http://armstrongeconomics.com/2014/04/07/panic-cycles-of-marchapril/

Quote from: Armstrong

The Panic Cycles have been hitting going into the end of March/early April. This is generally showing shifts in trend near-term but more so that capital is really getting confused where to go.

Quote from: AnonyMint on December 03, 2013, 08:45:34 AM

Martin Armstrong often quotes Herbert Hoover about international currency movement at that time of the early 1900s into the Great Depression.

Quote

"During this new stage of the depression, the refugee gold and the foreign government reserve deposits were constantly driven by fear hither and yon over the world.

We were to see currencies demoralized and governments embarrassed as fear drove the gold from one country to another.

In fact, there was a mass of gold and shortterm credit which behaved like a loose cannon on the deck of the world in tempest-tossed era."

Herbert Hoover Memoirs, 1952 Greatest Bull Market In History, p354

Capital today is running hither searching for a safe haven and not finding one. Armstrong often says it was like re-arranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.

At that time, it was the technological unemployment due to the Second Industrial Revolution that kicked in with factories that accelerated the demise of the cottage industries in Europe, which thus caused capital from Europe to run around seeking a safe haven. It mostly ended up in the USA.

http://armstrongeconomics.com/2013/12/01/gold-hedge-against-making-money/

Quote

The USA was bankrupt in 1896 when JP Morgan lent it gold. After World War I and II, the USA had 76% of the total world gold reserves and that is what the dollar became the reserve currency. It was WAR and capital flows that made the dollar what it is. Europe became too socialistic after the wars and thus remained second-rate.

Quote from: AnonyMint on February 22, 2014, 10:51:05 PM

Why The Only Solution is Technological

By the time you realize I am correct, you will be behind the others who realized earlier. Most people are still on the Titantic rearranging the deck chairs (see quote of Hoover). This is why the USA is actually booming until 2015.75, because capital is now fleeing into the USA from the emerging (peripheral) markets where the riots first manifest. But this ends up at the core reserve currency at the end game 2016ish. We can see how regulation appears to be a very loving and correct direction (listen to her charming speach). She is head of the IMF that is proposing 10% confiscation (termed "financial repression") of bank account balances across the EU to bring debt back to 2007 levels (i.e. not a solution and they will have to come back for more and more).

My opinion is that anything that does not circumvent law (which can be a legal activity, e.g. see the "Don't follow me, I'm the 5th car") is going to end up destroyed just like that dramatic upthread chart of the population of Rome falling from 1.3 million to 30,000 (because everyone fled the government). Apparently the-powers-that-be in the USA government are moving towards totalitarian allegiance analogous to recent events in the Ukraine. The entire premise of the Economic Devastation thread is that the Ineptacracy of socialism can't stop until it kills everything or until one of the following occurs:

A new technology renders the government impotent.
A Benevolent dictator like Caesar crosses the Rubicon to restore sanity

Note the people rising up as in Ukraine is not a solution, because they have no economically viable technology to remain decentralized. They will fall right back into the power vacuum of democracy with escalating chaos with Egypt as a recent example, because the fundamental problem is economic bankruptcy due to peaking socialism and debt (the people are not ready to embrace the decentralized Knowledge Age and the end of a public welfare and retirements system). Only a dictator or a technological solution to the power vacuum is a solution at this time (the contentionism has swung to anarchy because the time to make new social constitutions is not now for reasons stated).

And the benevolent dictator is also not sustainable, e.g. Rome continued to destroy itself after the vested interests of socialism killed Caesar. This is why only technology is responsible for sustainable gains in the lives of the people. Note CoinCube and I have postulated that in the theory of contentionism (a new term we invented) the top-down order (with socialism being one form) plays a role in the organization necessary to spawn new entropy, e.g. decentralizing technology.

Thus the only popular thing left standing will be the one that is impervious to government.

Gold and silver hoarding leads to a feudal Dark Age (which historically typically have long durations, e.g. 600 years), because the velocity-of-money (V in the Quantity Theory of Money) collapses. V is already down -50% since 2008. Capital is already running and disappearing into hoards. This will accelerate (as more frogs wake up from their blissful ignorance of what is going on and jump out of the boiling pot) if we don't have technological solution very soon.

And I have good news for you. I've had an additional epiphany recently that I have not written about publicly. I am becoming uber confident that Bitcoin is not the future of commerce, finance, and business. And become more confident I see (all the economic and algorithmic details of) the future technology in my mind's eye. Stay tuned, it won't be too long now. Commerce, finance, and business will never go back to centralized again. This changes the order that had existed since Mesopotamia.

So this isn't about crossing a crisis and coming back to the same notions of the way things are today. This is leaving the old ways behind forever.

P.S. Three prominent forecasters (with not such stellar prediction performance as Martin Armstrong who predicts the same, yet all with a correct model) are predicting "economic devastation" ahead. CoinCube do you think they read your thread and got that quoted term from you? (your thread in in the top 3 listings at Google for that quoted term)

P.S.S. W.r.t. to Bitcoin becoming government compliant, there is this problem that there isn't just one global government (yet), so its global fungibility will be pecked away by the discordant nation-state vultures. And as the recent Mt.Gox fiasco exemplifies, there isn't anything the government touches that doesn't get bloated and less efficient.

"An elephant is a mouse built to government specifications." - Lazarus Long.

pungopete468, hope you don't mind if I use your comments as an example the capital is starting to fret and get confused where to run to.

Quote from: pungopete468 on April 05, 2014, 06:14:28 AM

I don't care about the price of Bitcoin, it's nothing more than a speculative investment now. I feel despair right now because I'm living within an irrational system where the only logical outcome is complete and total collapse. I feel like every attempt to secure wealth is an act of futility. We're all just ducking and covering before the bright burning flash. I fear the new world will be unrecognizable and hostile when compared against the one before it.

Even Martin Armstrong has no clue what to do and has started to write in a tone of despair.

http://armstrongeconomics.com/2014/04/03/rising-threat-of-international-war/

Quote from: Armstrong

The West is being outplayed by Russia on every front for the economy is declining and Russia can smell the blood. Then the likelihood of war in Asia cannot be ignored. As the economy turns down, we may yet see a war between China and Japan. As we pointed out in the Cycles of War report, that cycle of border clashes with China has also unfolded precisely on that cyclical study.

War correlates with the economy. WWI follows economic decline of Europe and the 26 year Long Depression just as WWII followed the Great Depression. When things are booming, there is no major international war. Turn the economy down and that is it and it becomes time to get even for old wounds. In China the dislike of Japan for previous history runs deep to the point you could not really find even a Japanese restaurant in Beijing. Likewise, in Europe, the resentment against Stalin runs extremely deep.

With the Western economies turning down and no hope in hell of surviving the pension crisis, war is needed to escape the broken economic promises. This is a sad statement to even have to make. But the majority are just a herd of sheep and cannot see past the rear-end of the lamb in front of them.

I have hoped that publishing these studies we could help mitigate the coming crisis, but as I have said previously, you cannot manipulate a trend. It looks like all we can do is prepare for own survival. This is just the way government escape its failures thinning the herd.

http://armstrongeconomics.com/2014/04/06/poland-confiscate-bond-holdings-from-private-pension-funds-more-deflation/

Quote from: Armstrong

Poland on Wednesday confiscated all bond holdings of private pension funds. This will be booked on their balance sheet to reduce their debt to GDP ratio by as much as 8%. This is actually being discussed as I have reported in Europe and the USA. Most will follow that same course and fail to realize that government CONSUMES national wealth it does not create it. This is part of the deflationary cycle we are in and WHY I have stated there is ZERO chance of hyperinflation. Governments are confiscating wealth not printing their way out of anything.

http://armstrongeconomics.com/2014/04/06/inflation-is-not-always-caused-by-change-in-money-supply-deflation-is-engulfing-europe/

Quote from: Armstrong

Silver declined from 1919 into 1932 during a huge inflationary boom. So where is the beef? I deal in facts not opinions. Prove to me there is some one-to-one relationship between the supply of money and inflation PLEASE!. There is no such relationship and I have the largest database in the world tracking money supply even into ancient Roman times.

Quote from: Armstrong

The velocity of money peaked with the 1998.55 (July 20th) peak in the Economic Confidence Model. As taxes have been rising, tax enforcement has risen, and the insane changes to capital gains taxation where you pay now on gains, but losses you can only write off $3,000, investment declines as does VELOCITY. The greed of government has all combined to reduce long-term investment. Then add the 2011 hunt for Americans worldwide and you have a classic trend of collapsing velocity in money that negates inflation and increases cash holdings as liquidity declines further. Corporate cash is at a record high $1.64 trillion demonstrating how the velocity of money is also critical. If the velocity increases yet the supply of money remains unchanged, this will be inflationary for more people are spending and money turns over rapidly without increasing the supply. Nonetheless, increase the money supply, as the Fed has done, but raise taxes, tax enforcement, and the collapse in the velocity of money will offset any increase.

Quote from: Armstrong

Raise taxes on the rich to help the poor, sends capital fleeing from an economy and all you have left are the poor. Just look at Detroit and fast-forward to all the cities. There is no such thing as creating social justice through taxation. It is no different from saying everyone in school will be given the same grade so there is educational justice. The smart will stop studying (producing) because they will get nothing in return for their effort.

We are only equal in rights not ability or talent. I have no dreams of being a rock star because I cannot sing.

http://armstrongeconomics.com/2014/04/06/french-socialists-cannot-just-stop-reform/

Quote from: Armstrong

European countries are struggling with their high taxes, little entrepreneurship, and crazy socialism that is eating their economy from within like a cancer. The best thing they can hope for is a Russian invasion so they can pretend that was the cause of their economic failure.

About 50% of the French youth just want to leave France.

[snip]

Frances trade balance has declined from a surplus of 1 percent of gross domestic product in 1999 to a deficit of 3 percent last year with ZERO prospect of reversing.

http://armstrongeconomics.com/2014/04/05/lagarde-part-ii/

Quote from: Armstrong

Keynes made it clear you move to deficit spending only in a depression to stimulate DEMAND, and otherwise you lower taxes in just a recession to stimulate DEMAND something they will never do.

Politicians took only the part of Keynes they wanted to hear. Nobody in their right mind EVER advocated deficit spending every year with no intention of ever paying anything back. This is not Keynesian economics it is fiscal mismanagement.

http://armstrongeconomics.com/2014/04/04/hsbc-perhaps-the-worst-offender-of-depositor-rights/

Quote from: Armstrong

Get caught carrying even $50,000 in cash in the USA and they have the right to seize it PRESUMING it must be illegal. Anyone who dares to think there will be some return to a gold standard is dreaming. These people are eliminating cash and even when it is in a bank you still have to prove it is yours! A friend got divorced and the account was being split in half. The bank refused to wire any money to the wife at a separate bank until they showed up in the bank to prove why they were moving money and this was in Switzerland. There is ZERO presumption of anything being yours. Welcome to 1984 its just a little late on arrival 31.459 [Pi x 10] years to be exact.

This is coming down to what is yours is really theirs and always negotiable so shut-up and be thankful they let you spend anything for yourself or your family since they have the right to everything.

http://armstrongeconomics.com/2014/04/04/the-new-age-of-virtual-protectionism-the-us-virtual-oligarchy/

Quote from: Armstrong

The US hunting of Americans doing any business offshore and in the process they are destroying economic expansion to the point only the big multinationals can go offshore. This is having the de facto impact of a virtual oligarchy in the USA since only the big multinationals can operate. Small business is being destroyed by the IRS policies and the greed of Congress seeking more taxes rather than reform is contracting international trade that can ONLY fuel the coming economic collapse. Add to this trend the Cold War and the net outcome is the same result that spiraled during the Great Depression PROTECTIONISM.

http://armstrongeconomics.com/2014/04/04/influence-v-discovery/

Quote from: Armstrong

It is shameful that the West is convoluted (invegalled) in such political corruption that they will destroy what we have before they will ever consider their approach is dead wrong.

It is always a battle against the self-interest of government because they THINK influence is the key. They accused me of being TOO influential for their own failures. They only pray in silence for my death in hopes that will end my influence and then they will be right at last. They are just fools standing before a mirror and looking upon themselves as king. Our problem, we remain the victim of their delusions of greatness. The object that must endure their folly.

http://armstrongeconomics.com/2014/04/04/china-adopted-our-capital-flow-models/

Quote from: Armstrong

Virtually every major government is following our models. Yes, I met with China directly and they had a printed copy of everything I ever wrote and read it.

I have spent untold amounts of money building this analysis back for thousands of years to see HOW everything functions over time and if it has ever changed.

[snip]

Politicians know nothing about what they are doing. Why did the S&L Crisis unfold? Because Democrats came in and altered the tax codes to get more money as always and impacted the write off in real estate creating a one way market SELL. Then they blamed S&Ls when they were regulated and told to invest in real estate. Every single economic collapse is set in motion by GOVERNMENT. Never has any investigation ever turned up a single private cause.

The Plaza accord starting the G5 (now G20) to manipulate the dollar down by 40% in order to reduce the US trade deficit, created the 1987 Crash and sent capital rushing back to Japan that they did not understand creating the 1989 Bubble. Now Europe is trying to outlaw short-selling thinking that will stop the collapse. That will accelerate the fall.

Here is my letter to Rubin in 1997 when he was starting the same stupid stuff trying to talk the yen up for trade. After I sent this letter, he shut up. Someone has to remind these clowns about reality. It was Geithner who had to reply. Nonetheless, the 1997 Currency Crisis unfolded.

[snip]

We have spent vast amounts of money to collect databases from ancient times to date to see how capital flows dictate war and even the rise and fall of nations. Some have tried to mock the idea that there can be a cycle to war, yet they have never attempted any such analysis demonstrating their bias that precludes any advancement. Yet they persist in trying to criticize what they do not understand nor have ever attempted to test.

http://armstrongeconomics.com/2014/04/03/economics-sanctions-do-not-move-or-we-will-commit-suicide/

Quote from: Armstrong

Economic sanctions against Russia are really stupid. It is like the scene from Blazing Saddles where he points a gun at himself and says if anyone moves, then black guy gets it. The US is really delusional for Russias annexation of Crimea has heightened concerns in Asia about the possibility of China using force to pursue its claims. The US actually thinks imposing economic sanctions on Russia will be a deterrent to China is just amazing. If the USA imposes sanctions on both China and Russia, who is left to trade with? Europe where the cost of living is already 2x that of the USA and in decline?