury. We even have the first appearance of such private money that took place in 1815 thanks to the War of 1812, but then to the eruption of Mount Tambora which resulted in the Year without a Summer – 1816.
Here is a private note from 1837 due to the Panic and the resulting shortage of money then as well. The entire ability of the Fed to have the power of elastic money was to be able to create money is times of distress. People have focused on the Fed’s balance sheet and spun all sorts of conspiracy theories. What they do not address is what I was warning the Fed about buying in the 30-year bonds was NOT increasing the domestic money supply because the sellers were mainly China. The money was going outside the USA. This confusion led to others claiming MMT is now the economic theory because increasing the money supply failed to produce inflation. Once again, these ideas were entirely based on a domestic fish bowl economic model. We live in a globalized economy and the expansion of the money supply has no real bearing on anything because those theories assumed the money remains domestically – which has not been the case.
When WWI came, Congress ordered the Fed to buy government paper; not corporate. They never returned it to its original design. When Great Depression came, Congress at the direction of FDR usurped all branches and established a single national interest rate and the board was to be appointed by the President. They ordered the Fed to support U.S. debt at par during WWII to prevent interest rates from rising.
As World War II approached, politics took control of the Fed. Once again the Fed was ordered to support US government bonds at par. This decree was not lifted until 1951. The Fed remained fairly independent thereafter until the Vietnam War. Politicians viewed its authority to increase the money supply on an elastic basis as meant that inflation was their problem, not Congress’. Politicians began to spend whatever they wanted to win elections and criticized the Fed if inflation appeared when they had no control over the fiscal spending of Congress.
The is independent and it has been at war with Congress before. The elastic money power is necessary because the Fed has expanded and then contracted the money supply. I would stress that the Fed returns to its original design and it should buy ONLY private paper – not government. The Fed is stimulating the government under the orders from WWI to buy government paper. It should no longer buy government paper – PERIOD!
QUESTION: Mr. Armstrong, Your reputation precedes you. They call you the legend because you have been the only analyst who forecasts events years in advance. Throughout the rise and fall the stock market, you called for only 2 year correction from 2000 and 2008 and the market would remain in a bullish trend. I read that Barrows piece on you where it seemed they laughed at your forecast I think in 2010 when you said the market would rally and make new highs. You did the same in 1987. My question is, do you have a particular indicator that allows you to see the long-term like that in the stock market?
PE
ANSWER: This is why I stress that to be a successful trader, you have to conquer your emotions. I was always institutional. Our reports were too expensive for the retail world for they use to go out over telex, which would cost $75 alone per transmission back then. That is why we opened offices around the world to reduce delivery costs. We would send one transmission to that office and they would redistribute it to the clients in that region. We are gathering all our old forecasts that were in storage and will try to assemble them on annual basis for reference.
When FAX became common, we moved to that delivery system and that brought the costs down dramatically. Today, it is email and that is all free. So that is why we became the largest institutional adviser. However, because our clients were institutional, we had to specialize in reliable long-term forecasting. Day traders were not our focus.
We developed our Extreme Long-term trend indicator. This has successfully calculated that these corrections where everyone calls will be the next Depression were only short-term corrections. The calculations are extensive, but this indicator has been used by our Institutional Clients to provide underlying confidence in what is REALLY unfolding in the markets on a broader basis.
These are the charts I was showing at our institutional sessions around the world going into 1985. This indicator was starting to take off on the Quarterly level in 1982. It was fully outright bullish in 1984 on the Yearly Level one year before the ECM turned in 1985. This is why I ended up advising a few of the takeover players back then who they ended up making the movie Wall Street about with Michael Douglas and his famous speech on greed. What the movie did not explain was that the book value declined so much that we could buy companies, sell their assets, and double or even triple our money. I was warned that we were entering a takeover boom.
We took out the back cover of the Economist in July 1985 to forecast that the deflation was ending and a new Private Wave was beginning that would eventually peak in 2032.
The ECM even picked the high in the interest rates at the Fed. Our long-term forecasts have been amazing. They even impressed me. As I said at the last WEC, nobody has tried to defeat these models more than me. True, I do not like their project into 2032. But that is my personal opinion which is not something clients rely on. We all know that the forecasts can only come from Socrates. These indicators have been reliable and you cannot forecast the future from a personal gut feeling.
Your point about foreign money buying US assets and then adding back money to domestic circulation is quite profound. The inflows from Asia, the Middle East, and Europe are enormous. These monies had to come from somewhere. They were a result of globalization, accumulating dollar assets offshore, or having to convert their currencies into US dollar assets. This was never taught in any of my economics, trade, or finance classes back in the 1970’s. Then, the US economy was still a manufacturing-based one and the concept of money taught then was still the Fed and how it conducted OPEN MARKET OPERATIONS. Today, the Fed competes with so many forces it can’t possibly do the job it was designed to do, which was to make the money supply elastic across the US…forget about international money flows, which today are so large, their vast team of financial experts can’t possibly measure much less track them.
The money supply and what is taught in schools are the problem. They have these terms for it: M1, M2, and M3…when in fact in a debt-based economy, money is debt, not paper. What gives it utility is the ability to facilitate exchange, But at its core, the key is confidence in the country that issues it and the citizens who produce the wealth that backs it. The politicians in the US have worked to destroy the currency by consistently abusing it, by spending money without limit, and by convincing people, there is no cost in doing so as long as the US fights every war and defends open markets.
I agree with you that the US dollar will be the last man standing. Because every other country’s currency is simply inferior and the countries that issue it don’t produce enough wealth to consistently make it competitive in world markets.
MS
REPLY: I know. People want to argue with me based on what they read in school or what the press reports. I have been taught by my clients. Being called in to solve problems around the world, I have been fortunate to see how capital really moves. I have met with many central banks, and the IMF, testify before Congress on these subjects, and even attended an OPEC meeting and was called into China for the Asian Currency Crisis. I have been called in by heads of state and summoned by Presidential Commission investigating Crashes. I was even asked if I would teach at one of the most prestigious universities in the world and when I asked why I was told that they “know what they teach doesn’t work.”
Our major clients know this. It takes perhaps someone with experience like you to grasp the reality of the world economy and how it truly functions. We are plagued by Marxist ideas for every economist then thinks that their job is to manipulate society to create the perfect world. Here is Larry Summers saying you cannot predict the economy and if you could, then everyone would follow it and make it so. This is the problem with academics. It is all theory and no real-world experience. This is why they have accused me of manipulating the world because if the forecast is correct, then it’s because I influenced it with our clients. That is why the bankers told the CFTC I had to be silenced. They wanted to manipulate the world, and when they lost, it was always my fault.
QUESTION #1: Marty, Thanks for your interesting post about gold and China. Which do you think will perform better this year, gold or the dollar? Thank you.
DM
QUESTION #2: Marty, obviously the motive behind China buying gold is critical. I tried to explain that to a goldbug. It went in one ear and out the other. Russia and China have separate motives from the rest of the world. Correct?
Lee
ANSWER: Absolutely. Only a goldbug thinks motives are irrelevant as long as gold rises. Short-covering is not buying buy squaring off positions. Then you have retail buying and institutional buying. I was helping the Japanese circumvent the US trade sanction threats by purchasing gold on COMEX and then selling it back in London. It did not matter what you bought. The trade statistics only measure money flows – not goods. So, I was using gold to reduce the trade surplus of Japan buying gold in NYC (as it it was a product) and shipping it out to London. The buying was irrelevant to the trend. Just because someone buys gold does not make them bullish at all.
What you need to understand is that China is not buying gold because they are bullish on gold. They cannot hold US or EU debt and therefore you will continue to see them liquidating Western sovereign assets. That will not be the case for others inside the West. They will remain holding debt that pays interest where gold does not. Those who have been brainwashed about fiat and gold and inflation are so entrenched in their thinking, they will never see that the difference in motive has nothing to do with gold at all, but geopolitical events as we head into 2032. So they keep looking at balance sheets at the Fed and inflation and miss the real trend altogether.
We have private interests that do NOT have the same motives as China or Russia. Those are high net-worth individuals and institutions who will prefer the more liquid assets of equities and short-term debt like T-Bills. We have NOT reached the point where there is a total collapse in the faith of the dollar or the US government as of yet. Keep in mind that 50% of Americans still believe in Biden somehow and are consumed with their hate of Trump which prevents them from seeing the real trend.
Society is being so dumbed-down by the media that we are sleepwalking into WWIII and cheering it at the same time. They think war is a video game. We bomb and kill people elsewhere and it never affects us at home.
The dollar is not finished. It is the most hated currency perhaps in history. But that is also because people have been manipulated into thinking that money is fiat and keep preaching the days of returning to some sort of gold standard. The problem with that theory is it demands fiscal responsibility and you will NEVER sell that idea to politicians. They cannot survive without bribing people for votes. That means they MUST end Democracy and that is the main objective of Schwab and the WEF.
The backing of the dollar has NOTHING to do with commodities. If that were the case, Japan and Germany should never have risen to the top tier in the world economy. I am NOT an academic. I have worked on every continent and actually visited more central banks than probably any analyst ever. What I have seen is how things work, not theory. That is why some people hate my guts. The TRUE wealth of every nation is its people and their productive ability. The more leftist the government, the worse the economic growth and the lower the standard of living. That is the power behind the dollar and it has NOTHING to do even with the quantity because 70% of paper dollars reside outside the USA.
Remember the Money Plane. Skids of $100 bills were being sent to Russia every week to satisfy the demand. When the new $100 bill took place, anyone flying internationally saw videos on planes telling them that the old $100 bills were still valid and were NOT canceled as they do in Europe.
Perhaps by 2028, you will see the dollar fade away into the sunset. But for now! These insane world leaders are pushing for war. Sweden has just announced a military draft. Europe is not going to survive this one.
QUESTION: I find it fascinating how you bring much more detail to life in your work. I have read your latest book Plot to Seize Russia. I knew many of those events took place but never the background. What an excellent job. You have to get this out in paperback for the world to see.
My question is about hoards of ancient coins. What was the biggest hoard ever discovered?
PH
REPLY: The First Edition is sold out. We are rushing the Second Edition to our publisher and it will be on a less expensive paper to try to bring down the cost. It will then be available on Amazon and Barnes and Noble, etc. Probably the most famous was the Boscorelli Hoard.
The biggest hoard of Roman gold coins ever discovered was the Hoxne Hoard is the largest cache of late Roman gold found anywhere in the Roman Empire. It was discovered by a metal detectorist in Hoxne in Suffolk, England, in the east of England in 1992 containing 14,865 late-4th and early-5th century AD Roman gold, silver, and bronze coins. There were also 200 items of silver tableware and gold jewelry items. The hoard amounts to a total of 7.7lb of gold and 52.4 lb of silver. He reported his discovery immediately and the cache was professionally excavated by archaeologists and conserved soon afterward so the vital context of the objects and their condition were preserved. The coins were the source to date the hoard to the early 5th century AD in the aftermath of the end of the Roman occupation of Britain. Hence, the political chaos inspired the owner to stash his fortunes. Obviously, he did not survive.
Perhaps one of the most famous discoveries from Pompeii is known as the Boscoreale Treasure. This discovery came to light in 1895, when the treasure was uncovered among volcanic ash from the eruption of Mount Vesuvius on August 24, 79 AD. In 1895, excavations at a Roman villa at Boscoreale on the slopes of Vesuvius unearthed a remarkable hoard of coins, 109 items of silverware, and over 1,000 gold aurei, the latest of which dates to 78 AD with many pieces dating back decades prior, such as the gold aureus of Nero (54-68 AD). The villa that held the coins lay undisturbed until 1876, yet the coin hoard lay undiscovered for almost another 30 years. The original owner hid the treasure in a wine tank prior to the eruption, so it was not immediately discovered.
Unfortunately, there was never a formal study of the Boscoreale coins prior to being dispersed into the market. Consequently, we do not know the full extent of the find. Nevertheless, the coins are easily identifiable for a distinctive feature of this hoard from Boscoreale is their deep red toning, and the term “Boscoreale” is now used in auction catalogs to describe similar discoloration on any Roman gold. The coinage of Boscoreale does tend to be well preserved.
The Boscoreale treasure included a remarkable set of tableware reflecting the quality of Roman silverwork in the 1st century AD. The decoration on these two cups illustrates a most curious theme. There are Epicurean maxims (engraved in dots) and the skeletons of poets and Greek philosophers, representing an invitation to enjoy the present for death comes to us all.
These two silver cups pictured here, are famous for their strange decoration. A Latin inscription on the base of one of the cups gives their weight and the name of their owner, Gavia.
The ring of skeletons depicted on these two cups has similar and complementary decorations depicting tragic and comic poets, as well as famous Greek philosophers, beneath a garland of roses. Greek inscriptions engraved in dots form captions and are accompanied by Epicurean maxims such as, “Enjoy life while you can, for tomorrow is uncertain.” Clotho, one of the Fates, looks on as Menander, Euripides, Archilochus, Monimus the Cynic, Demetrius of Phalera, Sophocles, and Moschion provide a caustic and ironic illustration of the fragility and vanity of the human condition. But the main message of the cups’ decoration is that life should be enjoyed to the fullest. Zeno and Epicurus, the founders of the Stoic and Epicurean philosophies in the 4th century BC, confront each other before two mating dogs — a detail of some significance, as it represents the triumph of Epicureanism.
Silver and gold coins from ancient times have survived, as well as bronze. Silver can be affected by the sea and at times when it is debased. Bronze requires certain conditions to survive in good form. So if you intend to bury your gold and silver in the backyard, keep in mind that humanity has been doing this in times of trouble since before recorded history.
Sometimes you need to look behind the curtain before you understand the real trend. It is true that Federal Reserve officials are committed to fighting inflation and expect higher interest rates to remain in place until more progress is made, according to minutes released from the central bank’s December meeting. Also what has been reported is that at that meeting, policymakers expressed the importance of keeping the restrictive policy in place while inflation holds unacceptably high.
Now let’s look behind the curtail for just a peek. War ALWAYS impacts interest rates and they traditionally rise in periods of such conflict. After Europe kept rates NEGATIVE from 2014, that means every bond they sold for 8 years is now losing money. This was the bond crisis in London and then you had Janet Yellen come out and revealed the real silent worry.
Yellen came out and proposed that the Treasury buy in long-term debt and swap it for short-term. Some were out there claiming the Treasury was competing with the Fed as a second central bank. That just illustrated how much they do not understand what is going on or even how the monetary system works. The proposal was NOT another QE. The Treasury cannot create money as can the Fed. She was talking about a SWAP because the long-term debt is in crisis mode with the coming war. Smart players want to swap long-term for the short-term.
China has been dumping bonds since late 2021 as Biden has been claiming the US will defend Taiwan. I can confirm that under EVERY possible military play, the US will lose. I have reported this before. The US cannot defeat China – PERIOD! With China now selling off US debt and shifting to gold, they are seeking to insulate themselves from any Western currency since Biden violated every international law to impose sanctions on Russia. China elected Xi Jinping because Pelosi when to Taiwan just before the election confirming that we are headed to war.
Against this backdrop, the Fed CANNOT lower interest rates. This is NOT 100% about inflation anymore. The Fed realizes that the Biden Administration is determined to create World War III. As we are heading into a war they must adopt a war posture as well. Hence, interest rates will remain firm because not just inflation driven by shortages, but by the fact that the long-term liquidation continues, and lowering interest rates would now cause a capital crisis when staring war in the eyes.
The goldbugs are cheering that there has been a central bank buying of gold. They think somehow that this is because they are bullish on gold. What seems to be going over their heads is what I warned before – when China starts to sell US debt, war is coming. I have made it very clear that the precursor to war is always capital flows. That will be on steroids this year.
My clients taught me how capital and war move. At conferences, I stated that we were advising the Universal Bank of Lebanon. They found a ledger in the basement where someone wrote down the price of the Lebanese pound every day into the 19th century. They asked if we could build a model. I said sure! Here is a chart from back then. Our model warned that their currency would drop dramatically in 8 days. I thought there was something wrong with the data. Needless to say, I formed the client what the computer said and I commented that something had to be wrong. Very calmly, they asked what currency would be best. I said the Swiss franc. 8 days later the civil war began. The computer was correct. Then the same thing happened with the Iraq-Iran war.
By 1998, I understood the model’s ability to forecast war. I have never created a model to do that. It figured it out all on its lonesome. I stood up in June 1998 in our London WEC and warned that Russia would collapse in about 30 days. The London Financial Times reported that forecast and that became the collapse of the Russian debt market and Long-Term Capital Management debacle.
I have warned that if China was preparing to invade Taiwan, then they would start to sell off all US government debt. They would not risk owning US government bonds and watch Biden freeze it all and then claim it will be used to rebuild Taiwan as they are doing to Russia. So China began selling off US debt at the end of 2021. They have been buying gold because they cannot hold US or EU debt in time of war. It is as simple as that. The gold is simply neutrality, for it also does not pay interest. – So much for the inflation nonsense.
I have created this site to help people have fun in the kitchen. I write about enjoying life both in and out of my kitchen. Life is short! Make the most of it and enjoy!
This is a library of News Events not reported by the Main Stream Media documenting & connecting the dots on How the Obama Marxist Liberal agenda is destroying America
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