Armstrong Economics Blog/Economics Re-Posted Feb 24, 2021 by Martin Armstrong

QUESTION: Mr. Armstrong,

My wife and I are trying to buy a second home. We live in Wisconsin and want a place somewhere warm. We are trying to buy in Florida, but we are financing it and we bid at the asking. However, on all of the properties, someone comes in with cash and ABOVE asking.

Are we buying into a bubble?  Is it best to wait?  I will only consider Florida because that is where you are based off of your computer.

Any guidance would be appreciated.

Best,

P

ANSWER: It does not appear to be a bubble. It is not just the real estate going up in Florida. The problem is limited supply and a mad dash out of New England, Illinois, and California. But this is taking place across the board. I was looking for a classic 328 Fararri of 1985 vintage. I use to have one in London. They were going for $50,000 on average. They are now running  $100-$150,000 in 3 months. The same is happening in collectibles and art. It simply appears that we are entering the phase of a massive shift from Public to Private assets. This is our Index we have provided to our Institutional clients over the decades. The historic low was 2009 post-1968. This trend appears to be in motion overall into 2032.

In real estate, very few places up for sale and they are selling very fast. The draconian measures in the Democratic states like New York and California have accelerated the migration out of those regions. More than 1 million people have fled New York City to Florida already. You have major chains shutting down in New York City. New Yorkers are fleeing to Florida and so are the restaurants from New York. New Yorkers are realizing that even when vaccinated, it will not return to normal. New Yorkers are even migrating to Texas. But with the Ice Storms there, they are already shifting to Florida. Places like New York City are just no longer safe as is the case now in many cities in California. Gun permits are soaring in New York because of the sharp rise in crime. Politicians do not understand anything. If you are in business and sales decline, you run sales to try to boost activity. In New York, you impose lockdowns, revenue declines, so the solution is tax taxes and fees like tolls. You can’t make up this sort of brain-dead mismanagement. On top of all of that, the lockdowns have resulted in alcohol abuse, kids committing suicide for they cannot learn remotely, the very fabric of society is being torn apart.

I personally am not thrilled about this. Traffic has increased noticeably. Please go to the east coast! Even my house has doubled in value in four years. Florida is the safe-haven in the United States with no state income tax and no ice storms and a governor who has rejected the Democrat’s lockdown agenda that destroys society and business. It reminds me of my favorite movie, Brave Heart, being of Scottish heritage. They may take our lives, but they will never take our freedom. Just sometimes, you have to stand up against tyranny or you and your posterity will lose everything.

Armstrong Economics Blog/History Re-Posted Feb 24, 2021 by Martin Armstrong

QUESTION: Marty, I watched a documentary on Cleopatra. Strange how she was married to her younger brothers. They said nobody knows what she really looked like but I thought if anyone would really know, it must be you. Was she the most beautiful woman of antiquity or was that legend?

FR

ANSWER: Plutarch does remark that the Romans pitied Antony for having callously evicted his dutiful wife Octavia from their house, “especially those who had seen Cleopatra and knew that neither in youthfulness nor beauty was she superior to Octavia” (LVII.3). It was said that her seductive abilities were superior, not necessarily her looks.

When we look at the coinage, that is how we are often able to identify the bust. They had created models for the coin engravers to follow for their images. Therefore, we can refer to the coins to get a real sense of who someone really was.

In the case of Cleopatra,  coins clearly support what Plutarch wrote and he tends to be more historically accurate in general. The Romans I believe claimed she was so beautiful because Octavia was said to have been stunning. However, claiming Cleopatra was beautiful may be more of a rationale for her seducing both Caesar and Antony.

As for marrying her brother, there were two trends that gave rise to that practice. In ancient Egypt at that period in time, one was considered very lucky to have married their sister. Perhaps it was just keeping the property in family hands. In the case of Cleopatra, her family from Ptolemy I who was a general of Alexander the Great, were Greeks – not Egyptian. So some of the claims that Cleopatra was African were really absurd.

The son of Ptolemy I became Ptolemy II Philadelphos which meant “brotherly love” but not in the Christian sense, in terms of incest. Therefore, the entire family line of the Prolemy I were Greeks and nobody intermarried with an Egyptian.

The Ancient Egyptians were not a black race but were Phoenicians in origin. The question of the race of ancient Egyptians was always a hotly debated topic but the art does not support an African heritage.  They appear to be more of the white race of Greeks which was the same for the Carthaginians. The dispute was really settled with DNA taken from mummies which revealed they were not of African origin.

The fall of the Bronze Age civilizations throughout the Middle East and Northern Africa, with the single exception of the Egyptians barely holding on, was the result of the invasion from up north of what was called the Sea People. There was most likely a pole migration which caused the temperature to drop sharply up north and inspired the migration south.

The freezing of the Whooly Mamouths in Siberia is estimated to have been about 10,000 years ago which may also account for why recorded history really beings about 6,000 BC. Dwarf woolly mammoths survived until about 4,000 years ago on Wrangel’s Island, north of Russia), and now their remains are disappearing fast.

It certainly appears that there was a dramatic shift in climate around 2,000 BC which impacted the migration out of Africa reversing the trend backward.

Armstrong Economics Blog/Cryptocurrency Re-Posted Feb 24, 2021 by Martin Armstrong

QUESTION: Marty, I found your passing comment on cash-like coupons by private stores becoming cash in the digital world. Could you elaborate?

thank you as always

BK

ANSWER: Aside from the ancient Roman prostitute token, we have often found private tokens emerge as money during periods of shortages in physical money. The Roman Emperor Tiberius (14-37AD) was notoriously frugal. Where his predecessor Augustus (27BC-14AD) minted coins like no other emperor with so many varieties well over a 100, Tiberius reduced everything to two designs and cut the money supply. He ended up creating a Financial Panic of 33AD which was also a shortage of cash like during the Great Depression.

Hence, we find not only the prostitute tokens but a full range of tokens with different numerals on the reverse expressing value. One theory argued that they were tickets for entrance to the theater or the games, and the numerals represented sections in the stands, or that they were brothel tokens, with the obverse representing a chosen “product” and the reverse the price. However, this theory seems unlikely when one considers that the two seemingly divergent themes are joined by the same die links to the numeral reverses.

Alberto Campana (“Le Spintriae: Tessere Romane con Raffigurazioni Erotiche,” in La Donna Romana Imagini e Vita Quotidiana [2009], pp. 43-96) has published a new die study of the erotic pieces, recording eight specimens with at least basic find spot information, most notably a sealed tomb in Modena, firmly dated to the mid-late Julio-Claudian period, as well as other examples found around the Roman world in Palestine, Gaul, Germany, and Britain, often in areas of military interest. He notes that these tokens (tesserae) are primarily struck in orichalcum, a metal more valuable than regular copper or bronze. He thought they might be game pieces from a now-forgotten board game, possibly a variant of duodecim scripta, a game resembling modern backgammon (“Les spintriae et leur possible fonction ludique,” in Archeothema 31 [2013], p. 66).

These theories that have tried to come up with an explanation for these tokens, or tesserae, fail to consider the economics of the time. When we look at such periods of austerity such as the American Civil War were there was a shortage of metal coins and the Great Depression where hundreds of cities were forced to print their own currency, then these tesserae from the time of Tiberius are more in line with the financial crisis of 33AD and the fact that Tiberius reduced the coinage dramatically and disapproved of real estate speculation at the time.

During the American Civil War, the shortage of coins led to private companies striking their own coinage, The reverse would often advertise the store but these tokens were generally accepted universally. They were treated as regular pennies.

We find also higher denominations where they used postage stamps as the backing. They were encased and again on the reverse, you will find the store advertising that they were the originator. Once more, these were universally accepted in common day to day commerce.

From the Panic of 1873, once again there was a shortage of coinage developing. Here we find an 1876 token issued by R. H. Macy & Company. The US demonetized silver in 1873 and stopped producing the silver half-dime. They also changed the design of much of the coinage. In 1874 they minted 14.1 million pennies but in 1876 it dropped to 7.9 million and in 1877 production collapsed to just 852,500. Indeed, the 1877 Indian Head pennies are rare due to the economic slump that began in 1873 continued with full force. Demand for United States coinage was at an all-time low, and families struggled to make ends meet. Saving even a penny for a coin collection was not an option for most Americans so these coins in uncirculated condition will often bring over $100,000.

The first large issue of Notgeld (Emergency money)started at the outbreak of World War I as coins were hoarded and metals were diverted for wartime uses. These notes were issued in small denominations. This currency was not legal tender — but was used and accepted on a voluntary basis within local areas. The advantage of issuing Notgeld (Emergency money) was that it stabilized local government and local markets, so people could buy and sell what they needed while government services kept functioning, plus it helped concentrate the official currency in the hands of the government, where it could be used for non-local transactions. This very same  trend emerged in the United States during the Great Depression. The central bank in Germany could not produce enough notes to keep up with inflation, so new Notgeld was issued in denominations of thousands, millions and billions of marks. Private Notgeld was also issued in the form of commodities or other currencies for backing: wheat, rye, sugar, coal, wood, natural gas, electricity, gold, or U.S. dollars, known as “Wertbeständige” or notes of “fixed value.”

There was no “helicopter money” during the Great Depression for it was exactly the opposite – massive DEFLATION. There was a shortage of money to the point that hundreds of cities began to issue their own “Depression scrip.” You have to understand the dynamics of economic decline. People naturally hoard their money when they fear the future. The Great Depression was the very age of AUSTERITY where the assumption was that the collapse was due to a lack of confidence in government so they increased tax collection and cut spending, which unleashed both deflation and a dwindling money supply. This led many cities to create their own money due to the lack of money in circulation that was impacted by hoarding.

In Austria, there was an experiment to try to prevent people from hoarding cash during periods of economic crisis. This experiment was hailed as the “Miracle of Wörgl” which also took place during the Great Depression. The Wörgl Experiment began on July 31, 1932, the very month that the Dow Jones bottomed. The experiment involved issuing “Certified Compensation Bills” that were was a form of local currency known as Scrip or Freigeld. The monetary theories of the economist Silvio Gesell were applied by the town’s then-mayor, Michael Unterguggenberger. What differed from Gesell’s idea was that the currency would expire. Believe it or not, there are some governments looking into a currency that expires. Since World War II, Europe has issued currency that expired roughly every 10 years. This forced people to bring out the old currency to be swapped and thus prevented hoarding.

The central part of Gesell’s idea was how to stop the HOARDING of money. This is why FDR confiscated gold. He too saw the problem of people hoarding money and not spending it. This is part of every economic decline. If there is no CONFIDENCE in the future, people save more. This is simply human.

Nevertheless, the Wörgl Experiment resulted in a growth in employment largely because they had to use the money. This allowed the local government projects to all be completed, which many called a miracle, for it appeared to defy the depression in the rest of the country. Inflation and deflation are also reputed to have been non-existent for the duration of the experiment. But this was simply the result of money expiring so there was no purpose in hoarding “money” or shifting it back to “asset” appreciation as in hyperinflation. Despite the appearance of success, the Wörgl Experiment was terminated by the Austrian National Bank on September 1, 1933.

This time, they are seeking to use digital currency to just totally eliminate physical money. No matter how politicians try to eliminate the underground economy, as we have witnessed since ancient times when there is a shortage of money that is when the private sector will respond. As I mentioned they will reestablish a rise to the reestablishment of barter and private tokens. In prison, cigarettes were money. Then packs of mackerel. Who knows what will emerge? USB sticks? Perhaps private paper money issued by companies that are a hybrid-coupon perhaps from stores like Macy’s. Big chain stores could easily issue coupons redeemable by the bare which will function as money.