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COMMENT: Mr. Armstrong, I just went to see Les Miserables with my wife. I was really moved for it was indeed how history repeats. It just seems we always end up in the same position because government never changes.

ANSWER: Unfortunately, socialistic governments pretend that they are taking your money for your own benefit. The excuses are endless. Nevertheless, they constantly oppress the people by taking an ever increasing portion of their net disposable income, crushing them into the dust. The motives seem to change, but the end is always the same. This is why the Founding Fathers forbid direct taxation. That was such a critical deterrent to prevent revolution. The governments followed Marx at the beginning of the 20th century, and then convinced themselves that they were doing it to care for the people. In the process, they paid themselves pensions that no one else could possibly attain. Forbidding direct taxation was the only possible way to prevent the recurrence of revolution.

We Don’t Need A New Deal: We Need A Whole New Deck

January 26, 2019

We Don’t Need A New Deal: We Need A Whole New Deck

The gap between the earth’s wardens of wealth and the nearly eight billion humans under their control has grown wider and more dangerous but is beginning to be understood by some as a systemic problem and not simply a matter of evil leaders and villainous followers. When people see and feel their futures ranging from problematic at best to non-existent at worst, we get the resultant turmoil and changes taking place in nations moving in many directions at once but all of them against established power over things as they are.

Whether votes are cast in elections labeled democratic though still under minority control, or issues are subject to mob rule of one extreme or another, they are producing governments at least rhetorically dedicated to change even if often dangerously confused or in merely cosmetic form. Nevertheless, those demanding change beyond simply continuing the rule of market forces under minority control are starting to move up and into more commanding roles in governments. Unfortunately, and especially in America, many still operate as though political change amounts to the candidates skin tone, religion or sex, neglecting the philosophy between their ears by concentrating more on the genitals between their thighs.

Thus we have working people going to the polls and electing representatives of wealth operating against their interest but rhetorically speaking of change, which may mean reverting to earlier forms of capital private profit which still leave the public good in poor condition, or worse, sinking into megalomaniacal rule under populists (?) promising to dump even more wrath on those at or near the bottom.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Top 5 Dumbest Arguments Defending Trump’s Venezuela Interventionism

January 26, 2019

Top 5 Dumbest Arguments Defending Trump’s Venezuela Interventionism

Ever since the Trump administration announced that it was no longer recognizing the legitimacy of the elected government of Venezuela I’ve been arguing with people on social media about this president’s brazen coup attempt in that country. The people arguing with me in favor of Trump’s interventionism are almost exclusively Trump supporters, with leftists and antiwar libertarians more or less on my side with this issue and rank-and-file centrists mostly preferring to sit this one out except to periodically mumble something about it being a distraction from the Mueller investigation.

I engage in these arguments not because I enjoy fighting with strangers on the internet, but because it helps me get an idea of what propaganda narratives have been seeded throughout various political sectors. Take a stand online and you’ll quickly have people running up to you saying, in effect, “My media echo chamber told me I’m supposed to disagree with you about that,” and spelling out what they’ve been told to believe.

I have not received a single robust argument in favor of Trump’s Venezuela interventionism, but I have received a whole lot of really, really stupid ones. Here are the top five most common and most astonishingly idiotic of them:

1. “Socialism is bad!”

Me: US interventionism is always disastrous and it always lies about its reasons for targeting South American and oil-rich nations.
Tsunami of Trump supporters: SOCIALISM IS BAD THO

This one is easily the most common and most stupid of all the arguments I’ve been receiving. I’m not familiar enough with pro-Trump punditry to be able to describe how the MAGA crowd got it into their heads that attacking Venezuela has something to do with fighting socialism, but it’s clear from my interactions over the last couple of days that that is the dominant narrative they’ve got swirling around in their collective consciousness.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The CIA, Lost In The Orinoco

January 25, 2019

The CIA, Lost In The Orinoco

René Magritte The black flag 1937

One thing I am not is an expert on Venezuela. What I know is the country has the world’s largest oil reserves, mainly in the Orinoco Belt, but they come in a form of tar sands that while they are not as hard to exploit as Canada’s (viscosity), they’re far from easy, and buried deep. And I know Venezuela had Hugo Chávez as its president, who, for a socialist, was quite successful at what he did (depending who you ask).

And I know of course that the US yesterday recognized an opposition leader, Juan Guaido, as the ‘real’ president of Venezuela, instead of the elected Nicolas Maduro, whom Chávez picked as his successor. Soon as I read that, I thought: CIA. If Chávez, and Maduro, are hated in one place in the world, look no further than Langley, Virginia.

So I looked up a few articles I though would be interesting to read. The first comes from a site called Venezuela Analysis, an entity recommended for Venezuela news. They had the article below, but also this enlightening picture:

Note: in 2002, coincident with the attempted coup against Chávez, half the employees at state oil company PDVSA went on strike. They must have felt like clowns, too, 48 hours later.

The article explains what happened in terms you can find everywhere (but are perhaps good to note), except for the last bit:

Venezuelan Opposition Leader Guaido Declares Himself President, Recognized by US and Allies

Opposition leader Juan Guaido swore himself in as “interim president” of Venezuela on Wednesday, a move which was immediately recognized by the United States and regional allies. “As president of the National Assembly, before God and Venezuela, I swear to formally assume the competencies of the national executive as interim president of Venezuela,” he declared before an opposition rally in eastern Caracas.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The Psychological Warfare Behind Economic Collapse

December 21, 2018

The Psychological Warfare Behind Economic Collapse

The concept of using the economy as a weapon is not an alien one to most people. Generally, we understand the nature of feudalism and how various groups can be herded onto centralized plantations to be exploited for their labor. Some people see this as a consequence of “capitalism,” and others see it as an extension of socialism/communism. Sadly, many people wrongly assume that one is a solution to the other — meaning they think that crony capitalism is a solution to communist centralization or that communism is a solution to the corruption of crony capitalism. The reality is that this is just another false paradigm.

What is most disturbing is that the majority of the public have no grasp whatsoever of the true solution to the problem of corrupt or totalitarian economies: free markets.

Free markets have not existed within the global economy on a large scale for at least the past 100 years. The rise of central banking has eroded all vestiges of freedom in production and trade. Crony capitalism with its focus on corporate power and monopoly has nothing to do with free markets, despite the arguments of rather naive socialists who blame “free markets” for the problems of the world. If you ever hear anyone making this claim, I suggest you remind them that corporations and their advantages are a creation of governments.

The protections of corporate personhood, limited liability, unfair taxation of small business competition and legislation shielding corporations from civil lawsuits are all generated by government. Therefore, corporations and crony capitalism are much more a product of socialist-style systems, not free markets.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Mad World

November 20, 2018

MAD WORLD

And I find it kinda funny, I find it kinda sad
The dreams in which I’m dying are the best I’ve ever had
I find it hard to tell you, I find it hard to take
When people run in circles it’s a very very
Mad world, mad world

The haunting Gary Jules version of the Tears for Fears’ Mad World speaks to me in these tumultuous mad times. It must speak to many others, as the music video has been viewed over 132 million times. The melancholy video is shot from the top of an urban school building in a decaying decrepit bleak neighborhood with school children creating various figures on the concrete pavement below. The camera pans slowly to Gary Jules singing on the rooftop and captures the concrete jungle of non-descript architecture, identical office towers, gray cookie cutter apartment complexes, and a world devoid of joy and vibrancy.

The song was influenced by Arthur Janov’s theories in his book The Primal Scream. The chorus above about his “dreams of dying were the best he ever had” is representative of letting go of this mad world and being free of the monotony and release from the insanity of this world. Our ego fools us into thinking the madness of this world is actually normal. Day after day we live lives of quiet desperation. Despite all evidence our world is spinning out of control and the madness of the crowds is visible in financial markets, housing markets, politics, social justice, and social media, the level of normalcy bias among the populace has reached astounding levels, as we desperately try to convince ourselves everything will be alright. But it won’t.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

“No One Will Stop Us” – Venezuela’s Maduro Slams Trump’s UN Speech Which Hinted At Coup

September 26, 2018

“No One Will Stop Us” – Venezuela’s Maduro Slams Trump’s UN Speech Which Hinted At Coup

During his Tuesday UN General Assembly address President Trump held nothing back in terms of excoriating the socialist pariah state of Venezuela and leader Nicolas Maduro.

“Not long ago, Venezuela was one of the richest countries on Earth,” Trump said. “Today, socialism has bankrupted the oil-rich nation and driven its people into abject poverty.”

Trump continued, “Virtually everywhere socialism or communism has been tried, it has produced suffering, corruption, and decay. Socialism’s thirst for power leads to expansion, incursion, and oppression. All nations of the world should resist socialism and the misery that it brings to everyone.”

The US president blamed Venezuela’s collapsed economy and worthless currency, which has created a humanitarian crisis resulting in some 2 million citizens fleeing the country in recent years on the “Maduro regime and its Cuban sponsors”.

But a usually defiant Maduro, who didn’t attend the UN Assembly in New York for fear of his safety, slammed the speech via Twitter, stating in Spanish, “The empire points to us because it knows that we are on the socialist road to economic recovery.” He shot back at Trump: “And no one will stop us in our efforts to achieve self-sustainability.”

Also in response to Trump’s speech, Venezuela’s foreign minister Jorge Arreaza said Venezuela was a sovereign country and will continue to exercising the right to choose its own path. “It’s not the problem of the United States,” Arreaza said during a UN news conference in response to Trump’s listing a litany of the small Latin American country’s pressing problems.

Maduro has further called Trump’s mention of more sanctions to come against Maduro’s wife and his inner circle an “imperialist” intervention by “oligarchs”.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The Real Difference Between Left & Right

September 19, 2018

The Real Difference Between Left & Right

QUESTION: Mr. Armstrong; You have worked with politicians worldwide and both sides. What is your opinion of the politics that has emerged post-Great Depression?

ANSWER: The major difference between the socialism supported by the Democrats/Labour in Western Society is that to them the individual has no value, it is the collective society, which they then elevate themselves to rule. Conservatives believe in the individual has rights and value and that the state is to serve the people. In the eyes of socialism, it is not the individual but the collective society which is the value and they are qualified to rule from above. The socialist always seeks to control others and in so doing, the individual is always sacrificed for the collective state. It is not what your country can do for you personally, it is the teaching that you as the individual are to be sacrificed for the greater good of the whole which is controlled by the politicians – i.e. former the Soviet Union.

Nevertheless, the socialist always pretend that they are on your side. They have flipping everything upside down. Your personal well being is only possible by surrendering your individuality to the state. It is what they have done with Death Insurance. The insurance companies could not sell Death Insurance, so the reversed it and called it Life Insurance. Like fire insurance protects against fire, life insurance does not protect you from living forever. They reversed the label to make you feel proud how much Death Insurance you own. Socialist did the exact same thing. They get people to surrender their individuality to the state and always blame the rich when your quality of life declines.

Keep in mind that career politicians even on the right also support the government against the individual. Thomas Paine in Common Sense took the position.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Good Times…

September 13, 2018

Good Times…

My son wanted to know why it is that Venezuela (a topic that gets discussed around the dinner table at home) chose such painfully, obviously asinine policies.

After much thought I explained it thus.

Hard times create strong men. Strong men create good times. Good times create weak men. Weak men create hard times.CLICK TO TWEETI’d seen it before somewhere and so I dug it up. Here it is in a different form.

We bipeds don’t change. I’ve come to realise not to fight it, just see it for what it is and make sure you’re positioned accordingly…for your friends family and those you care about. Speaking of which you should consider joining our family.

No special offers, no steak knives, no wild ridiculous promises – simply rational analysis and positioning for a macro world we’ve never encountered before. EVER! That’s both exciting and terrifying at the same time.

We’re Bad

At literally everything. We buy high, sell low, look to what Johnny next door is wearing, what car he drives. We get taken in and scammed by shysters, we believe in the unbelievable.

Which brings me swiftly to EM where fund managers desperate for yield dived into the fire over the last few years. Now the inevitable pain is hitting as default fears mount for “BATS” as the emerging-market rout deepens.

Turkey’s implied default odds climbed to highest since 2008 and over in the land of great steaks default risk in Argentina is …ahem…substantial.

As Bloomberg points out:

Argentina’s implied default probability over the next five years climbed this month to 41 percent, the highest since Mauricio Macri’s government ended the nation’s decade-long legal battle with most holdout creditors.
Turkey’s implied default odds during that span rose to 31 percent, the highest since the 2008 global financial crisis.
Brazil’s implied default odds increased to 18 percent, the highest since the country’s worst-ever recession deepened in late 2016.
South Africa’s implied default odds soared to 15 percent, the highest since Donald Trump’s election in November 2016.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The Real Contagion Threat is Political

September 12, 2018

The Real Contagion Threat is Political

The real danger to the current institutional order was just demonstrated in Sweden. While I’ve talked at length about the potential financial contagion stemming from the implosion of multiple emerging market currencies it is the growing political crisis in Europe that will shape our future.

Sweden is The Land where Socialism Works, or so I keep getting told by ignorant leftists who cling to the power fantasy that central planning is the only way to make the trains run on time.

Central planning does do that, but only to deliver people into the nightmare of social disorder brought on by the disruption of the natural flow of capital.

Venezuela, South Africa, Soviet Union, post WWII Britain … you get the idea.

But, the effects of the collectivist mindset are far more pernicious than those extreme examples. And it is important we understand how little policies grow into big problems over time due to shaping people’s decisions through government edicts.

Corps Insanity

There is no better example for what I’m talking about than the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. A completely useless organization which sucks up billions in tax money to straighten rivers, build dams and alter the landscape to fit the needs of whoever paid Congress the most in lobbying money that year.

They engage in projects that cannot easily be done in the free market, nor should be done. But their activity creates downstream effects from their meddling which multiply over years and lead to problems which are orders of magnitude larger than they would have ever become naturally.

The Red Tides occurring off the Florida coast now are a political cudgel being swung at Governor Rick Scott to prevent him from moving up to U.S. Senator over his ‘environmental record.’ Now I’m no fan of Skeletor, as we call him down here, but these charges are simply grandstanding.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Venezuela on the Eve of Presidential Elections: The US Empire Isn’t Sitting by Idly

May 18, 2018

Venezuela on the Eve of Presidential Elections: The US Empire Isn’t Sitting by Idly

Photo by Joka Madruga | CC BY 2.0

“I don’t see why we need to stand by and watch a country go communist due to the irresponsibility of its people. The issues are much too important for the Chilean voters to be left to decide for themselves.”

— US National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger, 1970

Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro is the frontrunner in the presidential elections scheduled for May 20. If past pronouncements and practice by the US empire are any indication, every effort will be made to oust an avowed socialist from what is considered the US’ “backyard.”

With a week to go to the election, the leftist president of Bolivia Evo Morales tweeted: “Before the elections they (US and allies) will carry out violent actions supported by the media and after the elections they will try a military invasion with Armed Forces from neighboring countries.” All signals from the Trump White House and the Pentagon are that Evo is on target.

US antipathy towards the Venezuelan government started with the election of Hugo Chávez in 1998, followed by a brief and unsuccessful US-backed coup in 2002. Chávez made the magnanimous, but politically imprudent, gesture of pardoning the golpistas (coup perpetrators), who are still trying to achieve by extra-parliamentary means what they have been unable to realize democratically. After Chávez died in 2013, the Venezuelans elected Maduro to carry on what has become known as the Bolivarian Revolution.

The Phantom Menace

In 2015 then US President Obama declared “a national emergency” posed to the security of the US by Venezuela. Understand that the US has military bases to the west of Venezuela in Colombia and to the east in the Dutch colonial islands. The US Fourth Fleet patrols Venezuela’s Caribbean coast. Yet somehow in the twisted logic of imperialism, the phantom of Venezuela posed a menacing “extraordinary threat” to the US.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

What Lies Beyond Capitalism and Socialism?

May 2, 2018

What Lies Beyond Capitalism and Socialism?

The status quo, in all its various forms, is dominated by incentives that strengthen the centralization of wealth and power.

As longtime readers know, my work aims to 1) explain why the status quo — the socio-economic-political system we inhabit — is unsustainable, divisive, and doomed to collapse under its own weight and 2) sketch out an alternative Mode of Production/way of living that is sustainable, consumes far less resources while providing for the needs of the human populace — not just for our material daily bread but for positive social roles, purpose, hope, meaning and opportunity, needs that are by and large ignored or marginalized in the current system.

One cognitive/emotional roadblock I encounter is the nearly universal assumption that there are only two systems: the State (government) or the Market (free trade/ free enterprise). This divide plays out politically as the Right (capitalism, favoring markets) and the Left (socialism, favoring the state). Everything from Communism to Libertarianism can be placed on this spectrum.

But what if the State and the Market are the sources of our unsustainability?What if they are intrinsically incapable of fixing what’s broken?

The roadblock here is adherents to one camp or the other are emotionally attached to their ideological choice, to the point that these ideological attachments have a quasi-religious character.

Believers in the market as the solution to virtually any problem refuse to accept any limits on the market’s efficacy, and believers in greater state power/control refuse to accept any limits on the state’s efficacy.

I often feel like I’ve been transported back to the 30 Years War between Catholics and Protestants in the 1600s.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Where It All Began: The Dawn of “Fake News”

May 1, 2018

Where It All Began: The Dawn of “Fake News”

The two principals were Republican incumbent, Frank Merriman, and his Democratic challenger, Upton Sinclair. Merriman, a nondescript political lightweight with no national profile, was viewed more or less by the RNC as the Party’s West Coast performing flea. As Lieutenant Governor he was jettisoned into the incumbency when Governor James “Sunny Jim” Rolph died of a heart attack in June of 1934, just months before the election.

His chief opponent, Upton Sinclair, a prairie socialist and muckraker, was the celebrated author of “The Jungle,” the best-selling expose of the Chicago meat packing industry. Because the nation was still in the stranglehold of the most debilitating economic depression in its history, Sinclair reasonably chose to base his campaign on the EPIC (End Poverty in California) project.

Put simply, EPIC was an ambitious socialist program whose goal was universal employment. Among other things, EPIC promised massive public works programs, the reorganization of the agriculture industry into farm co-ops, and virtual state control of California’s factories.

Given the overall popularity of FDR’s New Deal, and the fact that the American Left was still feeding off table scraps of the 1917 Russian Revolution, the notion of “eliminating poverty” was properly considered not only necessary but feasible.

In addition to Merriman and Sinclair, there were two other notable players: Louis B. Mayer, the powerful overlord of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM), whose dominion over the movie industry permitted him to comport himself like the Sun King (think of Harvey Weinstein magnified 100 times). and the advertising-public relations firm of Whitaker & Baker.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Direct Democracy – Is it Possible?

March 13, 2018

Direct Democracy – Is it Possible?

The advancement in technology today certainly allows us to scrap the Republican form of government with pretend representation of the people by career politicians. There is no reason we cannot vote from home on every bill and that no bill may be merged with any other subject matter. There should be no sneaking spending for military tucked inside a Clean Water Act. Direct Democracy can work ONLY if it respects a Bill of Rights that precludes SOCIALISM no matter how noble the goals. It must also EXCLUDE all legislation to do with religious morals so no outlawing abortion or even prostitution no matter how much it will offend some. Do not forget that is another religious group get control, they will reverse it and retaliate again their opposition. No law will EVER eliminate either action and the most one can do is to restrict where it is and require a license to ensure it is conducted in a safe environment and leave God to judge.

Every tourist who has ventured to Amsterdam visits the famous red light district where girls are in shop windows typically wearing bathing suits (not naked). The street is packed probably with 99% tourists rather than customers, but it is famous, safe for both the people and the girls, and certainly a curiosity. They are not walking down the streets as they still do in LA, New York, Chicago, or Boston. Girls are not abducted and forced into prostitution. There have been movies on that subject like TAKEN, which are very real.

I have often told the story about flying back from London with my girlfriend into JFK and I went to the curb waiting for the car and she went to the bathroom. There was a very famous Supermodel I did not know at the time standing there and she started to chat. I had flown in on the Concord and she knew that but she had stiletto high-heels and a very short leather mini-skirt. I did not notice her on the plane so I assumed she was a hooker looking to pick up passengers when they land in NYC, which is very common. When my girlfriend came out and saw me talking to her she got jealous. She said I can’t leave you alone for 5 minutes you are talking to a supermodel. I said what are you talking about? She was a hooker! I was just being polite! She then said she was on the plane. Based on the provocative dress, it seemed to me like the standard hooker uniform in New York City. I remember staying the Excelsior Hotel on the Via Vittorio Veneto during the 1970s and having to push through prostitutes just trying to walk down the street to go to dinner. NYC 42nd street used to be that way as well.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Collapse of Socialism – End of Pensions

February 23, 2018

Collapse of Socialism – End of Pensions

I have been warning that we are in the midst of (1) collapse in democracy as the bureaucracy attempts to ensure they get their’s, (2) the collapse of socialism, which is the implosion of social programs, and (3) the collapse of pensions set in motion by the artificially low-interest rates for the past 10 years.

Once we entered this Private Wave in 1985, we have begun the Crisis in Democracy where career politicians are the hallmark of how empires, nations, and city-states come to a dramatic end.

With each passing day, we read about another pension crisis in some municipal government or system. Now across the UK teacher/lectures began a month of student disruptions over the proposed changes in their pensions plans. The strikes have even produced refund claims by students over missing tuition time. This is the collapse not of Capitalism, but Socialism as all the promised benefits cannot be provided.

The pension system has a £6bn deficit and thus there is no choice but to cut. Some 61 universities are being affected with many teachers/lecturers simply walking-out leaving the students with no education. The teachers/lecturers voted to strike and now it has gone on for some two weeks. The assumed they would strike and the money would fall from heaven. That has not been the case.

Individually, universities pay into a pool called the Universities Superannuation Scheme. That fund is then managed by a professional Fund Management team that produces a return annually. The investment returns, future contributions, and management costs should then be calculated and projections given at every management meeting between the two (Fund Managers and the administrators of the USS).

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

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