Monday, August 26, 2013

MARTIN ARMSTRONG'S LATEST BLOG POSTS

Gold & War

US$20Gold-pile
QUESTION:  Mr. Armstrong, Thanks for your active blog…I feel that l am learning a lot but questions appear to be arriving as quick as answers!
It seems to me that in order for gold to shine, capital must concentrate on the commodity. This, you have stated, will likely come after the Dow sees a phase transition – the flight to quality following the Dow phase transition will be into private assets (including gold) rather than into traditionally-safe treasuries. My question for you – given that 2014 is the start of a war cycle, couldn’t war (eg, in Syria) cause gold to move into the next phase without the Dow entering a phase transition?
Thank you Sir. Please come back to Asia for more conferences (Seoul is a great city to visit).
J
Roman-Hoard-Britain (2)
ANSWER: It has always been a popular notion that war is bullish for gold. That is not actually 100% correct. We studied this aspect using centuries of data. The more accurate statement is that capital fees from wherever the conflict takes place. Simply buying gold is of no use if there is no place to store it.
1900$X-Y-31-Year-Target

Looking at World War I and II, capital fled Europe and moved into the dollar. This drove the dollar up and from 1896 when J.P. Morgan had to lend the US Treasury gold because it was broke, by 1950 the US held 76% of the entire world gold reserves. Everything fled here away from the conflict since you could not store the gold in a bank and probably the only other alternative was to bury your cash as had been the case since ancient times as illustrated above. As shown here, it was money in general, not merely gold. You find that after World War II, even the rarities in stamps and coins of Europe were in the USA.
Byzant-Hoard

3-HoardHere is a hoard of Byzantine gold coins discovered in Jerusalem. Hiding money during times of war has been a long-standing tradition. It did not matter if it was gold, silver, or bronze coins. People have buried their money whenever conflict erupts. This is why so many ancient coins have survived. There have been hoards that cluster around geopolitical turmoil. Indeed, there was a book known as Historia Augusta (Historia Augustaconsists), which is a collection of biographies of Roman emperors from about 117-285AD. This work has been greatly criticized by academics who called it a fraud and fiction because it listed so many emperors during the 3rd century they had never heard of.
SATURNUS
One of those emperors was Saturninus (280AD). In Egypt, a hoard of gold coins was discovered from this chaotic period of civil war where few emperors lasted even 2 years and many just weeks. In that hoard, there were two Saturninus aurei found. This proved the academics were as wrong aboutHistoria Augusta as they had been about Homer, which they had also declared to be just fiction until Heinrich Schliemann (1822-1890) discovered Troy, Mycenae, Thebes etc..  To this day, despite all the evidence that has surfaced, some academics largely still seek to tarnish Historia Augustabecause like government, they just have a hard time admitting mistakes. They cannot prove their allegations – so they just make them up.
All this research has been fascinating. Both World War I and II as well as the Suez Canal Crisis all sent capital rushing into the dollar. However, when there was the Cuban Missile Crisis, capital fled the USA and went to Europe. During the Korean War and Vietnam War, gold did not rise but the dollar declined largely due to inflation.
The bottom line, war will not make gold rise on aSUSTAINABLE basis. It will make capital flows shift away from the area of conflict. If there is a crisis in the Middle East, we should expect oil to rise and gold will rise as well, but this will not be the reason for a sustainable breakout. For that we really need the MAJORITY to begin to see the Sovereign Debt Crisis and begin to question the sustainability of the world financial system. When we see the shift from PUBLIC toPRIVATE, then we will see gold start to breakout. Forget the inflation an war scenarios. Those are not sustainable and historically provide just brief spike rallies and the market collapses from where it came.

When The Top Are Criminals – There Is Nobody To Enforce The Law

Feinstein Dianne
There is no government that has prosecuted its citizens more than the United States. The USA has more people in prison than Europe, China, and Russia nearly even combined. New York City and Mayor Bloomberg spends $168,000 per year per inmate. When you consider that only 4% of the people in prison are there for some violent crime, it is mind-boggling. So it is time to start spending this money to clean up government. Dianne Feinstein has committed a felony and she now deserves that same tax-free living she subjects others to. It is called CONSPIRACY. The Roman Emperor Maximinus (235-238AD) prosecuted one senator for a crime and then prosecuted 4,000 other people for agreeing with him in aCONSPIRACY. Perhaps what was good for Rome should be good for us right now as well?
Knowing that a court held that the NSA would violate the constitution depriving the entire nation of their civil rights paying the tech-companies to “voluntarily” comply with the wish lists of those in the NSA and Congress like Feinstein, makes each and everyone involved criminally guilty of a felony and they should be legally bound to resign as being unfit for office. Of course, that will never happen.
Where most countries only recognize attempts and actual actsfor criminal prosecution, the USA prosecutes CONSPIRACY,which is defined as simply an agreement to perhaps attempt a crime that does not have to even take place. This is why the prisons are full. They allow someone who actually commits a crime to testify against others so he goes home. His “co-conspirators” did not even have to be there claiming they only agreed and were somehow behind the scenes involved. The proof required is only the testimony – that’s it. The most notorious English conspiracy trial was that of Sir Walter Raleigh (c. 1554 – 29 October 1618) who was implicated in a conspiracy by another to save himself. The so-called witness wrote his confession and Raleigh could not even question his accuser who they never showed in court. It was a sham trial. Raleigh was hated by the king and they staged a fake trial to “pretend” they were exercising justice. Welcome to the land ofCONSPIRACY.
Ashcroft-2
Our prisons are full because of one nasty man – the former corrupt Attorney General John Ashcroft. The prosecutors get credit for their career (1) by the number of convictions irrespective of what they did (like Raleigh), and (2) Ashcroft made it that there was no credit unless someone went to prison. Ashcroft of course would not tolerate a bronze statue of Justice with bare breasts and had her covered while he was in office, but he had no problem accepting an 18-month contract worth $28 million to $52 million steered to him by New Jersey prosecutors. Bronze Breasts are obscene but $28 million for 18 months is not. Corruption in Washington is just pervasive and they have no problem raising taxes to get theirs.
Under this legal foundation of CONSPIRACY, absolutely EVERY politician who has backed the NSA in their crimes is now knowingly guilty of CONSPIRACY and in a real world should be in prison now:

18 USC § 371 – Conspiracy to commit offense or to defraud United States

Even President Obama can legally be impeached for he has committed a felony as President of the United States no different than Richard Nixon. We are not talking about a blue dress here or having oral-cigar-sex while sitting on the seal of the United States in the oval office like Mr. Clinton. This is theREAL thing. Of course nothing will be done and nobody willEVER be charged for who can even charge them since most likely Eric Holder is also guilty.
Snowden Edward
No wonder the USA wanted to kill Snowden. He should be given man of the year. Those who called him a traitor are clearly guilty of CONSPIRACY.

NSA Paid Microsoft & Others to Circumvent The Courts – This is Now Criminal

Guardian Logo
The Guardian has now revealed that the NSA paid millions of dollars to Microsoft, Google, Yahoo and Facebook to cover the cost of its illegal activity AFTER the courts ruled that what it was doing was unconstitutional and they could not separate domestic surveillance from pretended international. This all took place AFTER a court ruled that some of the agency’s activities were unconstitutional, according to top-secret material passed to the Guardian.
This is absolutely outrageous and no wonder the head of Microsoft is suddenly retiring. He belongs in prison. The scam is the same thing the banks do all the time. They send the US cash of customers to London and London requires the signature of a customer before placing that money in the overnight markets. The banks steal your cash, pretends it is their’s, signs the papers in London as if it is their’s, and everyone is happy legally in London.
Here we have the same scam. The NSA didn’t break the law. What is going on is the companies involved are WILLINGLYturning over your info and lying to everyone about it. That way the NSA did not violate the law, the tech companies are doing so.
This opens a whole new chapter and it means as long as you do not sue in New York City or Washington DC, these companies have violated EVERYONE’s Civil Rights no different than the South use to do preventing blacks from voting. This is CRIMINAL activity 18 USC § 241 and is serious stuff. There should be a massive class action lawsuit against the whole lot of them and there should be jail time for the CEOs involved along with their counterparts in the NSA who circumvented the courts and the constitution.
Either we are a nation of laws, or we are a nation with laws only for some. 

Real Estate

QUESTION: “Hi Mr. Armstrong, You mentioned before that real estate will decline from 2015.75 and will continue for over 10 years.  Do you still feel that way and why? Thanks,”
1933_Virginia-land-auction

1933 Virginia Land Foreclosure Auction
ANSWER: Real Estate is a strikingly different animal. The 30-year mortgage was created by FDR to try to restore the value of real estate. Our problem today is people will be less and less inclined to lend for 30 years due to uncertainty as this cycle moves forward. Fund managers who are still inside the box will but that stuff all day long until they lose your shirt.
The real estate that has been coming back are high-end in New York City and selected places in Florida for example. But this is being driven by foreign capital inflows. Lots of Europeans are buying in the USA right now to hedge against the banks and the euro. They are trying to keep assets out of the country and the banking system.
Corp-Treas%
Places like Detroit and the lower income will not recover much and will turn down again. The lower the income area the hard it is to sell property. The high end is acting like a hedge at this time. That will survive and may rise sharply into 2015.75. The downside will be purely one of liquidity. Cash always rises in purchasing power during economic declines.However, we are not likely to see the traditional flight to quality. Expect cash to go to corporate bonds more so than real estate after 2015.75. There is likely to be a crisis in government debt at the state and local level that infects the national level as well. As shown here, there was a reduction in the flight to quality after the 1931 Sovereign Debt Crisis as corporate yields declined in a premium over federal issues. This is what we see coming ahead. The quality will more and more emerge on the private side.

No Indication of Postponement Yet

brazil_riots 2013

Brazil Demonstrations
There is a possibility of a postponement for the Phase Transition (doubling in value) in the US share market into 2025. A postponement could be caused by war. Otherwise, that issue aside, everything is still lined up in that direction. We have the capital flows pouring out of India, Brazil, and it is even starting in China. There is some debate that the economic numbers out of China are overstated regarding economic growth. We even are seeing capital leave Japan. The environmental disaster with the Fukushima’s reactor there is far worse than initially reported. There are now private projects to produce energy from solar and wind and that the government is entering into contracts.
Meanwhile, the greatest concern is we end up with military action by the USA to distract the people from the economic crisis. They see the turmoil in Europe and this is what Homeland Security has been preparing for domestic civil unrest. Obama has been doing his best to strip citizens of all arms and he has been buying up ammunition everywhere. They lied to begin Vietnam, Iraq, and every piece of evidence suggest that the Japanese tried to deliver a declaration of war to the White House and were turned away. Even 911 seems as though they allowed that to take place so they could use it as cover to eliminate the evidence that $2.3 trillion was unaccounted for in the Defense budget that Rumsfeld one day before acknowledged and said he would launch an investigation. WTC7 was hit by nothing yet collapsed straight down into dust destroying decades of evidence seized from us that would have exposed all the corrupt market manipulations by the NY Bankers. Who knows what else was there.
Free Syrian Army soldiers in Idlib
Now we have US Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel stating publicly that President Obama has asked the military to“prepare options for all contingencies” as the Syrian crisis appears to escalate on trumped up claims that the government used chemical weapons right in front of UN inspectors when it was not necessary since the army had the upper hand. Syria has come out and warned against foreign involvement in conflict and Russia is coming out on the side of Syria. In Egypt we support the overthrown of the religious extremists yet is Syria we see to support the extremists. Whoever support our secret agenda is always the good guy regardless of the politics.
It certainly appears that the powers in Washington need a war to hold on to power. They appear to be setting the stage for that with great speed. There is nothing that they ever do that is honest or can be trusted. Now we are to invade helping the religious fanatics they call terrorists one day and freedom fighters the next. These people beheaded a priest cutting off his head with a knife.Who knows really where the truth lies any more. But there is nothing like a good war to get people to forget their unfunded pensions might have to be given up for God, Country, and lying politicians.

There is no long-term future without serious reform

COMMENT:  Yes you are correct MA  Australia is way to socialistic!!  This country needs people with brains but those with them don’t want to stay because they can feel the isolation and limit of the countries location.  
But do you think the UK is any better??  Look at it , it follows US in war, bows down over NSA (Australia would too by the way!) so the poms are no better in many ways.
Just observation.
Cheers,
FDR
MA-PALM
REPLY: Some people cannot separate OPINION from FACT. I loved Australia. I rummaged through the outback even swimming with the “Freshy” crocks. I lived in London and still have my British drivers license. But those fond memories only sadden me to see the economic demise. Britain was perhaps my second home. I always visited Margaret Thatcher in Victoria. Unfortunately, personal fondness has no room in analysis. Britain looks bad. Its banking system is corrupted by New York.
So for now, the choices of a safe place to retire are diminishing like grass in the middle of an August drought (February downunder). So no. Perhaps we will have to meet in shallow water someplace and bring our own rock and start from scratch. The days of freedom and the life we once dreamed of are fading into the night. We so desperately need to get rid of these professional politicians who support things like the NSA and line their pockets with the help of the bankers. There is no long-term future without serious reform.

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