Tag Archives: May 7 2024

Feb 5 2020

Why Exaggerated Nonsense on Flu?


Armstrong Economics Blog/Disease

Re-Posted Feb 5, 2020 by Martin Armstrong

QUESTION: Mr. Armstrong; Why is there such an exaggerated response to this Coronavirus when the death toll is far less than the flu each year? Both the Swine and the Bird flu are far more dangerous. Do you have any take on why the conspiracy contingency just loves such doom & gloom?

HC

ANSWER: I do not know. The latest death toll in China has reached at least 490 people who have died out of 24,324 confirmed to be infected (about 2%). The 1918 flu pandemic, which lasted nearly two years, killed more than 500,000 Americans, historians estimate. The CDC estimates this year, 19,000,000 – 26,000,000 have been infected with the flu. They estimate 8,600,000 – 12,000,000 will seek flu medical visits of which 180,000 – 310,000 will be hospitalized and the death toll will be between 10,000 and 25,000. The number for just the normal flu season is far worse than this coronavirus. The Flu killed and hospitalized more people in the United States 2017/2018 winter than any seasonal influenza in decades since 1918. Some 80,000 people died in the United States alone.

If we assume that about 45% of those infected seek medical help using the standard flu numbers, then with 24,324 confirmed persons infected, that means there should be about 53,512 people infected so far. China has come down very hard trying to contain this outbreak. Chinese tourism has all but collapsed and we should see a very sharp decline in the economic output in China for the first quarter of 2020. They stopped flights to Hong Kong as well. China has been clamping down aggressively. We were planning a Shanghai WEC in May. The hotel is closed right now and so far it does not look good. The government has directed employees to remain home for 10 days. It looks like we will be doing Frankfurt and Orlando.

Nevertheless, while this may become a pandemic since it spreads like influenza each year, we still need to be concerned about the Bird Flu and Swine flu for if they cross to humans, the death toll will not be a mere 2%. Definitely, don’t eat any bat-burgers this year. Maybe beef is better this year. (I know the vegetarians will write in, I respect that. I have even tried the charcoal ice cream. I still like a good burger).

So why are people exaggerating this coronavirus? Good question! People have been feeling like the world is ending for thousands of years. Aethelred II took his portrait off the coinage for the year 1000 believing the world was coming to an end and Christ would make his second coming. When that did not happen, he promptly put his portrait back on the coinage.

 

Feb 3 2020

How Long Does it Take to Accept the Revelations of the Economic Confidence Model?


Armstrong Economics Blog/ECM

Re-Posted Feb 2, 2020 by Martin Armstrong

COMMENT: Marty, I have to respectfully disagree with the comment made by CR in the last blog, “The Dow & the Economic Confidence Model”. In the email he said, “Marty, I have to laugh. Only those who have followed you more 20 years understand you have discovered the hidden order behind the facade.” Not all of us that know have been around that long nor did it take us long to figure out.

I would say it would take one with their own mind, methods and models, and like you said someone willing to learn, that would be able to capture all of this and add what they already have to your model. There are those of us with a lot to bring to the game that haven’t been around that long but started to get it right away when we first started studying the model. I’m sure that was just a general statement focusing on themselves and their immediate group, but I found it inaccurate nonetheless.

Regardless, keep up the good work on your part.

EM

REPLY: I think what he really means is that I have had similar comments from people who have been followers only since 2012. What they have expressed is watching geopolitical events but this time the Dow peaked on the very day. Just comments distinguishing events from markets.

The Wave #932 saw so much from the precise day of the low in the US share market April 1st, 1994 to the high on July 20th, intermixed with the move in the dollar when it made its low in June 1997 and the Asian currency crisis hit in July. Of course, there was the Russian bond collapse which then set off a contagion that resulted in a massive liquidity crisis. Global markets were all collapsing because the “club” lost a fortune on Russia and their bribes being paid to the IMF to keep the loans going. When that manipulation failed, they had to start selling everything everywhere to raise cash even the collapse in the Japanese yen.

The peak not only marked the beginning of the Long-Term Capital Management Crisis forcing the Federal Reserve to step in for the first time to bail out a hedge fund but it marked the start of the Euro which was officially set on January 1st, 1999 and then at the bottom in 2002, that was the introduction of euro paper currency.

The Pi target marked precisely 911 which changed our world dramatically tp the day, and then 2002 was the bottom of the share market again. There are just so many events that take place with this model that it proves people who refuse to accept it are predetermined like those who refused to ever accept that the earth was not flat. All they do is try to disparage the messenger because they cannot explain why the message is wrong.

It takes some convincing, but not necessarily 20 years. I think what he meant was that after 20 years, they just expect it to work in this fashion.

 

Feb 2 2020

The Dow & the Economic Confidence Model


Armstrong Economics Blog/ECM

Re-Posted Feb 2, 2020 by Martin Armstrong

COMMENT: Marty, I have to laugh. Only those who have followed you more 20 years understand you have discovered the hidden order behind the facade. Fantastic call on this turn in the ECM. Once again to the very day in the Dow. And people do not think your model is real? They must be idiots who also worship Greta.

All the best

REPLY: I know. They cannot get their head around the fact that the Economic Confidence Model has pinpointed so many events in markets to geopolitical events to the very day. This proves BEYOND a shadow of a doubt that there is a hidden order behind the chaos.

Video Player
The 1987 Crash and the new highs into 1989 along with the Japanese Bubble may be the most famous forecasts I have done with this model. But there have been so many others which have worked to the precise day in markets like this one to within the same week generally regarding geopolitical events.

The 1998 forecast also landed me being named hedge fund manager of the year. I had sold the stock market the very day of the high on July 20th, 1998 and caught the ride down for the Long-Term Capital Management debacle.

The forecasts it made back in 1981 were also amazing. It was off 2 days for the peak in interest rates when the Federal Reserve raised the discount rate to 14% on May 5th when the model targeted May 7th. It picked on the Pi turning point the negotiations to hand Hong Kong back to China, then on August 21st, Japan agreed to join the G5 which became known as the Plaza Accord on August 21, 1985, when the target was Sunday, August 25th. We even took the back cover of the Economist Magazine for three weeks in July 1985 to announce that the bottom of the cycle of deflation was reached and that a new wave of inflation was about to begin.

While 1989.95 picked the peak in the Bubble Top in Japan, the precise day of the low in the stock market in the USA came on the bottom of that wave on April 1, 1994.

 

After that wave market the precise day of the high in the S&P500 on July 20th, 1998, the Pi turning point picked precisely the day of the 911 attack. Then the bottom of the wave was to be Sunday November 6th, 2002, and the market bottomed the next week.

The wave which peaked in 2007.15 picked the precise day of the high in the Schiller Real Estate Index. The Pi target marked the precise day Greece applied for the IMF loan beginning the whole European debt crisis.

The top of this wave 2015.75 marked the start of Merkel opening the gates to the European refugees which have been the downfall of Europe. It marked the very day that Russian troops entered Syria. We now have the temporary high in the US stock market at the bottom of this wave.

Sure, no matter what evidence I put forward, there will be people who refuse to believe anything. We need those type of people for that are what make the cycle work. We all also have our personal life-cycle where we grow in experience and knowledge. We begin life ignorant and those who are smart, actually learn from their mistakes. As we proceed through life, we change and adapt so in the early stages of life we buy the high and sell the low. Those of us who are actually intelligent and are capable of learning from our mistakes, mature and then we become the people who sell the high to the novice and buy when they panic and sell everything at the low.

The morons, incapable of ever learning the lessons of life, cry to government that they WOULD HAVE BEEN correct except for some devil who manipulated the market against them. What they are really doing is refusing to admit that they were wrong. That inability to learn the lessons of life keep them perpetually on the wrong side of the cycle. We need those fools. I choose not to be a fool and assume I can teach anyone. If you have the spark of curiosity, then you have the ability to learn and advance in life which is what this journey is all about – the quest for knowledge.

A professor from Princeton University once told me I reminded him of Einstein. I was shocked. I said I was not some genuine is physics. He explained to me that was not what he saw. He said it was my curiosity to try to figure out what made things function. It does not matter what the subject might be or the task. It is the curiosity that made one try to sail across the Atlantic when others feared the end of the world. It has been my curiosity which has driven me to try to understand how a business cycle can act so precisely throughout even ancient history. This has been the curiosity of my life I have tried to share with those who share my curiosity.

 

No, the mainstream press will not report this. It is not something the majority is yet willing to hea

Jan 28 2020

Discovering Cycles


Armstrong Economics Blog/Products and Services

Re-Posted Jan 28, 2020 by Martin Armstrong

QUESTION: Speaking of cycles and frequency I guess the question is how to find the exact beginning of a cycle? You say 8.6 is the base frequency. Why not 8.5875? In other words, how do you come up with the exact day a cycle begins?

A

ANSWER: You have to discover them. The 8.6 I discovered from a list of international panics covering 1683 to 1907 that I stumbled upon while doing research in the Firestone Library at Princeton University. There were 26 events within 224 years. That was 8.6153846… When I began to test it, I discovered it was interlaced with volatility, which moves on a different frequency of a base of 6. This is a very deep subject that cannot be addressed in a simple blog post.

 

I will release two books on this subject this year – “The Geometry of Time” and “The Economic Confidence Model.” I am working hard to get a series of books out now. Trying to finish up my goals. These will deal with the cyclical nature of time and the world we live in.

Categories: Products and Services, Understanding Cycles
Jan 28 2020

Are Climate Activists Displaying Patterns of Violence That Always Undermines Civilization?


Armstrong Economics Blog/Climate

Re-Posted Jan 28, 2020 by Martin Armstrong

COMMENT: Mr. Armstrong, I find it interesting how the entire climate crisis people are pushing so hard to seize everything and force zero CO2 which is impossible when a volcano or forest fire releases far more CO2 than driving cars around. Then they ignore the sun entirely when even NASA said we are headed into a cooling people.

 

REPLY: The press helped them to push this agenda because all they are interested in has been catchy headlines to sell advertising. There is no more truth in newsrooms anymore — it’s just not profitable. Yes, NASA warned we were heading into a cooling period back in 2018. Despite all of that, I get emails claiming I am wrong and they should shut down this blog. These are evil people who have always been a danger to any free society, for they seek to oppress and eventually kill anyone who disagrees with them. It never matters what the subject might be. This pattern of behavior ALWAYS historically leads to violence be it religion, economics (Marxism), or now climate. They just hate people and that’s the bottom line.

 

The subject matter seems to be irrelevant. They display the same pattern that has led to millions of deaths throughout history. The hatred they display is eerily similar to the rise of Communism during first the Revolutions of 1848 and then the early 20th century. This will lead to major bloodshed by 2036. The bottom of that cycle was 2005, which marked three important events.

 

  1. The IRA announced the end to armed conflict and gave up its weapons to independent weapons inspectors
  2. Israeli settlers were forced to leave settlements in the Gaza Strip as part of a peace settlement
  3. Syria withdrew the last of its 14,000 troop military garrison in Lebanon ending its 29-year military occupation

The peak of that cycle will be 3

Jan 27 2020

Seeing Cycles Everywhere Around Us


Armstrong Economics Blog/Understanding Cycles

Re-Posted Jan 27, 2020 by Martin Armstrong

 

For years, it has been a sort of family joke that I view the world around me and see the cycles in everything. I had walked into a casino and noticed there were cycles to the numbers coming out on a roulette wheel, but more fascinating was that the cycles were unique to each dealer. This is why casinos rotate the dealers from table to table. I notice this particular dealer was very cyclical one night so when the casino moved him, I closed and followed him to the next table. This was back around 1971, and I was winning a lot so people began watching me. Some very big player from Texas came and sat beside me and whatever I played he did too. We made so much money they closed the casino. Whenever I would walk into a casino and start to play roulette, within 30 minutes they came to me and asked my name and would always say we recognize you as a player. I would cash out and just leave.

Triple-Crown-odds

There was a family gathering and my daughter was always fond of horses. The talk was all about the Triple Crown. They said no one had won since 1978. I did the wave math in my head and replied that this year the horse will win. I do not even follow horses. They just looked at me and asked, “You can forecast that too?” I simply looked at the stats and saw the cycles. I said this is the year the horse will win – and American Pharaoh won. What did I see in the stats? The major turning point from 1978 should be 37.33 (8.6 * 4.3) bringing it to 2015. The horse won. I didn’t bet on the race. Like the scene in the movie the Matrix, I just see the cycles to everything around me.

Now there is Jason Padgett, who is 41, and he sees complex mathematical formulas everywhere he looks. He sees the geometry in everything. He said, “I see bits and pieces of the Pythagorean theorem everywhere.” He continued, “Every single little curve, every single spiral, every tree is part of that equation.” He hand draws what he sees and he is a college drop out but understands and sees the fractal nature of everything. As I have tried to explain, everything is connected and there is absolutely nothing void of a cycle. Even when something dies, there is a cycle to the decay as everything turns back to dust as they say.

Padgett can draw a visual representation of the formula pi, which is really an infinite number that begins with 3.14. He explains, “A fractal is a shape that when you take the shape a part into pieces, the pieces are the same or similar to the whole. So say I had 1,000 pictures of you, that were little and I put all those little pictures of you in the right spot to make the exact same picture of you, but bigger.” While Benoit Mandelbrot is credited with discovering Fractal Geometry, he was not someone who could see it in the real world all around him. He was a mathematician and his attempt to apply it to things was not very helpful.

I have tried to explain why cycles exist. Any time I have been wrong, it has simply been my interpretation of the cycle, not that there is no cycle. The reason you can find a cycle that works for a bit and then it suddenly vanishes has been because of the interconnections – not the fact that cycles do not work. For you see, the interconnections are what produce the major overwhelming events, which is why economists are always wrong and have been unable to forecast the future. The Great Depression of the 1930s was a conjunction of many cycles such as technology where the invention of the combustion engine reduced the need for workers in agriculture. Like the internet is replacing local book and camera stores, tractors reduced the agricultural workforce from 40% to 3% causing unemployment to rise. Add to that the Dust Bowl, the Sovereign Debt Crisis in 1931, and the excess capital inflows fleeing Europe, what you ended up with was a bubble economy like Japan into 1989, and then the dramatic decline. Such events and NEVER simply one cause. Nevertheless, every investigation into such events always attempts to reduce it to a single cause and effect which is impossible.

What is most fascinating about Padgett is that this remarkable gift appeared only after he was attacked and suffered some brain damage. Berit Brogaard, who was a neuroscientist at the Center for Neurodynamics at the University of Missouri-St. Louis flew Padgett to Finland to run a series of tests as to why he could suddenly see the fractal world around him. The results revealed that his brain showed the damage from the attack he suffered, but the brain rewired itself and was using particular areas that most people don’t have access to. Padgett had become an acquired savant, which means he was brilliant but in a specific area. His story is quite fascinating. He has acquired talent to see the fractal interconnections and suddenly was able to draw what he sees. Remarkable!

Jan 27 2020

Northwoods & Cycle of War


Armstrong Economics Blog/War

Re-Posted Jan 27, 2020 by Martin Armstrong

CycleOfWar-2014

This particular Cycle of War is the combination of two models: 1) international war, and 2) domestic civil unrest. This is the first time these two models have coincided in the same time slot for about 300 years. We should expect a rise in civil unrest going into 2022, but the international war cycle is targeting 2032. We are witnessing a sharp intense rise in civil unrest on a global scale. This is what we should be most concerned about, for this is what leads to separatist movements and in many cases civil war.

I will update the Cycle of War in 2020

Jan 27 2020

The Hidden Order behind the Mask of Chaos


Armstrong Economics Blog/Understanding Cycles

Re-Posted Jan 25, 2020 by Martin Armstrong

COMMENT: Marty, The last few days I’ve been remotely attending the 2019 WEC Orlando. Lo and behold, now? three months hence and six days into the new wave?I am simply astounded at hearing how you describe your own amazement with the global confluence of events occurring absolutely everywhere while also curious whether there is merely one event telltale to the Jan. 18/19 hand-off. Then, the Wuhan coronavirus breaks out big today and market graphs everywhere all hop on the toboggan to end the week. How did you ever do it?! You’re truly a man of a thousand graces and I, for one, could not be more grateful.

Breaking the WEC to stay current with the latest today, it has been conspicuously absent for me to have yet encountered the term “Black Swan” regarding this Wuhan event. Then, it occurred to me: The term itself is a bit Johnny-come-lately and would not surprise me one bit it has flown the coop over maybe most could be seeking an oil of veracity through Socrates to throw on all these choppy waters.

It would be most interesting to see the traffic stats for AE and Socrates when such events as these take off.

In Gratitude!

D. D.

REPLY: What you have to understand and why I am often so critical of analysis, is that real analysis does NOT begin with a predetermined conclusion. What I am trying to reveal and why I put the very sources of what I have read into books like the Manipulating the World Economy, is because the proper way of analysis is exploration. I have sought perhaps like Leonardo DaVinci to figure out how things actually work without some predetermined agenda. DaVinci dug up dead bodies to try to discover how we function.

All the research I have done is in that vein. So it is me trying to show the world, hey look at this! My opinions and beliefs have been shaped by what I have encountered. I have never looked at research to prove a predetermined idea. That is where everyone goes wrong. Adam Smith’s Invisible Hand was hated by Keynes and so many others BECAUSE they do not like the way the world economy functions, and they seek to manipulate it to perform as they desire. That is why economics is no longer a science but has degenerated into a political propaganda machine.

People judge me by everyone else. This turn in the Economic Confidence Model is not about me being right, wrong, smarter than everyone else, or any other personal critique. This is about how the world truly functions and everything from weather to disease plays a role right down to this coronavirus which I am running our models to try to ascertain will this be a cyclical pandemic, or an epidemic – a big difference!

All of my research has been a quest to understand how the world truly functions. It has always been:

Hey, take a look at this! Here is order hidden behind the mask of chaos!

Every single action has an equal and opposite reaction. This is why I taught Socrates how to look for patterns and how to analyze those patterns. I have warned that the 2020 election will be notorious and will mark a rise in violence. People are unwilling to accept the vote of the people. If they lose, they blamed Russia for everything. Democracy is dying along with civility. I am not interested in being right, I wish I was wrong.

We are faced with the collapse in Democracy our model forecast back in 1985 would begin 2015.75. Politicians like Adam Schiff are the poster child for absolute corruption and dishonesty. This type of behavior has never been seen and is merely an attempt to put a Democrat in the White House who will raise taxes and devastate the business community in the spirit of “progressiveness” which is the new politically correct label for Marxism.

This is all part of the decline and fall of the West and the shift in the Financial Capital of the World back to Asia. It does not matter who wins in 2020, the other side will never accept the winner.

Categories: Understanding Cycles
Jan 27 2020

The Future & Analysis


Armstrong Economics Blog/Armstrong in the Media

Re-Posted Jan 25, 2020 by Martin Armstrong

QUESTION:  Hello Mr. Armstrong,
I just saw your interview on BNN, too bad you only had about 7 minutes to explain something that big, guess that’s the Limitation of TV Media I’m glad I bought the Repo Crisis Report. You would not have such limitations on your own platform like youtube. Can you see yourself doing a compilation of blog articles or updates in a video format like once or week or a month? You used to do this in 2015 for many Markets and also explained your reading on the arrays and reversals. I guess many people think of it as highly as I myself do.
all the best

ES

ANSWER: That is why the special reports are so important. You really have to support what you are saying or end up with just “I think” opinions that plague the analysis field. What I am doing is coding right now something to highlight everything that is taking place on a global scale with the ECM etc. I am trying to create systems that replace me and will keep going long after I am gone. We all do have expiration dates. I am trying to replace me. We even laugh internally for some have proposed we create a hologram of myself that could still appear long after I am gone

Jan 26 2020

Edmonton & the 7th Century


Armstrong Economics Blog/Europe’s Economic History

Re-Posted Jan 24, 2020 by Martin Armstrong

QUESTION: Mr. Armstrong…HOW DARE YOU!!!!!????

My brother lives in Edmonton, AB where the surface air temperature is a refreshing -23F as of 6:30 pm MST this evening. I am in the coastal northeast where if that temperature were to occur, there would probably be a societal breakdown with tens of thousands frozen to death overnight along with power outage, looting, and rioting. But in Edmonton, things just roll along like another day.

In the case of medieval Europe, would you say that the Huns may have been motivated in the 5th century AD to move east out of the steppe lands into western Europe due to the colder climate? Also, in the 6th century during the intensified cold, the Gothic wars erupted which led to a major depopulation of the Italian peninsula. Then in the 7th century, there seems to have been so little history documented that the misery taking place there may have been at an extreme degree at that time. Were there any coins minted during the 7th century in western Europe? The ones you showed of Peppin the Short and Charles the Great from the 8th century are fascinating! Also, did Charles Martel have any minted for him in the early 8th century?

JD

REPLY: I have been to Edmonton. Gave a lecture there back in the ’90s. Hundreds of people showed up, and I assumed it was just to get together to huddle for warmth. It was -40F. Not sure anyone was really listening to what I said. They were looking for hot air if I recall. The next day was only -20F and there were people in short-sleeve shirts calling it a beautiful spring day. All I remember is I could not open my mouth outside it was so cold my teeth would hurt. I also remember it was so cold they couldn’t even turn off their cars. They would never start again.

Yes, Charles Martel and Peppin the Short issued silver deniers. It was Charlemagne who was the first to apply his portrait to the coinage. So there was coinage during this 7th century, but something changed dramatically at that time. Peppin the Short was the son of Charles Martel who halted the Arab invasion of Europe in 732. The Carolingians, therefore, take their name from Peppin’s father Charles Martel.

Martel was really the last of the Merovingian dynasty which ruled the Franks from the middle of the 5th century until 751 AD. They first appear as “Kings of the Franks” in the Roman army of northern Gaul. By 509 AD, they had united all the Franks and northern Gaulish Romans under their rule as the Roman Empire which had broken apart in 476 AD. The coinage of the Merovingians was gold, not silver.

The Merovingian rulers began imitating the gold solidus issued by the Eastern surviving portion of the Roman Empire, which we call the Byzantine Empire. They issued gold tremissis from about 473 AD under Gundobald and then imitated the Byzantine coinage from about 500 AD forward.

Therefore, it was the 8th century when we find gold vanish from coinage in the Western portion of the old Roman Empire which appears to be coinciding with the rise of the Arab world and their attempt to invade Europe.

There is no doubt that the migrations were driven by climate change. Climate change has always caused massive migrations which have historically been movements from North to South. Even the Mayans of Mexico appear to have DNA links to Asia and were migrants perhaps 15,000 years ago who crossed the Beringia land bridge, which had formed between northeastern Siberia and western Alaska due to the lowering of sea level during the Last Glacial Maximum. It turned warmer back then without CO2 from fossil fuels and then the Ice Age change the sea leve