QUESTION: Good day Mr. Armstrong, I have been a student of yours since 2001 and am always amazed at your work. I am not one that can afford to go to your seminars, but would love to know all that you discuss there. Could you write a book about what all is discussed there?
My question is, I am in the process of moving from California, due to politics and their financial mismanagement. I am in escrow, but I am afraid of where to put my money from the sale of my home, it is my retirement, as I have put all of my savings into the home over the years. I plan on moving to a location with lower taxes and lower home prices and purchasing a home much less in price and save the rest of the money in case social security runs out. Are banks going to be a safe place to put money, or maybe a high paying dividend stock, or should I just bury it in my new homes backyard?? This is really quite frightening as I do not want to be forced out into the streets as a poor person after working hard for 65 years! We are very, very frugal so do not need a lot of income, just do not want to loose what we have. Thank you so much, and sorry to bother you, as I know you are very busy.
Bill
ANSWER: U.S. banks will probably be safe in general for the next two years. Just anything you put in a bank, do not lock it in long-term. Stay short-term — 2021 is where things start to go nuts.
As far as good equities, we will be in a position to look at that next year. As far as places, look at Texas or Florida. Florida has the better place for housing (homestead). Also, there is a high concentration of retired people in Florida. That provides greater resistance to dramatic changes
You keep stating that the center of Finance will move to China. However, the world distrusts China, rightly so. How can they become the Financial Center if no one trusts them?
RLK
ANSWER: That will come only after 2032. Keep in mind, the West will be tested and the failed system of continually borrowing is why the confidence in the West will break. After that, it will become the lesser of two evils. The financial capital of the world always migrates. The British never saw how America could take their crown. Throw in a world war, and capital moves. I have dealt with this issue in detail. That report is available (see the Store for “China on the Rise”). It is available in printed form or in digital forma
News we might have missed. Last week Catherine Engelbrecht announced a historic legal victory in her decade long battle against the IRS for targeting her group, True The Vote, as part of the Obama administration’s weaponization program against political opposition.
U.S. District Court Judge Reggie Walton issued a stunning ruling (full pdf below) in favor of True the Vote, and penalized the IRS. Judge Walton forced the IRS to pay maximum attorney’s fees due to discrimination against the conservative organization that stemmed from the Lois Lerner scandal. The financial award is likely to exceed $2 million.
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Ms. Engelbrecht gave Breitbart News an interview where she discussed the victory, SEE HERE.
.Ms. Engelbrecht’s case is actually connected to the political surveillance operation used against presidential candidate Donald Trump. Factually, the 2010 program to weaponize the IRS looks like the precursor to the 2012 program to weaponize the NSA database.
Political spying 1.0 was the weaponization of the IRS. This is where the term “Secret Research Project” originated as a description from the Obama team. It involved the U.S. Department of Justice under Eric Holder and the FBI under Robert Mueller. It never made sense why Eric Holder requested over 1 million tax records via CD ROM, until overlaying the timeline of the FISA abuse:
The IRS sent the FBI “21 disks constituting a 1.1 million page database of information from 501(c)(4) tax exempt organizations, to the Federal Bureau of Investigation.” The transaction occurred in October 2010 (link)
Why disks? Why send a stack of DISKS to the DOJ and FBI when there’s a pre-existing financial crimes unit within the IRS. All of the evidence within this sketchy operation came directly to the surface in early spring 2012.
The IRS scandal was never really about the IRS, it was always about the DOJ asking the IRS for the database of information. That is why it was transparently a conflict when the same DOJ was tasked with investigating the DOJ/IRS scandal. Additionally, Obama sent his chief-of-staff Jack Lew to become Treasury Secretary; effectively placing an ally to oversee/cover-up any issues. As Treasury Secretary Lew did just that.
Lesson Learned – It would appear the Obama administration learned a lesson from attempting to gather a large opposition research database operation inside a functioning organization large enough to have some good people that might blow the whistle.
The timeline reflects a few months after realizing the “Secret Research Project” was now worthless (June 2012), they focused more deliberately on a smaller network within the intelligence apparatus and began weaponizing the FBI/NSA database. If our hunch is correct, that is what will be visible in footnote #69:
Additionally, Matt Gaetz appears to have seen “a memo held in the Congressional Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility (SCIF) that contained previously-undisclosed information involving the Federal Bureau of Intelligence (FBI) and Department of Justice (DOJ).” [LINK] Which sounds like the MOU in the footnote, and the memo that Trey Gowdy and Jason Chaffetz inquired about.
Recently, the “Wall Street Journal” (WSJ) reported you granted the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC) new powers to store dossiers on United States citizens, even if said citizens are not suspected of any criminal activity.
With these new powers, the NCTC would have the ability to copy entire government databases holding information on flight records, casino-employee lists, the names of Americans hosting foreign-exchange students, as well as other data.
The WSJ goes on to report the new rules allow the NCTC to keep data about innocent United States citizens for up to five years and to analyze it for suspicious patterns of behavior. Previously, both were prohibited.
If the WSJ report is accurate, these new powers represent a sweeping departure from past practices, which barred the NCTC from storing information about ordinary Americans unless a person was a terror suspect or the information sought was related to an investigation.
If the WSJ report is accurate, it raises numerous concerns and questions. As elected Representatives and members of the House Judiciary Committee, we are concerned such sweeping, fundamental changes would be made to existing policy without public input and Congressional approval. Changes, which fundamentally alter the relationship between the government and the governed, should only be made with input from the people by and through their elected Representatives. (more)
Fusion GPS was not hired in April 2016 to research Donald Trump. As shown in the evidence provided by the FISC, the intelligence community was already doing surveillance and spy operations. The Obama administration already knew everything about the Trump campaign, and were monitoring everything by exploiting the FISA database.
However, after the NSA alerts in/around March 9th, 2016, and particularly after the April 18th shutdown of contractor access, the Obama intelligence community needed Fusion GPS to create a legal albeit ex post facto justification for the pre-existing surveillance and spy operations. Fusion GPS gave them that justification in the Steele Dossier.
That’s why the FBI small group, which later transitioned into the Mueller team, are so strongly committed to and defending the formation of the Steele Dossier and its dubious content. The Steele Dossier contains the cover-story and justification for the pre-existing surveillance operation.
During a rather innocuous podcast discussion panel April 12th, 2019, one of President Trump’s personal lawyers Jay Sekulow mentioned the FBI had three FISA applications denied by the FISA court in 2016. [Podcast Here – Note comment at 25:05] The denials were always suspected; however, until now no-one in/around the administration has ever confirmed.
If Sekulow is accurate, this adds additional context to the actions of the FBI in the aftermath of Admiral Mike Rogers and an increased urgency in gaining legal justification for surveillance and spy operation unlawfully taking place. A valid FISA warrant would help the FBI cover-up the surveillance. The likely targets were Manafort, Flynn and Papadopoulos…. but it appears the DOJ/FBI were rebuked.
These FISC denials would then initiate institutional panic dependent on the election outcome. An insurance policy would be needed. The Steele Dossier becomes the investigative virus the FBI wanted inside the system. To get the virus into official status, they used the FISA application as the delivery method and injected it into Carter Page. The FBI already knew Carter Page; essentially Carter Page was irrelevant, what they needed was the FISA warrant and the Dossier in the system {Go Deep}.
Fusion GPS was not hired to research Trump, the intelligence community was already doing surveillance and spy operations. The intelligence community needed Fusion GPS to give them a plausible justification for already existing surveillance and spy operations.
Fusion-GPS gave them the justification they needed for a FISA warrant with the Steele Dossier. Ultimately that’s why the Steele Dossier is so important; without it, the DOJ and FBI are naked with their FISA-702 abuse.
COMMENT: Dear Martin,
you are once more right with your view’s. EU’s Schengen agreement is going to die. From May 1st on, anybody in the EU has to carry an “A1 Certificate” if he or she is going on a business trip to avoid “social insurance fraud”. If not, you could be fined by up to 10.000,00 Euro.
Best regards
AC
REPLY: The cornerstone of the EU was to be the freedom of movement to create the United States of Europe. This became known as the Schengen Agreement to create a borderless Europe signed on June 14, 1985, between five of the then ten member states of the EU. It proposed the gradual abolition of border checks at the signatories’ common borders. Measures proposed included reduced speed vehicle checks, which allowed vehicles to cross borders without stopping, allowing residents in border areas the freedom to cross borders away from fixed checkpoints, and the harmonization of visa policies. However, this Schengen Agreement did not come into effect until March 26, 1995 (1995.232). It eliminated border checks among its members and allowed foreign visitors to travel throughout the area using one visa.
Britain has been preventing those non-EU citizens with Schengen visas from freely crossing the border into Britain. Someone from Ukraine with an EU visa cannot travel to Britain and subsequently to many former British Commonwealth states, such as the Bahamas, even for a vacation. Switzerland also is experiencing an anti-EU immigration trend.
This is what they always do. They cannot repeal the Schengen Agreement, for that would defeat the entire premise of the EU in creating the United States of Europe. They are using health insurance to prove you are really a citizen or legitimate resident of your country. It is always the same — wordsmithing. This is not my simple opinion. The Schengen Agreement was dead once they allowed the refugees into Europe.
The school resource officer, Scot Peterson, who did not respond during the shooting Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School last year, has been arrested on negligence, child neglect and perjury charges.
(NBC6 Miami) […] Peterson, 56, was arrested in Broward County on seven counts of neglect of a child, three counts of culpable negligence, and one count of perjury, Florida Department of Law Enforcement officials said.
The arrest comes after a 15-month investigation into the actions of law enforcement after the Feb. 14, 2018 shooting at the school that killed 17 students and staffers and left 17 others injured. Peterson was the school resource officer at MSD High School during the shooting.
“The FDLE investigation shows former Deputy Peterson did absolutely nothing to mitigate the MSD shooting that killed 17 children, teachers and staff and injured 17 others,” FDLE Commissioner Rick Swearingen said in a statement. “There can be no excuse for his complete inaction and no question that his inaction cost lives.” (read more)
CTH previously outlined how Broward County school police officers were primarily positioned to mitigate issues with criminal student engagement.
The Broward County diversionary school discipline program known as the “Promise Program” gained scrutiny after the Parkland shooting left 17 students dead.
The unstable shooter was identified as a prior benefactor of a county school district policy to reduced crime rates by exchanging criminal punishment for school discipline.
Many readers are aware CTH spent almost two years researching this practice in both Miami-Dade and Broward County. The downstream consequences were predictable when it first began; unfortunately, no-one wanted to accept the warnings – and the corruption is was systemic within the School and Police leadership, there’s was little hope to ever see it change.
QUESTION: Martin – Just read your latest on Lewrockwell.com, regarding taxation. I think the most basic, simplistic explanation you can put forward about income taxation, now in 2019, is that governments are taking directly out of our paychecks, while at the same time, printing money like deranged lunatics. Why tax my labor income if you (the government / CB’s) can just print as much fiat as they need? What do they need to dip into my paycheck for 30% before the money even hits my bank account, when they can just print what they need. Maybe it is because of their greed and lack of morality know no bounds. We are being ruled by tyrannical, Marxist inspired lunatics.
CN
ANSWER: That is my point. When money was precious metals, then taxation made sense. However, most taxes are initially implemented with such modest amounts like 2% for the first income tax in Britain back in 1799. People accept such modest levels. Even the American Revolution was fought over a tax of about 7%. Today, under the influence of Marx, taxes have risen to insane levels. A woman may have fought for the right to work with the Suffrage Movement, but today, it now takes two incomes to support a family because of the levels of taxation. The burden of direct taxation is seriously reducing our standard of living.
Taxes should be fixed because they can raise taxes at will. This is why you also have lobbyists who then fund their campaigns for loophole
In Berne, Switzerland, there has been a redistribution in occupational pensions which has revealed that it too is not a funded pensions plan as people previously assumed. For at least twelve years, pension fund monies have flowed from the employed to the pensioners. The amount has reached a tremendous scale with funds in the order of more than 90 billion francs being redistributed during these years. This is the result of data collected by PPC Metrics, the pension advisor for the SonntagsZeitung.
The AHV pension scheme is heavily redistributed in the pay-as-you-go system, but the occupational pension schemes should have been fully funded. With low-interest rates, the presumed fully funded occupational pension plan is now also operating as a Ponzi scheme. The prospect of future payments has been called into question
UBS will charge a 2 franc fee for withdrawing cash at the bank counter beginning in July, be it a withdrawal in CHF from a UBS private account or from a UBS current account. Thus, UBS stands (at least for now) pretty much alone. A survey of various institutions revealed that hardly any banks charge cash for cash withdrawals at the counter. One of the few exceptions is the Zürcher Kantonalbank (ZKB). Exceptions to this rule are customers with a private or savings account of the “ZKB inclusive base” package. These customers pay 5 francs for payments at the counter in francs or foreign currencies. However, industry observers expect other banks to follow UBS’s example soon, given the pressure on earnings.
QUESTION: You do a lot of comparison to the Roman Empire. What was the size of the government relative to GDP? Can you estimate that?
GY
ANSWER: The Roman economy was more like the USA during the mid-19th century in that it was pre-industrial. About 80% of its inhabitants worked in agriculture, which was about where we were in 1840. There was no social agenda of trying to redistribute wealth from one class to the other. Still, there were social programs. But the socialistic agenda that was adopted by modern governments has sought not merely to redistribute wealth among the classes, but it has justified bigger government on a grand scale never before witnessed in history. The tax rate in the ancient Roman Empire was about 5% with some paying as little as 2%. The actual cost of government during the Roman Empire was minimal compared to the modern standard. The Roman Emperor Trajan (98-117 AD) formalized the alimenta, which was a welfare program that helped orphans and poor children throughout Italy. It provided general funds as well as food and subsidized education. The program was supported initially out of Dacian War booty, and then later by a combination of estate taxes and philanthropy. So there were programs to take care of people who needed help.
Virtually all the taxes and rents raised by the imperial government were spent on the military, which came out to be about 80% of the imperial budget in 150 AD. This military spending constituted about 2.5% of the empire’s GDP. Obviously, we do not really see separatists movement until the mid-3rd century when Valerian I (253-260 AD) was captured by the Persians. With the cost of the military coming in about 2.5%, this explains the lack of tax rebellions. The tax enforcement was nowhere near as intrusive as we see today. The US military budget comes in about 4% or twice that of the Roman Empire. The Roman Empire lasted far longer than any modern state for it seems to have been much more tolerable of a burden, whereas the U.S. military budget will be around 20% at times of total expenditure.
The primary purpose of my investigation into the monetary system of the world is very simple. The political unrest ONLY rises when there is economic tension. Turn the economy down and you will get historically civil unrest. Additionally, it is interesting to see what policies produce the best and worst results. Augustus (27-14 AD) created a real land boom as he issued a tremendous amount of coinage creating a booming economy. He was followed by Tiberius (14-37 AD) who imposed austerity and issued very little coinage by comparison. That resulted in an economic depression in 33 AD and this was in part reflected in the Jewish rebellions over taxes. Remember the story that Jesus asks whose picture is on the coin and he replies to give to Caesar what is Caesar’s? So we can see the impact of austerity throughout history to extract the best policies under which we should live to promote like Rome – Pax Romanum.
QUESTION: Dear Martin,
Whereas for years you have put in a solid 5,000 year data for arguing for no individual taxes yet in countries around the Middle East there is no income tax. Yet they have not made any dynamic economic progress as such. I mean the evidence is seen by us live. How do we argue that zero direct individual tax will bring more economic growth? What am I missing?
Regards,
KG
ANSWER: It is not just taxation. The wealth of a nation is not its resources, but its people. The Middle East has been blessed with oil in many areas. As a result, the emphasis has been historically on a mercantilist model of just selling things to others. If you look closely at the economic model, you will see that Germany may be the strongest economy in Europe, but the wealth of its people is actually less than Italy’s. According to the German Bundesbank, the European reports show a median wealth of around €163,400 in Italy vs. €51,400 for Germans. Germans pay a lot more in taxes than Italians where they make it an art form to avoid taxes.
China understands this model. This is why they are turning inward to develop their domestic economy. A consumer-based economy creates jobs and provides a stronger economy. This is why the USA has the largest economy and everyone else stands in line to sell things to American consumers.
Economies are constructed on their people — not resources. You need education and a work ethic to succeed. Commodity-based economies that rely on exports lack the sustainability long-term. The Middle East realizes this and we are witnessing a change in places like the UAE and Saudi Arabia.
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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