but Lagarde’s ECB keeps buying.
Thanks, Chris, for this interview. I know folks have mixed opinions on Armstrong in this community, but I was actually very excited when I saw you were interviewing him. I really do think there is something very legitimate to the whole topic of public vs private. In fact, if I had to boil many of the trends of today to one unifying topic, I might say it is a trend of decentralization. You see this in businesses (i.e. Uber), cryptocurrencies, and most notably in election results - to name a few. There seems to be a sentiment of increasing distrust in centralized institutions, especially governments. I also think it’s not so far-fetched to believe capital is flowing into the US because it’s the cleanest dirty laundry in the bin and, as a result, asset classes are getting pumped up. Where he lost me a bit in this particular interview is when he says things like fundamentals don’t matter. I disagree with this, but think the fundamentals around sovereign debt levels will be exactly what pushes the very switch from public to private he’s projecting. I think the general thought at PP is that unsustainable sovereign debt will eventually lead to a currency crisis of some sort, which seems to fit with what Armstrong is saying. The only difference is what happens in between now and then.
On gold, I was a little disappointed that he never really answered Chris’s question on the future of gold. I don’t think it was intentional - I think he went off on a tangent - but I would have liked to hear him complete his thoughts on this. What I took away was that gold does not correlate to inflation, but that it doesn’t necessary mean it always moves in opposite directions. If I could infer where he might have gone, I suspect it would have been to say that if/when there is a currency crisis, gold will do very well but that it wouldn’t be tracking inflation because it’s correlated to inflation but because it’s a vehicle to ride through a crisis.
Anyways, just some thoughts. Thanks for the interview.
I read his typewritings in 2008/9 when he was still in custody. After his release he’s very careful about his words.
So, the big question worth pondering at this time is which investments will perform well in a reflationary environment accompanied by large liabilities coming due and with significant internal conflict between capitalists and socialists, as well as external conflicts. It is also a good time to ask what will be the next-best currency or storehold of wealth to have when most reserve currency central bankers want to devalue their currencies in a fiat currency system.
Most people now believe the best “risky investments” will continue to be equity and equity-like investments, such as leveraged private equity, leveraged real estate, and venture capital, and this is especially true when central banks are reflating. As a result, the world is leveraged long, holding assets that have low real and nominal expected returns that are also providing historically low returns relative to cash returns (because of the enormous amount of money that has been pumped into the hands of investors by central banks and because of other economic forces that are making companies flush with cash). I think these are unlikely to be good real returning investments and that those that will most likely do best will be those that do well when the value of money is being depreciated and domestic and international conflicts are significant, such as gold. Additionally, for reasons I will explain in the near future, most investors are underweighted in such assets, meaning that if they just wanted to have a better balanced portfolio to reduce risk, they would have more of this sort of asset. For this reason, I believe that it would be both risk-reducing and return-enhancing to consider adding gold to one’s portfolio. I will soon send out an explanation of why I believe that gold is an effective portfolio diversifier.
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/paradigm-shifts-ray-dalio/?published=t
Pretty sure they used to be published on Jim Sinclair’s Mineset site…
Martin Armstrong clearly has tremendous insight into markets. His thoughts on the importance of capital flows provide a very useful lens through which to consider events. Based on some exposure to his work he has some important blind spots that lessen the strength of his outlook in my opinion.
From my exposure to his work, he seems to be an absolute believer in the power and wisdom of unfettered markets. In general, I agree. However, when markets have important factors omitted from their calculus, such as the externalities of environmental degradation, they will be vulnerable when those externalities diminish the ability of markets and societies to function.
Also, my impression is that oil/energy in his view is simply another commodity. Not accounting for the fundamental importance of energy reduces the value of his perspective. That wouldn’t be apparent to him looking back through history as humans have consistently moved towards more energy dense resources. Our current trajectory will challenge that and hit our “markets” with some nasty surprises.
I find his public/private lense very useful. However, current equity markets seem to be different in some fundamental ways. Certainly in the past I can see how equity markets provided more protection for assets when fear of defaults etc. rise. What is the book value of current equity markets though? What’s the book value of Facebook, Google , Apple or any of the other tech companies that represent such a substantial portion of our equity markets?
His point about the gold market being tiny in comparison to large pools of capital is true. My view though is that those pools of capital, largely representing financial assets that have been inflated without any restrictions based on physical constraints will not simply slosh around the world to find safety. Actually, I do expect a lot of sloshing, I just don’t think they’ll find safety. Most likely we’ll find much of this wealth that sits in financial assets is more imaginary than real and it will go simply disappear.
Kevin
So you get a negative first post about the interviewee and PP rallies to his defense, including calling into question wikipedia, links to a vid on Israel disinformation, and arguments that two wrongs make a right: it’s all good there are felons everywhere!
No one and I mean no one deals with any of the actual behaviour of Armstrong, the charges - multiple charges over a long period of financial advisor malfeisance. This isn’t stuff planted by Gerry in Oz. Really ? Someone registered at PP 3 months in advance just so they could post a quick negative on an interviewee? Dave, your CT slip is showing.
Wiki is a compendium of sources which are all footnoted at the bottom of an entry. Did anyone care to read the many articles at Bloomberg, WSJ, NYTimes, the Guardian, and elsewhere? Were these all Israeli disinformation also? LOL LOL LOL
I don’t doubt that Armstrong might have some particular insights into the way financial advisors raise funds, invest them, report to both the investors and the authorities. Someone doesn’t have to have a clean record to be interesting, that’s for sure. He could start by telling us a lot about what NOT to do. Chris should lead off with that, setting the stage for just who is being interviewed here. Instead not a word…crickets. And that’s not right.
Well, Armstrong is a criminal and a sociopath. Aside from that, his inability to take raw facts and correlate them is proof enough that he is not someone whose opinion is more than the ramblings of a lunatic.
Many smart people have been saying, for nearly a decade, that there is an economic crash looming just around the corner and that gold and silver will be rocketing to unseen heights. Still, most economic indicators have continued to improve while gold and silver have lost more than 50% of their value since 2011 and show no inclination toward changing that trend any time soon. Armstrong’s opinion means nothing compared to those of Martenson, Maloney or my cat.
Armstrong shows his true arrogance with his inability to take centuries of data showing that, since the Industrial Revolution, humans have been steadily burning more fossil fuels while atmospheric CO2 and global temperatures climb at the same rate. Armstrong uses his own “analysis” to “prove” that climate change is fake news. His complete inability to make a simple correlation (and that he is a criminal) place him in a basket with a big sign that says, “Do not listen to the ramblings of this guy.”
Martin points out several aspects of the Epstein affair that sound right to me:
- Big Media is very quiet on two aspects of the Epstein case: a) the network of coercion/blackmail and a) the breadth involved participants. As a diversion, attention is focused on sordid stories of Epstein’s individual depravity. (the “lone deranged pedophile”).
- Prosecutors collected video and pictures of hundreds of underage girls from Epstein’s properties, most of which should be identified or identifiable. Who do they say they were “servicing?”
- Epstein has been at this for 30 years. He been protected by the legal system enabling ongoing abuse of young people. What changed now? One explanation is that Trump was NOT a sex patron and that many wealthy Dems WERE–i,e.–and that leaking this story is just politics as usual in the USA. (If the dems can “find” a “grab 'em by the pussy” audio tape 12 years later and surface it just before the election then the repubs can find a pedo scandal that includes dem leadership and supporters.)
- The battle for control is again being waged by destroying the legitimacy of the opposition (similar to some comments on this thread).
One explanation is that Trump was NOT a sex patron and that many wealthy Dems WEREObviously a lot of very wealthy and otherwise politically powerful people were regular patrons of Epstein's parlors, planes and palaces. Dems, Repubs, both...this isn't a left v. right kind of thing, but rather a right v wrong kind of thing. I found today's release of this by the White House to be rather odd in terms of timing:
There's been a huge (for the US) connecting of the dots and the Israeli connection to Epstein is as obvious as can possibly be.
So...all of a sudden the White House is concerned about Anti-Semitism?
This is the usual ploy when Israel gets caught doing something bad. Connect anything that the state of Israel does to Anti-Semitism. Blur the lines. Mix them up good and solid to the point that the Overton window for such conversations gets slammed good and tight.
The problem with such an approach is that if/when the mood shifts, and you've left people with no choice but to either be Anti-Semitic and have the freedom to be critical of Israel's tactics, or to remain silent, then many people will choose their freedom.
It's an awkward choice to be sure, and one that should never have to be made.
To be clear, I am 99.995% certain that the CIA and MI6 are up to their ears in this mess too. It's just that nobody is (yet) saying that looking too closely at Epstein is an act of Anti-Americanism.
I think it is because a Muslim Congresswoman tweeted some things or said some things that were anti-Israel or even anti-Semitic altogether. Trump is doing this to put more pressure on “the squad.”
I think it is because a Muslim Congresswoman tweeted some things or said some things that were anti-Israel or even anti-Semitic altogether. Trump is doing this to put more pressure on “the squad.”Maybe. But the optics are not good. Meanwhile, the US's electrical infrastructure proved not up to the task of keeping people cool this past heatwave. ConEd let down 80,000 customers in the NYC region, and Madison Wisc looked like an absolute war zone at one point when two separate substations blew up.
Maybe it's time to stop waging endless wars in the Middle East and spend some time and money rebuilding an obviously decaying US empire?
That's a big part of what 'the squad' is talking about and Trump's efforts to marginalize them as Anti-Semitic are quite off-putting to me.
So you get a negative first post about the interviewee and PP rallies to his defense, including calling into question wikipedia, links to a vid on Israel disinformation, and arguments that two wrongs make a right: it’s all good there are felons everywhere! No one and I mean no one deals with any of the actual behaviour of Armstrong, the charges – multiple charges over a long period of financial advisor malfeisance. This isn’t stuff planted by Gerry in Oz. Really ? Someone registered at PP 3 months in advance just so they could post a quick negative on an interviewee? Dave, your CT slip is showing.Those whom the power structure doesn't like, gets hosed. That's just how things work. Anyone with a functioning memory, and the ability to add small single-digit numbers will quickly figure this out for themselves. Armstrong got tossed in prison for 7 years on just "contempt of court" - I think he got the longest contempt citation of anyone in history. Pretty clearly "the system" had a hard-on for making his life unpleasant. This, while other financial criminals at the mainstream banks just get fined. The injustice is really striking to anyone who is even slightly observant. Was it accidental? I don't think so. To me, this lends Armstrong extra credibility. If The System wanted to hose him this badly, then by definition he's got something interesting to say. The government is doing the same thing to Bradley/Chelsea Manning - in jail on "contempt" charges - because s/he refuses to testify against Assange - someone else who has really interesting things to say. Just another case of The State hosing someone they don't like. Flynn, Page: tossed in jail on "lying to the FBI" charges (they are "felons" now - they can't run the register at McDonalds, but that slot running the ECB is still open), while Clinton's staff all got immunity deals. If you're a corrupt tool, you and your staff get a pass. If you are a fly in the State's ointment, you and anyone associated with you gets a ton of bricks dropped on your head As for my Conspiracy Theory "slip" - you must not have read my other posts. I love exploring conspiracy theories, such as: Operation Northwoods. Babies in Incubators. Bomber Gap. Missile Gap. WMD in Iraq. And of course the latest one: Crossfire Hurricane. Thanks for providing more reinforcement that Armstrong actually has something important to say. http://www.gata.org/node/4892 [I do think he's not up on "energy" nor "climate" - but to paraphrase Chris and other posters here, we can always choose to focus on the donut rather than on the hole]
Continuing with DaveF’s theme of “unequal under the law,” Charles Hugh Smith yesterday offers a very incisive comment on how bad it is.
Our Ruling Elites Have No Idea How Much We Want to See Them All in Prison Jumpsuits Divide-and-Conquer has been the absurdly easy strategy of the Ruling Elites to fragment and disempower the citizenry. It's child's play for the Ruling Elites to ceaselessly promote a baker's dozen of divisive issues via the corporate media, and then watch the resulting conflicts split the citizenry into fragmented camps which subdivide further with every new toxic injection.Prayer in schools, kneeling during the national anthem, burning the flag, "send them back", abortion, cartoons about the Prophet, painting over a George Washington mural, etc. etc. Hot button topics that the elite could care less about. But: these issues set the conservatives and liberals at each other's throats. As thc0655 says they are playing the game "Lets you and him fight." Or as Catherine Austin Fitts says: "While we fight, they take the money."
The one issue that could unite the fragmented citizenry is moral revulsion: As the Epstein case promises to reveal, there is literally no limit on the excesses and exploitations of the privileged few in America, no limit on what our Ruling Elites can do with absolute impunity. ... It is painfully obvious that there are two sets of laws in America: bankers can rip off billions and never serve time, and members of the Protected Class who sexually exploit children get a wrist-slap, if that..... There's always a way to lawyer-up and plea-bargain for a wrist-slap, a way to bend another "patriot" (barf), a way to offer a bribe cloaked as a plum position in a philanthro-capitalist NGO (non-governmental organization), and so on. Here's the sad reality: everybody in the Ruling Elites looked the other way: all the self-described "patriots" in the Intelligence services, all the technocrats in the Departments of Justice, State, etc., the Pentagon, and on and on. Everybody with any power knows the whole class of Ruling Elites is completely corrupt....Charles captures my fury also.
http:///www.armstrongecmscam.blogspot.com
Nuff said?
Amusingly, your link kicked off an error: “SSL_ERROR_BAD_CERT_DOMAIN”
Whatever further bad things you have to say about Armstrong remains hidden behind a bad SSL certificate.
You might want to run off and fix it and then tell us when your site is ready for prime time.
https://www.armstrongecmscam.blogspot.com/ Unable to communicate securely with peer: requested domain name does not match the server’s certificate. HTTP Strict Transport Security: false HTTP Public Key Pinning: true Certificate chain: -----BEGIN CERTIFICATE----- MIIMETCCCvmgAwIBAgIQCLG1GZj81WYCAAAAADjY8DANBgkqhkiG9w ... -----END CERTIFICATE-----
@JimOz and @davefairtex,
JimOz had the wrong URL. It’s https://armstrongecmscam.blogspot.com/
ECM model has been debunked here: https://armstrongecmscam.blogspot.com/p/economic-confidence-model.html
Lies about Super-computer is here:
https://armstrongecmscam.blogspot.com/p/lie-about-super-computer.html
I don’t know who this personis or what they are up to, but it looks like no good.
First, they resurrected a year-old+ thread with a “fix” to a bad link.
Second, they put forth a link that is identical to the one that was bad in the first place, claiming that someone “had the wrong URL.”
JimOz had the wrong URL. It's https://armstrongecmscam.blogspot.com/As compared to the original: https://www.armstrongecmscam.blogspot.com/ Looks identical to me. So, enough warning flags here for me to say, don't click this link. I'm leaving it up in case you run across it elsewhere.
Armstrong Economics: Will the Dow Reach 30,000 by 2015?(Martin Armstrong, 08/14/09)
This guy is always wrong…now I’m going to watch the interview.
Damn I was all excited to click that link!
I consume Armstrong’s interviews and blog with some regularity and I give him credit for the things he’s gotten right. But I always thought this Socrates AI thing has more than a bit of a Wizard of Oz feel to it, and it seems like every question he answers on his blog starts with an essay where the questioner totally blows him for five paragraphs before getting down to business.
Like I say, as a gold bug who thought the USD would collapse I credit Armstrong with setting me straight about why that wouldnt happen and his capital flows arguments have made the stock market performance make a lot more sense.
Maybe he’s just a crazy genius…