Futures Markets & Money
COMMENT: As you say, future contracts are not immoral. What has created quite some problems in recent years was the ability to work with structurate finance using both futures and ability to speculate leveraging on margin. The combination of the two can be quite dangerous if most of the money are trapped here.
As for money, it doesn’t have to have value. Money is just a mean to carry out a transaction. It is a surrogate for something else that is the object of the transaction. Transactions are the issue on which we have to focus.
Unfortunately there is this dumb idea that creating money equals creating wealth. If that might hold true at an individual level, it is not true anymore at a systemic level and consequences are dramatic if we do not get that…
REPLY: It has been the constructed products using futures that blow up for therein lies the complexity that they cannot grasp. I advised Temple University. Before the Orange County scandal back in 1994. They were sold a scheme that you can take say $1, borrow $10 and leverage the interest on that to reflect back to the $1. They would lend you $10 to buy say 30-year bonds and then sell $10 worth of 10-year notes and the spread between the two when reflected back to $1 is a doubling in the interest return.
Two young math boys were selling this structure on behalf of Merrill back then. The Chairman of Temple told them to show me and if I approved, then the trust fund of the University would consider the investment. They flew from Chicago to see me in Princeton. I told them interest rates would turn back up and their spread would reverse. They went back to Chicago and return reworking their numbers. They said see, if rates went up 1% you would break-even. I laughed and said look. This is the trust fund of the University. We cannot play like this and you numbers assume you can get out without chaos. They told the board I was “too old” to understand the “new way” to make money.
The basic futures market is necessary and it cannot be escaped. The problem comes when you get into complexity for here they were looking at just those two instruments and had no clue as to external factors.
This is WHY I say, everything is connected. You cannot create a trade looking at just two instruments. It is an entire fabric of interconnections and until you open your eyes and understand this reality, you will constantly fail.
The gold promoters constantly claim they are not wrong in their analysis, it has been that they have thoroughly documented the gold price is rigged to artificially low levels by the same interests that caused the 2007-2009 collapse to pick the pockets of Americans even though gold is a tiny fraction of the world economy. They then argue paper gold markets are virtual markets that have nothing to do with the actual price of gold. Both of these statements are dead wrong and ignore the fact that bankers needed a huge bailout because their rigged perfect trades failed in mortgages. When gold rises, it is the futures market that rises then it is somehow real. They want gold to rise but deplore a central market. Without a central market gold would be of little interest. Its value is quotes from exchanges and paper gold was fine until it peaked in 2011. They used that as confirmation they were right only until it declined.
Honestly, making these excuses because they have made the same stupid analytic mistakes that blew up Orange County begs the question if this is true, then why trade gold at all since it is hopelessly manipulated by deep pockets? Then they make the wild claim that gold is suppressed. But why? To maintaining the petrodollar the argue. They haven’t noticed that the US imports of oil have dropped and the price of oil has collapsed. They also ignore the fact the dollar is the only game in town because the Euro has failed. None of this comes into their mind ever. Keeping gold low somehow does not keep the dollar high. This is rhetoric unsupported by the capital flows. It is the fact that the rest of the world is worse that capital hides in the dollar and this has nothing to do with gold. Those who disagree are just captured by this view and will be unable to escape to ever see the world in its entirety.
It is a complex world and no matter what relationship people try to create between two instruments, it will blow up in their face. It is not the futures market – it is the complexity they create and they assume they just discovered sliced bread.
As far as money is concerned, well Spain had more gold than any European nation. They had a big party, but invested nothing in their economy. When the money was spent, they fell back to the poorest nation in Europe and had no means to rise again. It was not the gold that makes the wealth of a nation, it is its people. Give a million dollars to someone on welfare and it will be gone. Studies show people who win the lottery end up broke. Money does not solve all the problems. If you have no skills, you have no worth to society to earn a living and contribute to the national wealth. This is why government consumes wealth, they do not create it.
An Interesting Idea
COMMENT: Remember the musical Cats or Les Miserables; the 60′s songs “Ruby, don’t take your love to town” & “Billy don’t be a hero”; Ralph Nader’s “Only the Super Rich Can Save Us”; Bob Geldorf’s “BandAid”; Earth Hour or New Years? If only your work were similarly processed, your message would go viral globally.
Imagine a brilliantly organised cross-culture global rally coinciding with October 7, 2015.
Imagine a brilliantly organised cross-culture global rally coinciding with October 7, 2015.
NM
Australia
Australia
REPLY: I have been asked if I would accept backers to start an Institute to further investigate this whole phenomenon of cycles. It is an intriguing idea. Perhaps after Socrates launches it may be a way to get things moving into the exploration of time. It really is not fixed. There is even work now exploring if time has been speeding up.
Measles & 51.6 Year Cycle?
COMMENT:
Martin, thank you for the work. Your discovery of the pi cycle is just amazing. I am a mom and you probably heard about the latest measles outbreak from Disneyland and now the scare to force vaccinate everyone. It turns out, I just read that the measles vaccine program started about 52 years ago. There was a researcher by the name of Dr. Heffernan, who by his mathematical calulations predicted that 52 years after the measles vaccine started, society would start to see the vaccine become ineffective and breakouts would occur. 52 years after the measles vaccine program started is 2015. 52 years is exactly your six waves of 8.6 years. You can see the article mentioning the measles vaccine pi cycle here.
I am not even sure that he knew he had calculated a pi cycle. Amazing nonetheless. I think it just gives more credence to your work.
Cheers!
Susan
REPLY: This is precisely what I mean. What I discovered is astonishing. It shows up everywhere in everything from planets and weather to disease and the rise and fall of nations. My hope is to open the eyes and just explore for this is the key to knowledge. This is understanding the unifying structure upon which the entire universe was constructed – cycles. This is how energy moves in all planes of existence.
The Decline & Fall of the United States on Schedule
QUESTION: Mr. Armstrong;
I read your essay on the 224 year cycle and the peak in the United States would occur April 22, 2013. That was the start of Obama’s Syrian invasion argument. I must say, I am blown away with the accuracy of your work. I read an article in the newspaper here that highlighted this event as the decline of America as a world power. Can you explain how or why your models are so refined? From that target all you read about now outside the United States is how America is collapsing as a world power on every front from China, Europe, and Russia.
Thank you for opening my mind.
Joseph
ANSWER: I have written many times before that this has been my privilege to discover the incredible order hidden behind the mask of randomness and chaos. I did not begin this pursuit as some theory to prove. It has been my discovery and in that vain, I hope to leave behind a new field worth exploring. So I have no explanation as why such turns can be pinpointed to the day or what makes these things unfold with stunning accuracy. It has been my blessing and my curse. The blessing is that people like you observe and are moved by fascination. The curse comes from those who do not believe and assume I somehow manipulate the world instead. They will do whatever they can to slander me and to try desperately to prevent others from even reading a single word I might write.
It was on Thursday, April 18th, 2013 that we first heard of the Syrian Chemical Weapon Allegations. Diplomats from both Britain and France reported to the United Nations that there is credible information that the government in Syria had used chemical weapons in its civil war. According to both diplomats, the Syrian government had used chemical weapons multiple times since December 2012. Officials from Israel also said they had evidence that the Syrian government used chemical weapons. Obama also said that the use of chemical weapons by Syria’s government could lead to a military response by the United States. The model pinpointed 4 days later, Monday April 22nd. I wrote in that report:“The 2013 target from the inauguration of George Washington on April 30th, 1789, warns that the United States will begin a 72 year downward spiral. ”
The article you have linked that “the end of America as a World Power” from the German press attributes the start of the decline and fall of the United States to this Syrian issue.
“The descent of the United States as a world power began in Syria: US President Barack Obama, by his nature anyway rather a procrastinator, had to call off the already planned military strike. The military had refused to follow him to the top of the generals there was a veritable . mutiny The highly indebted country to war could not finance such as the Americans were accustomed twofold: to make quick progress and have very few own losses.”
This was the first War Obama could not sell. The American people were lied to way too many times to start wars. There was no support domestically and the standard lies failed. It marked a change in trend for government and ever since, Obama has failed on every possible front. He told the allies not to join the Chinese effort to undermine the World Bank and IMF – they did. One by one, former allies are turning their back on Obama even on the Russian sanctions. The NSA has been caught and American technology is on the decline with products being banned in China.
From this turn in the model, it is like a Financial Panic. Everything is collapsing so rapidly it is mind-blowing. People are now starting to see that report, 224 Year Cycle of Political Change, as a classic. But as I have said, this was my privilege to discover, not my theory to prove. Trying to figure out why everything functions so precisely is a journey others will continue long after I am gone.
Anyone’s work in such a new field is often hated and ridiculed while they are alive and at times plagiarized for others despise someone who gains attention they wish they had. Only after such a person passes does the work continue without the personal attacks, jealousy, and hatred. That is just the dark side of human nature. My work has always been more accepted in Asia and Europe and hated from the epic center of New York. There are those who are curious to learn, and others who are on ego trips and hate others who have something they wish they had. The former constitute the group of knowledge seekers whereas the latter is that dark corner from which communism and socialism emerge – the quest to covet whatever their neighbor has. Some call this the battle between light and darkness or good and evil. But it exists. The latter will always try to discourage people from reading for they cannot stand anyone having something they do not.