Posted originally on the CTH on December 23, 2023 | Sundance
As the story is told, the “republicans” have the lowest amount of reserve cash on hand in the past seven years. However, as readers here are well aware, it’s not the republicans that are “running out of money,” it is the RNC Corporation that is running low on funds. These are two distinctly different things.
In the era of the great political awakening, the term “uniparty” has now become a well-known in conservative lexicon to describe our national political situation. The RNC and DNC are two private corporations that form each wing of the Uniparty vulture.
The RNC and DNC are private entities, private corporations, that manage the illusion of the two-party political system in the United States. The reality is that both corporations are funded by the same multinational donors.
The RNC and DNC are essentially private clubs, business entities that exist within a political system they create and control. In the era of Donald J Trump, this stark reality is now clear to almost every voter.
As a result, the RNC corporation does not receive most of its funding from the American electorate. The people have switched from funding the republican corporation, the RNC, to directly funding the individual republican candidates.
The people who control the RNC keep the illusion in place because they have no option; their entire business model is dependent on retaining a false premise. However, the people have moved on. The RNC is irrelevant to grassroots, small donors. Only the multinationals continue funding the RNC, which makes the candidate funding from the RNC an outcome of who the multinationals, hedge funds, and Wall Street billionaires choose to select.
The MAGA base does not fund the RNC, and in most instances the RNC funded candidates are antithetical to the objectives of the America-First movement. This inherent reality creates two types of Republicans, the RNC/Corporate republicans – beholden to the multinationals and millionaires, and the MAGA republicans who must serve the interests of the MAGA voters.
We are currently in this transitional phase, which is why we see the constant battle between the two distinct groups of republicans in DC.
Candidate President Donald Trump often is in a position of trying to connect the two disparate groups; however, recently there has been a more confrontational approach toward the corporate controlled republican politicians. This dynamic, conflict and inherent battle is what we call “The Big Ugly” and it must be waged in order to stop the historic illusion of choice being gamed by the RNC.
[Newsweek] – The amount of money that the Republican National Committee (RNC) had on hand for spending at the end of November was the lowest bank balance it has had at that point in any year since 2016, disclosures to the Federal Election Commission (FEC) show.
In a filing on Wednesday, the GOP governing body revealed it had $9.96 million to spend as of November 30, which is less than half what it had to work with when Donald Trump was contesting his first presidential election.
By comparison, the Democratic National Committee (DNC) reported cash on hand of over $20 million for the same day. Both parties’ committees have seen downward trends in funds they can draw upon since 2021, but the RNC’s balance has been around half that of its counterpart in the past two reporting periods.
[…] Oscar Brock, an RNC member from Tennessee, told the Post: “We’re going through the same efforts we always go through to raise money: the same donor meetings, retreats, digital advertising, direct mail. But the return is much lower this year. If you know the answer, I’d love to know it.” (read more)
Given the nature of corporate political structures, I suspect Kevin McCarthy will eventually replace Ronna McDaniel…
Posted originally on Dec 21, 2023 By Martin Armstrong
QUESTION: Why do you seem to be the only analyst who understands central banking? My son got an internship at one of the major banks in New York during the summer. I won’t say which bank, but he asked a senior-level guy there about you and the interest rates, explaining I had been following you for years. He said you were the only one with international experience and who has ever advised multiple central banks. Is that the answer?
PK
ANSWER: Perhaps in part. But there is a massive gap between the experience of those of us who have dealt at high levels internationally and domestic analysts who always seem wrong calling the shots based on the headlines they read.
The number one problem is this fiction that the dollar is a fiat currency when, in fact, currency from the beginning of time has ALWAYS been valued NOT by its pure metal content but by who issued it. There has historically always been a premium to the currency of the dominant economy.
When Cyrus the Great conquered Lydia, he continued to strike coins of their design because they were highly regarded in international trade. We see the same with Roman coinage imitated in India when they, too, could have issued their own designs, but the Roman coinage carried a premium.
Even when the Barbarians were on the Northern frontier of Rome, they too took silver and struck imitations of Roman coins because they were worth more than the metal content. In 260AD, when emperor Valerian the Persians captured me, there was a Financial Panic of 260AD where bankers suddenly did not know if Roman coins would still be worth anything when there was no emperor.
While everyone claimed hyperinflation would engulf the world because of Quantitative Easing (QE), I warned there would be no such inflation. Indeed, with QE, there was no inflation, and people then developed the Modern Monetary Theory, claiming that they could increase the money supply and it would not result in inflation.
The entire problem rests with the fact that these people not only did not understand the role of money but also failed to grasp international capital flows and how they play into the world economy. Because you can now buy US TBills and place them as collateral to trade with at a brokerage house, the debt is simply money that pays interest. BEFORE 1971, it was illegal to borrow against government bonds. For you see, if you could borrow against the bonds, that meant the bonds were part of the REAL money supply.
Once debt became cash that paid interest, that changed economics forever. I have said over and over again the Fed is NOT the problem, and it can not stop inflation with interest rates. The REAL money supply if the national debt, so if the Fed buys-in 30-year bonds and creates cash to do so, it is NOT increasing the money supply; it is increasing the liquidity – that is all. Swapping cash for bonds does not change the balance sheet. If you buy a house for $100,000 and pay cash, then you have merely converted your cash into an asset.
Now, it all depends upon the buyer. If I have a building and sell it to a fellow American for $10 million, it does NOT alter the domestic money supply. However, if I sell it to Brit, he brings in cash to buy the property, and that DOES INCREASE the money supply BECAUSE he has imported $10 million that did not previously exist within the domestic system.
This is a very complex topic that only those of us in international finance ever encountered. I helped the Japanese reduce their trade surplus for political reasons. I had them buy gold in New York, export it to London, and sell it there. The trade statistics only count dollars in and dollars out – not the product. Buying gold and exporting it reduced the trade deficit, and nobody understood anything.
I handled a lot of the takeover boys during the 1980s when they made the move about Wall Street. They never understood what I was doing. The stocker was way undervalued when you could buy a company, sell its assets, and double your money. I took it to another level. I ran the model on currencies, and we would then buy like all the Courage Pubs in England but borrow in Swiss in a currency that would decline against the asset. We were making 20% on the currency moves besides the asset values. I was restructuring companies selling assets in one currency to buy assets in another to create balance hedge portfolios. That’s how I became friends with Maggie Thatcher. She wanted to know who this guy was sending companies into Britain.
Maggie was one of the few world leaders who grasped what I was doing. She kept Britain out of the EU because she understood what and how I was restructuring multinational companies. They staged a coup against here to take the pound into the Euro, then Soros attacked the overvalued pound in the ERM, and John Major had to reverse the entire mess, making Soros very rich in the process.
I will get around to doing my memoirs. I understand what I was doing set the stage for the world economy post-1971 Bretton Woods. That’s why Milton Friedman bothered to listen to my lecture about currencies in Chicago.
Posted originally on Dec 17, 2023 By Martin Armstrong
QUESTION: Marty: You have mentioned that Trudeau’s freezing of accounts of anyone who donated to the Truckers was a test run for CBDCs. Do you think this is the end goal to control 100% of our lives?
GD
ANSWER: Hopefully, this will become a Presidential campaign issue. But they are desperate to stop Trump. Congress, including the traitors pretending to be Republicans, passed legislation that NO president can withdraw the US from NATO. This will enable the Neocons to start war BEFORE the 2024 election, and this legislation is to usurp the power of the president, assuming it might be Trump to make it so that he cannot exit World War III. Every politician who voted for that legislation should be thrown out of office in 2024 – PERIOD!
That said, the CBDCs are intended to control our social behavior. This transforms society into a digital prison, which is why the Founding Fathers outlawed Direct Taxation. The rally to Marx at the end of the 19th century led to the introduction of the Income Tax in 1913, and they swore they were going only after the trich. By World War II, they introduced the Payroll Tax because Roosevelt’s Marxist agenda was to include Social Security, and we, of course, had to be FORCED to save for our own future. That became a slush fund that was restricted to buying only government debt to fund this Marxist agenda.
You are being imprisoned with every piece of legislation, like reporting $600 transactions through various cash apps. You have lost ALL your LIBERTY – you don’t know it yet. They could simply create some nonsense and prevent you from donating to Trump or RFK and just make up some nonsense charge. The January 6th had unmarked buses filled with federal agents dressed as MAGA supporters before anyone showed up to stage the event so they could charge Trump and use the 14th Amendment to prevent him from gaining the White House. The Democrats refused to let RFK in, and Biden refused to give him Secret Service protection. In Florida, they tried to remove any contender from the ballot to challenge Biden. This is all about creating war. They let the border open to allow terrorists in so they can declare Martial Law and restrict everyone’s movement. All FREEDOM has been lost!
What Trudeau did in Canada permitted the bypassing of due process of law, which is the foundation of a free society. Wake up! Digitization of the monetary system will allow them to totally kill all dissent. There will be NOTHING left standing. This is what 2032 is all about. We are the ants beneath their feet. Anyone who thinks they care at all about us is an absolute fool.
We cannot stop it. This is NECESSARY for political change. This is them fighting to retain power when they fully understand that this monetary system is collapsing. This is not going to be this Great Taking. That would be an instantaneous revolution. They are not that stupid for even the army would rise up against them. This is about total control leaving you with your trinkets.
As this is rolled out, ONLY then will it open the eyes of the masses. Unfortunately, this is also why movements like Transgender, Black Lives Matter, you name it, are all about dividing the people. They MUST keep the people divided and fighting among themselves so they do not unite against the government, where the common denominator is FREEDOM.
It was Julius Caesar who said – Divide and conquer. Hitler attacked the Jews BECAUSE they were the bankers, and he needed to blame the hyperinflation on the bankers. He divided the people and then came – Papers, please! That is precisely what they are doing to us with CBDCs. This is the purpose of Gates’ UN-organized digital IDs. To prevent freedom of movement. Digital IDs to vaccine passports are all designed to prevent movement. Europe, as of January 1, 2025, will require visas from Americans to visit, and they will apply your social credit score to determine if you are eligible. Still, they intend to start World War III before that, creating an external distraction to divert people from the loss of liberty. This is the government’s objective- the enemy of freedom – as always, no matter what century or culture to look at.
Posted originally on Dec 14, 2023 By Martin Armstrong
Whenever those in Congress mess with real estate, they have ALWAYS, and without exception, caused a major crash. The Entire Savings & Loan (S&L) Crisis was a catastrophic disaster that wiped out nearly one-third of all the 3,234 savings and loan associations in the United States between 1986 and 1995. I previously mentioned that hedge funds were created by a regulation conflict between the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) and the Securities & Exchange Commission (SEC). If you obeyed one, you went to jail with the other.
Back in the 1980s, we began the S&P500 Report when futures started to trade. We had to refund everyone’s money and shut down the report because these two agencies were fighting over who had the regulatory power of stock index futures. We could not provide analysis as long as the two agencies fought for power. It came down to a Supreme Court decision that finally said forecasting was free speech – SEC v Lowe. Nevertheless, in funds management, you could not hedge for a client domestically because if you had a stock portfolio and you thought there was a crash unfolding, you were only allowed to hedge 17% for anything more than that made you a futures fund – rather than a stock fund. The only way to trade everything was to move offshore, and these were called Hedge Funds, which you were not allowed to do domestically. To this day, you have separate funds domestically, each claiming they are the best, forcing the decision onto the average person.
The S&L crisis was also created by Congress’s persistent quest to regulate things they do not understand. Once more, there was a conflict and mismatch of regulations regarding S&Ls v banks. Congress had imposed restrictions on S&Ls with the creation of the Federal Home Loan Bank Act of 1932, which included such caps on interest rates on deposits and loans. They also directed that S&Ls should be lending into the real estate market and banks should be focused effectively on businesses. The banks still could do mortgages.
The market conditions moved into deflation between 1981 and 1985 because Volcker raised rates at the Fed to 14% to stop inflation, which caused capital inflows to buy bonds, sending the dollar to rise dramatically on international markets. The British pound crashed from $2.40 to $1.03 by 1985. However, the regulations on how much interest an S&L could pay meant they could not compete with the rates that the Fed adopted, and nobody in Congress noticed until 1982. The S&Ls experienced a massive capital outflow, and they were left with low-interest long-term mortgages.
In 1982, President Ronald Reagan signed Garn-St. Germain Depository Institutions Act, which was intended to correct the conflict between high interest rates and caps on the S&Ls. The reform eliminated loan-to-value ratios and interest rate caps for S&Ls. In addition, it also allowed them to hold 30% of their assets in consumer loans and 40% in commercial loans for the first time. The S&Ls began paying higher rates to attract funds. S&Ls also began investing in commercial real estate, which had tax advantages with regard to amortization.
As always, the Democrat’s constant hunt to punish the rich with every breath they take caused the entire S&L crisis of the 1980s. The Democrats only see the money dangling in front of them and nothing else. They pushed through a landmark 1986 Tax Reform Act that reduced the top personal income tax rate from 50% to 28%. However, in a bitterly divided Congress, as usual, demanded a compromise and that the income tax cuts were to be paid for by raising the rate on capital gains from 20% to 28% and limiting the deductibility of real estate losses for passive investors. The braindead unintended consequences undermined the entire real estate market and took down the S&L Industry in the process.
The S&L crisis demonstrated that those in government NEVER understand the private sector. They created the business model of the S&Ls whereby they made 30-year fixed-rate mortgages, which Roosevelt invented to solve the real estate collapse back in the Great Depression. To provide those loans, S&Ls depended on a deposit based on DEMAND that could be withdrawn within 30 days. When the Fed raised rates to 14% in 1981, the S&Ls were in trouble and lost deposits when they were prevented from paying higher rates. That was not lifted until the Reagan 1982 reform. This is the basic banking model using on-demand money to lend out long-term. To this day, the Fed directs the “Model Risk,” which you can review at SR 11-7: Guidance on Model Risk Management.
At first, the measures seemed to have worked, and by 1985, S&L assets had risen by almost 50%. Commercial real estate became the “hot” market. This is what attracted the Democrats. They saw all this money pouring into mortgages, so they could not resist changing the laws to get at that money in 1986. The Economic Recovery Tax Act of 1981 accelerated the depreciation of commercial and noncommercial real estate, making those investments quite attractive. Then, the Democrats saw the money and pushed the Tax Reform Act of 1986 to extend depreciation schedules for both real estate forms, reducing the attractiveness of those investments.
These people NEVER understand market behavior. By extending the depreciation tables, they created a one-way market. Real Estate collapsed, everyone tried to sell, and there was NO BID! One of the few Congressmen with real estate experience at the time called me and asked what my model projected. I told him this would be a major crash that would cost a fortune because there were also government guarantees behind a portion of the mortgages left over from the Great Depression days. Nobody would listen to his warnings.
In the meantime, pressure was mounting on the Federal Savings and Loan Insurance Corporation’s coffers (FSLIC). By 1987, the FSLIC had become insolvent. Rather than allowing it and S&Ls to fail as they were destined to do, the federal government recapitalized the FSLIC, exposing taxpayers to even greater risk. The S&Ls were allowed to continue to pile on risk. I had a client who wanted to buy an S&L, and I advised him not to get involved and that the crisis would worsen. He did not listen, bought a failed S&L, and recapitalized it; as the crisis worsened, they kept changing the capitalization requirement, ended up seizing his S&L, and lost most of his investment.
A bill is now being introduced to Congress that will prohibit hedge funds and other institutional investors from buying single-family homes. What these people in Congress FAIL to ever understand, is that they will now eliminate that segment of buyers and create a one-way market. Prices will have to collapse as these investors will ONLY be able to sell to a mom-and-pop, and as we head into a recession from 2024 to 2028, this does not bode well for the blue states especially.
The intent of the bill is to address the housing supply, which continues to dry up as prices have been climbing 20% since 2021. They believe that the low housing supply is driving up prices, and they are pointing their finger at hedge funds to blame, like Blackrock. The bill’s sponsors are U.S. Senator Jeff Merkley (D-OR) and Representative Adam Smith (D-WA). Of course, they ignore their spending, and pouring countless billions into Ukraine has nothing to do with inflation, and certainly, their COVID scam had nothing to do with anything regarding prices or unemployment. It is NEVER them on Capital Hill – it is always we, the Great Unwashed.
This bill is entitled the End Hedge Fund Control of American Homes Act of 2023, targeting both hedge funds and private equity firms that have been buying single-family houses as investment properties. While the bill addresses a serious issue, what we MUST understand is that people “feel” rich when their homes rise in value, for they see that as their savings. Both the Great Depression and the Great Recession of 2007-2009 impacted real estate, and this is the MOST sensitive area of the economy. You can take the stock market down 90% and the bond market. They will impact only a portion of the economy, typically the upper classes. However, when you take down the real estate market, now you are messing with the bulk of the middle class.
Senator Jeff Merkley said in his statement, “The housing in our neighborhoods should be homes for people, not profit centers for Wall Street.” While I do not support Blackrock and its agenda, this is closing the barn door after the horse ran away. He has made a big splash, saying: “It’s time for Congress to put in place commonsense guardrails that ensure all families have a fair chance to buy or rent a decent home in their community at a price they can afford.”
Larry Fink, BlackRock CEO, is a board member of Klaus Schwab’s World Economic Forum who preaches you will own nothing and be happy. Fink is also behind Zelensky, promising to invest in a war zone. Meanwhile, Fink sent his 2022 letter to CEOs of companies he has invested in on January 17th, 2022, while intimidating them to follow Schwab’s WEF. His letter reflected Klaus Schwab’s Agenda 2030. He stated:
“I write these letters as a fiduciary for our clients who entrust us to manage their assets – to highlight the themes that I believe are vital to driving durable long-term returns and to helping them reach their goals.”
BlackRock insists that it does not invest in single-family homes. It claims that it invests in multifamily properties, apartment complexes, and other residential real estate. They insist that they are not one of the large asset managers and private equity firms who have been buying single-family homes.
On August 2, 2021, CNN reported that during the first three months of 2021, “nearly a quarter of all homes sold in the United States were going to investors.” They reported that BlackRock (BLK), JPMorgan Chase (JPM), and Goldman Sachs (GS) were among the big-name buyers. They further reported, “Institutional investors still own only about 2% of all single-family rentals in the United States, or roughly 300,000 homes, according to John Burns research director Rick Palacios.”
The headline from 2021 made it sound that Blackstone was BUYING 17,000 single-family houses, outbidding regular mom-and-pop buyers with its $6 billion war chest. Blackstone bought Home Partners of America, which had already owned 17,000 single-family houses, and rents them out to tenants with an option to buy at a preset price at any time with 30 days’ notice. They insist that they are facilitating private home ownership by providing an option to buy.
Here is a chart provided by Freddie Mac, which shows the contest between large institutional buyers vs mom-and-pop as a percentage of the marketplace. The overall market share of investors has grown to around 30%. Like the changing of the depreciation table on real estate in 1986 by the Democrats caused a one-way market of sellers with no bid, outlawing investors now when they already have 30% of the market can lead to a MAJOR recession following the ECM between 2024 into 2028.
We have a Directional Change in 2024 and should expect higher volatility into 2025.
Posted originally on Dec 14, 2023 By Martin Armstrong
Government officials do not understand why Americans are disappointed with Bidenomics. Biden’s own team did not realize the term “Bidenomics” was intended to mock the president’s policies and they have adopted it as their own. “Bidenomics is about growing the economy from the middle out and the bottom up, not the top down,” Joe Biden posted on X, formerly Twitter, in July 2023. Americans’ personal financial situation has only deteriorated under Bidenomics and no one seems to understand why.
A November poll published by the Financial Times found that only 14% of Americans believe they are better off financially under Biden. Those people are likely on welfare. Around 70% of American voters feel Bidenomics hurt the economy or had no impact, with 33% saying they “hurt the economy a lot.” These numbers are staggering, as no president in recent history has managed to derail a stable economy so rapidly.
When asked why Bidenomics was not landing with Americans, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said she believes COVID is to blame. COVID has provided Biden with the only optimistic data figure in that unemployment naturally decreased once the economy reopened, but of course he is chalking it up to his policies. Sacrificing America’s energy independence for the Build Back Better agenda was Biden’s priority on day one in office. We have seen inflation rise every month of his presidency and experienced record-high inflation in June of last year. INFLATION WAS AT 1.4% WHEN JOE BIDEN TOOK OFFICE IN JANUARY 2021.
Now, I obviously do not blame the government for the issues at the Fed and their QE failures. However, the Fed has been attempting to tame inflation by raising rates and it simply is ineffective. Biden prided himself on implementing countless multi-trillion-dollar spending packages at a time when America is operating at its steepest deficit. Then Biden’s Administration managed to insert itself in numerous overseas conflicts. They also allowed million of illegals to invade America and paid them to do so. Inflation cannot decline amid war.
The majority of Americans have a drastically lower standard of living thanks to Bidenomics. Some estimates believe 63% of Americans now live paycheck to paycheck. Real disposable income has decreased 7.5% since January 2021, and credit card debt is up 36.2%. Monthly savings have plummeted 81.4% since Biden took office, and home affordability is down 37.3%.
It is an insult at this point for the current administration to gaslight Americans into thinking our situation is anything but dire.
Posted originally on Dec 11, 2023 By Martin Armstrong
According to a recent Federal Reserve report, US household wealth experienced a significant decline in the third quarter, largely attributed to deep stock losses. The central bank’s report revealed that household net worth fell by approximately $1.3 trillion, or 0.9%, from July to September, amounting to $151 trillion. The decline was primarily driven by a $1.7 trillion drop in the value of equity holdings.
This comes after a volatile year for the stock market, with all three major indexes experiencing a significant downturn in mid-2023. While the market has since recovered, the report also indicated a continued rise in household debt, which increased at a 2.5% annual rate in the third quarter. The decline in household wealth has raised concerns about its potential impact on consumer spending, borrowing, and investing, as well as its implications for the broader economy.
Americans living off credit began pulling from their 401K accounts early during Q3. Hardship withdrawals rose 13% in the beginning of June after already being 27% higher than January. Hardship withdrawals allow employees to pull money out of their 401K for an “immediate and heavy financial need.” No one would recommend doing this unless the situation was dire as individuals must show evidence that the money will be used for a major hardship in order to avoid the 10% early withdrawal fee imposed for those under 59.5.
The year 2023 marked the first time personal credit debt surpassed $1 trillion. Credit card interest rates average 24.56%, according to LendingTree. Credit cards aside, American households are carrying $17.29 trillion in various forms of debt, with the average household hosting $103,358 in debt that continues to compound.
Posted originally on Dec 8, 2023 By Martin Armstrong
The Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) believes that taxation could decrease traffic congestion in New York. Vehicles will be charged an additional $15 daily to enter Manhattan from 60th Street or below, while trucks will face a fine between $24 and $36. New York Gov. Kathy Hochul strongly backs the measure as she believes it will help to clean up New York.
“Congestion pricing means cleaner air, better transit and less gridlock on New York City’s streets and today’s vote by the MTA Board is a critical step forward,” Hochul commented. As a reminder, New York City just voted to slash funding for sanitation. It is not an exaggeration to say that the city is overrun with rats. The police budget is declining by $5.6 billion as well at a time when crime is through the roof and the city’s infrastructure is crumbling as busloads of illegals arrive daily.
Do they want to utterly kill the leisure and hospitality industry? As a previous resident of New Jersey, I saw the tolls into New York rise over the years. It now costs a good $20 in tolls simply to cross into the state, and parking fees in the city are some of the highest in the nation. Now you have to factor in an added daily congestion fee and it will cost the average person a good amount simply to enter Manhattan.
Obviously they want people to rely on public transportation as the coming 15-minute cities will not require personal vehicles. Taxis will charge passengers an extra $1.25 to meet the toll while Uber and Lyft plan to implement a $2.50 fee. People earning under $50,000 annually can apply for a discounted rate only after their first 10 trips per month.
They’re banning coal and wood ovens so there will soon be no reason to stop in the city for a slice of pizza or world famous cuisine. Former grand hotels are now migrant camps and thousands of undocumented military aged men are scattering the streets. Crime is rising and Soros-backed DAs won’t allow criminals to be prosecuted. The people of New York will never see the money derived from this new tax. Yet another reason why I will never return to NYC.
Posted originally on Dec 7, 2023 By Martin Armstrong
Permitting health agencies to dictate what we can and cannot do is a slippery slope. These health agencies, such as the World Health Organization, work on behalf of their donors who support lobbying interests. For example, numerous health agencies began telling people to consume less meat after the plans for the Great Reset were formulated. Now, the WHO believes governments globally should place a higher tax on sugary and alcoholic beverages.
There is no denying that alcohol is dangerous. The WHO estimates that 2.6 million people worldwide die from ethanol each year. The pandemic that the WHO also supported increased alcohol usage and deaths involving alcohol spiked over 25% from 2019 to 2020. In fact, alcohol killed more young people than COVID itself. However, government agencies do not need to parent the taxpayers. Prohibition failed miserably, and prohibiting or increasing taxes on a product will not decrease demand. Additionally, the WHO wants to impose these tax rules worldwide. Wine is a staple in many European diets and a number of countries do not tax the beverage at all. The WHO wants that to change.
“Taxing unhealthy products creates healthier populations. It has a positive ripple effect across society, less disease and debilitation and revenue for governments to provide public services,” said Rüdiger Krech, the WHO’s health promotion director. “In the case of alcohol, taxes also help prevent violence and road traffic injuries.”
Only 108 of the 194 member states have implemented a tax on sugary beverages. The WHO believes 8 million deaths per year could be saved if people ate healthier diets. SSB (sugar-sweetened beverage) taxes account for “just 6.6% the price of soda.” The WHO does not state how high the tax should be on these products but believes higher taxation should be universally adopted.
The agency admits that poor people will be unfairly targeted by these taxes as they typically choose the cheapest option available. The average tax on beer is 17.2% and 26.5% for spirits. “A pressing concern is that alcoholic beverages have, over time, consistently become more affordable,” WHO Assistant Director-General Ailan Li said. “But increasing affordability can be curbed using well-designed alcohol tax and pricing policies.” Why not look at past RECENT examples to see the consequences?
The money earned from the proposed tax increases would never see the hands of the people. Agencies like the WHO only exist to push an agenda on the masses and they do not care about public health. I do not want to know my recommended daily insect protein intake. I do not want to pay triple the cost for the foods deemed “unhealthy” by an agency that was never elected.
Posted originally on the CTH on December 6, 2023 | Sundance
Having spent time doing the legwork, I have a completely different perspective on the issues.
If you choose to live in the world of pretending, or if you trust the expressed justifications and motives of the USG as outlined by the DC proletariat, this is not going to be a read that retains your comfort. However, if you want to boil it all down to the real reasoning, read on.
Top line – JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon wants cryptocurrencies banned in the USA.
(Newsmax) – JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon on Wednesday suggested bitcoin currency should be banned.
“I’ve always been deeply opposed to crypto, bitcoin, etc.,” Dimon said in response to a question from Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass. “The only true use case for it is criminals, drug traffickers … money laundering, tax avoidance because it is somewhat anonymous, not fully, and because you can move money instantaneously. “If I was the government, I would close it down.” (read more)
Bottom line, the non-pretending reasoning. The US Treasury has set the financial system on an almost unreversible path to a U.S. Central Bank Digital Currency. Crypto is a threat to the establishment of that objective.
The leftists and Marxists who now control the various institutions we associate with the United States Government, together with the DC UniParty apparatus that controls the Potemkin village we call congress, are in full alignment with the control objective. What and who is their target for control? Us.
I’m going to be brutally honest and seemingly radical, but here is the Occam’s razor.
If you have ever wondered why Hillary Clinton could hold a reset button with a visit to Russia, expressing a direct interest in improved relations. Then, if you have ever wondered why Barack Obama would tell Russian President Medvedev he just needed to get through the 2012 election to have “more flexibility,” again expressing an interest in improved relations with Russia; then seemingly all of that is dispatched in 2016 to make Russia the #1 threat…. keep reading.
What happened?
How did the Obama administration go from all efforts to be on good relations with Russia 2009 through 2015, then suddenly pivot to the exact opposite with the Trump-Russia collusion conspiracy, the Russian election interference nonsense, the expulsion of Russian diplomats in Dec/Jan 2017 and suddenly Vladimir Putin as the archvillain for the world? Apparently, few have ever really asked how that happened.
Here’s the big picture, as seen through the prism of the EU and the non-pretenders in Eastern Europe.
The Marxists in the Obama admin needed a boogeyman in order to pull off their domestic heist and secure the “fundamental change.” The CIA and State Dept were deployed to utilize Ukraine in 2014 to create the boogeyman, Russia. Ukraine would be the stick to poke Russia. The USA needed a proxy; they created one and made the participants rich.
Provoked, Russia fell into the trap and took control of Crimea as they perceived the NATO expansion and likely control of the Black Sea as a threat. The Crimea move gave the CIA and State Dept the exact response they intended.
The Russia boogeyman was created.
But why? Why would the effort of the U.S. Government be to provoke and create this crisis?
In the biggest of big pictures, the domestic fundamental change needed it. We needed a reason to put walls around the U.S – not to keep Russia out, but to keep Americans locked in. Conflict with Russia became the Obama version of Bush’s conflict with Iraq. Putin now cast to play the role of Bin Laden.
The Patriot Act was never intended to stop foreign terrorists from attacking the USA. The Patriot Act was intended to create the DHS surveillance system for domestic control. It succeeded. The Russian sanctions were never intended to sanction Russia (and they don’t). The Western sanctions against Russia were intended to build walls around the U.S. financial system.
Ostracizing the world’s global trade currency, the dollar, from the global trade system was/is a necessary step in controlling domestic currency. If there is a threat, the government needs to respond. That’s how the crisis is created and not wasted.
Yes, what I am saying is there was a longer and deeper play afoot, a ‘trillions at stake’ game by those who control money and power, using foreign threat as the justification for something that just would not be possible without it. That’s why Trump was never allowed to breathe for a moment, whenever Russia or Vladimir Putin was mentioned. The control forces needed Trump to be adversarial to Russia, regardless of whether the threat was real. After all, it was supposed to be a willfully blind Hillary Clinton in place during this phase.
Conflict with Russia created the opportunity for the USA to create a sanctions regime that doesn’t truly sanction Russia, instead it controls the world of USA finance. At the end of that control mechanism is a digital dollar, a Central Bank Digital Currency…. and by extension full control over U.S. citizen activity. The Marxist holy grail.
That moment is closer than most can fathom, and that is exactly why the counterforce of a cryptocurrency, a rebellious mechanism for free people to exchange payment for goods and services, must be stopped by the same USG that is triggering the CBDC. Crypto is a threat. Jamie Dimon, along with all the major banks and financial institutions, is one key beneficiary that CBDC (a transactional player for fees therein) so long as JPMorgan stays on task.
Republicans, really financial beneficiaries of the largesse, oppose crypto currency.
The narrative…. Only criminals, that means those who would be defined as domestic terrorists like pesky remnants of our nation who demand freedom and liberty, would support cryptocurrency. Criminals, tax cheats, bad people support crypto. Don’t be a bad person comrade citizen. Insert vote, pull lever, get pellet, go back to sleep. You will own nothing and be happy comrade.
Yes, that’s the bigger picture.
Can it be stopped? I laugh, look in the mirror, think about the reality of how many people think this is an absurd conspiracy theory, and respond with…. How many people even know about the thing you are asking to oppose?
How many people would believe the Western sanctions against Russia were really the USG building a cage to keep us in. How about we start there. That’s my answer.
You can travel to Russia. Wait, what?
Yes, you can travel to Russia without issue. The Russians don’t care. The process for getting an entry visa into Russia is the same now as it was five years ago. Ask Russia for a VISA. The paperwork has not changed. Show your passport, give them pictures to create the visa (it’s a full page sticker added to your passport), show your hotel reservation printout, show your travel destination, drop off the paperwork, go back on your appointment date and get the visa.
It’s hard and takes longer from the USA, but it’s not impossible – it’s just easier from the EU. It’s the booking of a flight into Russia (best done in the EU), the payment for a hotel given the sanctions, the stuff created by the USA that is the roadblock. From the Russian side of the dynamic, nothing has changed – they don’t care.
How do I know? The friendly people at the Russian consulate in Budapest walked me through the process. So, find a way to pay for the hotel in Russia (there are many options), travel to the intermediary airport that has flights into Russia (like Istanbul, Barcelona, Budapest) go to the second smaller terminal in the major airport, hop in the flight and fly in. Russians don’t care. Go have a good time. Leave the same way you came in. [If by train or road, just have the VISA ready for review]
Scared about travel? Why?
The same people who tell you where to be scared traveling as an American, are the same people who told you Trump was colluding with Russia.
Posted originally on Dec 3, 2023 By Martin Armstrong
QUESTION: I was told I should not listen to you because you manipulated the world economy with the bankers, and you were an adviser to BCCI and managed money for Saddam Hussein and Qadaffi. When I asked if you manipulated the world economy, then why invest against you? There was no reply. I watched the Forecaster, and it was clear you were against the bankers. It seemed that this was all about disagreeing with you on gold and was very hypocritical. Then I read your Plot to Seize Russia. It opened my eyes in many directions. Why do some people go out of their way to hate you? Do you have any idea?
WMB
ANSWER: If they hate me, it is because they are the shills supporting the real manipulations. Yes, I did manage money for Muammar Mohammed Abu Minyar al-Gaddafi, but not to my knowledge, Saddam Hussein, unless he, too, had some shell account structure. However, I also had to manage the metal position for Aristotle Onassis and dealt with many other billionaires throughout my career. I never joined the bankers and they were behind instructing the CFTC to shut down Princeton Economics. The bankers know if they spin news that is bullish, they get the gold bugs to buy, and they inevitably sell to them to exist their trade. They manipulate the investors the same way the Fed tries to do with interest rates.
I believe it is the old story of people judging others by themselves. Whenever the bankers blow up, and I had forecast that would happen, it is not that I have a model, but I have more clients than they do. They would call the CFTC always complaining, claiming I had too much influence because they lost. Here is the analyst Larry Edelson talking about our forecasts about 10 years ago before he died.
These people do not understand cycles, so to them, the only reason I have been correct is that it can’t possibly be a model; it is influence. It has to be that I have more clients than anyone else. This is why the bankers were always trying to get me to join them. They thought I could say buy, and they could exit their trades or sell. Likewise, if I said sell then they could buy. How many times would that work before people figured out such a scam? Soloman Brothers was notorious for that back in the 1980s. Their analysts would say buy, and on the floor, it was Soloman Brothers selling. That was the perception regarding Henry Kaufman’s forecasts back then.
Goldman Sachs was criticized for creating products to sell to clients and then traded against them. The bankers have never looked at their clients as “clients” but as adversaries against whom they make money. My business was always the exact opposite. The bankers didn’t like that very much. I advised my clients against the bankers – that is why they did whatever they could to stop me.
It goes back to when I was in High School, and the Physics professor said there is nothing random, and then in Economics, they said everything is random so they can manipulate us by raising and lowering interest rates. I just concluded back in High School that someone was lying. It turned out to be the economists. This is why the bankers have paid bribes and sought to manipulate financial markets: they think it is influence that wins. They blew up in 1998 due to the collapse of Russian bonds, and they were bribing the IMF to keep the loans going. They blew themselves up on Mortgage-Backed debts. Just look at all the big crashes, and you will find these so-called professionals begging for bailouts. They are NEVER traders – they are manipulators.
The Clintons proposed to Gorbachev that Russia should join NATO. That is when the hardline-Communists staged the coup and attempted to take Russia back to the Soviet Union days. It was Yeltsin who stood on the tanks and pleaded with the army not to fire on their own people. When the army stood down, the coup collapsed without military power. It was a bloodless coup. That is a modern example of a situation where if the military refuses to support the current government, they have no power and collapse.
I have the De-Classified documents from the Clinton Administration. Hillary blamed Putin for RussiaGate because she lost in 2016, and ASSUMED Putin retaliated against her for interfering in the 2000 Russian election. They tried to get me to invest $10 billion into Hermitage Capital Management to seize Russia. I declined. So they have never liked me very much because I do not play ball. I do not need the money. Sorry – I am not motivated by money, but trying to figure out how the world really works.
Berezovsky was their intended puppet ruler. Berezovsky even called me personally when I refused to fund this covert operation. The American Neocons/Bankers were blackmailing Yeltsin to appoint Berezovsky as president of Russia and call off the elections. The communists had filed an impeachment motion to overthrow Yeltsin, and this is how Putin came to power because he was not a politician, not an oligarch, and was NOT a communist. Yeltsin’s last words to Putin were – Protect Russia.
The ’80s were the Wild West in finance. I have told the story of how many banks operated back then. I would be called in and told someone wanted to give me $1 billion to manage back then when $1 billion was a lot of money (now it’s trillions). I would go to various banks, and there would be a curtain between me and the potential client. I was not allowed to know who they were. I was turning down that business because it was just too wild for me.
Yes, we were advising BCCI on foreign exchange. They were passing it on to specific clients who, at the time, I did not know. I became concerned when I accepted an account for who I believed was a Saudi individual. The account was opened at Rudolf Wolf in London. After a few months of tracing all the various layers of shell corporations, it turned out I was managing money for none other than Muammar Mohammed Abu Minyar al-Gaddafi. I closed the account, and within a matter of weeks, he was back through a completely different channel.
Perhaps one day, I will write a book about those days. I ended up managing money for even Saudi billionaire Adnan Khashoggi (1935–2017), who once owned one of the world’s largest yachts, the 86-meter Nabila, named after his daughter at a cost of $100 million to build. This yacht appeared in the James Bond film “Never Say Never Again.” After Khashoggi, the yacht was sold in 1988 to the Sultan of Brunei, who was another one of our clients at the time. He flipped the yacht, selling it to Donald Trump for $29 million that same year.
On top of that, what I thought was a company turned out to be a secret partnership between Gaddafi, Khashoggi, and Ferdinand Marcus of the Philippines. I thought I was dealing with a hotel chain out of Geneva. During the ’80s, you just never knew who was who.
The Floating Foreign Exchange Rate system had just begun in 1971. This was not a subject you could get a degree in. This field was built from scratch, and it took a trader’s understanding of the world economy at that moment in time. Currency futures only began trading on May 16th, 1972, following failed negotiations to reestablish a fixed exchange rate system. By chance, a collector who was a client, Walter Zenergle, asked me if he could look at the problem at the bank. It was clear that nobody yet understood about hedging risks.
Walter was a VP at Franklin National Bank, which was once the 20th largest bank in the USA. Most people have no idea, but in 1951, Franklin National Bank in Long Island, New York, issued the first card that most resembles today’s general-use credit cards. For the first time, customers could purchase items and pay them off quickly or be charged interest if the debt carried over. Participating merchants had to pay a fee for each card purchase. By 1952, about 28,000 customers and 750 businesses had signed up for the card, which eventually became the Mastercard.
Walter came to me because I understood currency. He thought the problem at the bank was caused by the floating exchange rate system. Indeed, on October 8, 1974, Franklin National Bank collapsed in obscure circumstances involving connections to the Italian Michele Sindona, who was alleged to be a Mafia banker. At the time, it was the largest bank failure in the country’s history. The bank failed because of a 10% move in the Italian Lira. Nobody seemed to understand international finance or currencies back then, and there was no understanding of hedging within just three years of the collapse of Bretton Woods.
After that, when there was a currency problem, people would seek me out to get that guy who was called in for the Franklin National Bank. In addition, I was being called in globally because of currency fluctuations. Yes, I was advising BCCI on currency globally. I dealt with their London office. They were one of the biggest international banks back in the 1980s.
BCCI’s founder was the Pakistani Agha Hasan Abedi (1922-1995), who founded the bank in Luxembourg in 1972 following the collapse of Bretton Woods. Abedi was keen on currency fluctuations. That is likely why I was called in to provide FX forecasting. BCCI was created with capital, of which 25% was from Bank of America and the remaining 75% was from Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan (1918-2004), the ruler of Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates at the time.
Yes, I was also friends with members of the Royal Family of Qatar. Saud bin Muhammad bin Ali bin Abdullah bin Jassim bin Muhammed Al Thani (1966-2014) was a friend of mine who was interested in FX but was a competitor of mine in ancient coin auctions. We were probably the two biggest collectors of ancient coins in the world. Because of our friendship, he had offered Qatar as the headquarters for our operation but could not grant me citizenship because I was Christian. Yet, Qatar is the richest nation on Earth on a Per capita basis.
I was advising a company called GRANEDEX, which was a front for Russia’s KGB. I could never tell who was who. I had even the counter-revolutionary army in Iran coming to me, for they were trading to make money to overthrow the religious government in Iran. I would be on a phone call with a client from Saudi Arabia who asked about gold, and I said it depended on what OPEC would say that day. He put me on hold, dialed into the OPEC meeting, and they put me on speakerphone. Those days taught me about war and how capital flows could be used to forecast war and geopolitical events. It cut my teeth of those wildest days in global finance.
I lectured on foreign exchange and international capital flows in the 1980s in Chicago. To my shock, Milton Friedman came to listen to me. When I finished, he walked up to introduce himself and said it was the best lecture he ever heard and that I was doing what he had only dreamed about. We became friends, for I did not know then, but Milton had written about the floating exchange rate system and how it would put a check and balance against governments back in 1953. Only then did I understand what he meant that I was doing what he had only dreamed about in 1953 in his Essays in Positive Economics – some 18 years before the collapse of Bretton Woods on August 15th, 1971.
Milton saw three types of monetary systems: Fixed, pegged, and floating rates. Most never looked deeply into the exchange rate system. Under a floating exchange rate monetary system, the central bank sets a monetary policy. Still, it has no exchange-rate policy itself, for that is created by the free market on a sort of autopilot basis. Therefore, the monetary base is determined domestically by a central bank.
Now, compare that to Bretton Woods’ fixed exchangerate system. Milton saw that politicians set the exchange rate yet have no power in the money supply since that is the central bank’s domain. Hence, under a fixed exchange-rate regime, a country’s monetary base is determined by the balance of payments, moving in a one-to-one correspondence with changes in its foreign reserves. That often led to trade wars and protectionism, as was the case under the gold standard during the Great Depression.
Many assumed that pegged rates were just the same as fixed exchange rates. Milton saw them as quite different. A pegged exchange rate system involves the central bank aiming for money supply and the exchange rate that would lead to exchange controls and were anti-free-market mechanisms focusing on international balance-of-payments adjustments. Therefore, pegged exchange rates lacked any free-market automatic response mechanism that would produce natural balance-of-payments adjustments. Consequently, pegged rates would require a central bank to manage both the exchange rate and monetary policy.
Unlike floating and fixed exchange rate systems, pegged exchange rate systems would result in conflicts between monetary and exchange rate policies. Indeed, I had argued against the Plaza Accord in 1985 and wrote to President Reagan, warning this would lead to an imbalance and a crash within two years, which became the 1987 Crash. They had sold one-third of the US debt to Japan, and this idea of manipulating the dollar down to reduce the trade deficit would cause the Japanese to sell US assets. The capital inflows reversed from inflows between 1980 and 1985 because of the excessive interest rates to stop inflation by Paul Volcker, which led to a new panic in selling US assets.
Under a pegged exchange rate system, a central bank often attempts to sterilize the ensuing increase in capital inflows, which expands the domestic money supply by selling government bonds to reduce the domestic component of the base. When outflows become “excessive,” a central bank attempts to offset the decrease in the foreign component of the base by buying bonds, increasing the domestic component of the base.
Balance‐of‐payments crises would typically erupt as a central bank begins to offset the withdrawal of the foreign component of the monetary base with a domestic increase in the money supply buying in government bonds. FX traders will then jump into selling the currency in response to the increase in the money supply based on what they perceive is happening.
Therefore, Milton theorized what would happen going back to 1953. It is important to stress that economic freedom was the primary motivator for Friedman’s theories – not the gold standard v fiat as the novice gold advocates keep pushing who are oblivious to how the economy works or the politics required for a gold standard. The entire social system would come crashing down, including Social Security. Politicians would not know how to run for office if they could not promise to rob the rich to give to the poor. There is a lot more to any type of fixed exchange rate system than meets the eye.
Milton came to listen to me BECAUSE I developed a Capital Flow Model to track the rise and fall of currencies. This is what he meant by saying what I was doing was what he had dreamed about way back in 1953. Milton’s work in the chapter The Case for Flexible Exchange Rates was perhaps THE MOST influential forward-thinking on economics ever written. I was unaware of it until he shook my hand. It is next to impossible to find this in digital format. You find countless others commenting on this chapter. I cherish my autographed 1953 copy to this day. Milton concluded that what I was observing running around the world was indeed true back in 1953.
“The nations of the world cannot prevent changes from occurring in the circumstances affecting international transactions. And they would not if they could. For many changes reflect natural changes in weather conditions and the like; others arise from the freedom of countless individuals to order their lives as they will, which it is our ultimate goal to preserve and widen; and yet others contain the seeds of progress and development. The prison and the graveyard alone provide even a close approximation to certainty.”
Today, they are preparing capital controls, central bank digital currencies to control our spending, and pretending to raise taxes they claim will prevent the natural cycles in climate. That is up there with raising the taxes on the rich, which never results in lowering taxes for anybody else. All of this is because the fiscal side depends on their Ponzi Scheme of issuing endless new debt to pay the previous debt while expanding it. After all, they are incapable of fiscal management. This entire house of cards is coming down. When it does, the majority of the people will be told it is because of the rich, and we have to get them just as they did in Russia and China, costing the lives of over 200 million people who resisted. History repeats BECAUSE human nature never changes. Those in power will NEVER relinquish that power willingly. As the old saying goes:
Hopefully, this time, the system will be so unstable it will collapse all by itself, just as communism did in the blink of an eye in 1989. It is now 34 years since that event. Our time has come. That is one major reason some hate my guts.
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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