Idea of federalizing Europe came, not from the United States, but from France.

Is the CIA Responsible for Creating the EU?

Posted Jan 31, 2017 by Martin Armstrong

The new conspiracy theory running around claims that the European Union was a CIA project. This serious misconception misses the entire point. It is very true that the idea of the EU was supported by the United States since World War II. However, the U.S. supported the idea of the EU as a trade union that could support NATO during the Cold War. However, the idea of federalizing Europe came, not from the United States, but from France. It was de Gaulle who blocked Britain from joining the EU because he wanted France to dominate Europe. It was de Gaulle who broke Bretton Woods by buying up dollars and redeeming them for gold to make France the economic power of Europe. Britain was only allowed to join the EU upon de Gaulle’s death.

The idea of federalizing Europe was a dream inspired by de Gaulle. This is the origin of the idea that war could be eliminated if there were only one government. That never could have been spoken in real public settings because the differences within Europe ran deep and bitter following two world wars. The Treaty of Rome was to prevent a third European war.

The idea of transforming the EU from a trade union to an economic union was given birth at the Plaza Accord in 1985. That was the brainchild of James Baker to create a viable alternative to the US dollar. That is when the euro was born. The commission attended our WEC in London and I spoke directly with them at the time. I warned this would result in the collapse of the euro system unless they consolidated the debts. I was told they could not sell that to the European people so they would push for the currency first and later deal with the debt problem. Of course, phase two never came. The euro cannot survive with such a structure. You have people like Martin Schultz now pleading that the problem is not a central power, but Europe needs to surrender all sovereignty to Brussels.

By 1990, Maggie Thatcher was warning that “a single currency is about the politics of Europe. It is about a federal Europe by the back door.” (November 22, 1990). As everyone knows, I was friends with Maggie. I was there through all these machinations. This was BY NO MEANS a CIA plot. The desire for NATO and an EU was in the interests of the United States following World War II — absolutely! But do not mix that with the state of the EU today and the attempt to federalized Europe. That is exactly the opposite of U.S. interests for it will lead to the risk of another European war.

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2019 in Canada? France ? Germany?

A Sign of the Times

Posted Jan 27, 2017 by Martin Armstrong

QUESTION: First Brexit then Trump, do you see the same coming in 2019 in Canada? France ? Germany?

WB

ANSWER: Yes. This is a private wave. Unfortunately, this is where we will see the greatest confrontation between left and right. There will be rising civil unrest from the left that threatens civilization as we have known it. This is also the Sixth Wave, so we will see the collapse of Western government instigated by the left. What comes afterwards will be a new government and a new public wave.

As we move into this cycle that turned up in 2014, we will see civil unrest far greater than what existed to create the revolutions against monarchy during the 18th century. We can survive this if you understand the root causes. The primary cause is the corruption in government.

Brits acted to destroy the reputations of American isolationists who opposed helping British.

Foreign Governments Have Always Tried to Interfere With US Elections

Posted Jan 21, 2017 by Martin ArmstronG

Meddling  with public opinion is by no means altering the voting machines or vote tallies. Fake news statements can be countered with truth, but only when our own media is not part of a domestic propaganda action to benefit one side, as was the case with 77% of all news stories anti-Trump and pro-Hillary. The Democrats boycotting the inauguration today are pathetic hypocrites who are angry that their own propaganda conspiracy in mainstream media failed despite all the TV stations and newspapers they influences, such as the New York Times who admitted they were wrong. Words by themselves do not diminish the legitimacy of any election and what the domestic American press and the Democrats did by deliberately ensuring Trump would be the Republican candidate was far more direct manipulation than anything Russia may have done.

Let’s be real here. There is a long history of illegitimate election results. In 1940, Roosevelt wanted to get into the war but the majority of Americans were isolationists. The British intelligence officers in New York and Washington worked to elect candidates who favored U.S. intervention and even funded people domestically to defeat Republicans who were opposed to entering the war. FDR gave this campaign speech in Boston during 1940, promising no boys would defend Britain. You have to realize that Boston was predominantly Irish. Their view was that the British oppressed the Irish, so why should they go defend Britain. The isolationist view was dominant. The Brits acted to destroy the reputations of American isolationists who opposed helping British. They hired hundreds of Americans who supported entering the war and worked for British intelligence and/or cooperated with British efforts to influence the elections.

You can even go back to the very birth of the nation. During the 1787 Constitutional Convention, Elbridge Gerry of Massachusetts argued that only natives should be allowed into public office and not immigrants. He warned in discussing Art IV: “Foreign powers will intermeddle in our affairs, and spare no expense to influence them. Persons having foreign attachments will be sent among us & insinuated into our councils, in order to be made instruments for their purposes. Every one knows the vast sums laid out in Europe for secret services. He was not singular in these ideas. A great many of the most influencial men in Massts. reasoned in the same manner” (source Yale archieves).

The Clinton Foundation is closing as all their foreign donors stopped handing them hundreds of millions of dollars for influence. Hillary violated the Constitution and should be prosecuted for selling influence. The debates to create the Constitution show that there was considerable risk concerns that foreign governments would interfere in U.S. politics. For that very reason, they included under Article I, Section 9, Clause 8, the Emoluments Clause.

Emoluments Clause

“No Title of Nobility shall be granted by the United States: And no Person holding any Office of Profit or Trust under them, shall, without the Consent of the Congress, accept of any present, Emolument, Office, or Title, of any kind whatever, from any King, Prince, or foreign State.”

ARTICLE I, SECTION 9, CLAUSE 8

Hillary committed treason. I have stated that before. With all the hoopla and boycotts by the Democrats claiming that Trump is not a legitimate president, a special prosecutor should be appointed who is independent to prosecute her, not for emails, but for taking foreign money from foreign governments for influence.

During World War I and the election of 1916, the German press urged American Germans to support Charles Hughes against Woodrow Wilson to keep America neutral. A prominent government-backed newspaper in Germany urged German-Americans to support Hughes. Theodore Roosevelt commented on the effort by the Germans saying they wanted to “make the American President in effect  a viceroy of the German Emperor.”

Many considered that Iran deliberately interfered in the U.S. election of 1980 to defeat Jimmy Carter. Once Ronald Reagan won, Iran released the hostages. That led many Democrats to say similar things that the Iranians influenced the 1980 election. They didn’t like losing that one either.

Then there was the Kennedy-Nixon election when the main argument against Kennedy was that he was Catholic and that meant the Pope would be running the White House.

So historically, we have always had foreign governments attempting to influence elections. This is nothing different even if Russia hacked the Democratcs. If there was nothing there, then there would have been nothing to leak. Blaming Putin and saying Trump is not a legitimate president reveals the stupidity and bias of those who make such claims. The difference here is that the Clintons freely sold their influence for money. That is TREASON.

Corruption inspired by subsidizing from government

Education – The Greatest Fraud Exempt from Law

Posted Jan 22, 2017 by Martin Armstrong

QUESTION: Trump seems to be interested in changing education. This seems to be really controversial. What are your thoughts on this subject.

ANSWER: Yes, there are people yelling about reducing or gutting public education. Let’s get real about this. The two WORST areas of abuse have been medical care and education. Both are increasing at costs way ahead of anything else in the economy. Why? Corruption inspired by subsidizing from government. Trump has been talking about:

• Consolidate ALL current repayment plans into a single Income-Based Repayment program (IBR) where students pay 12.5% of their income toward their loans each month and receive total loan forgiveness after 15 years
• Plans to cover increased forgiveness amounts (and the higher cost to taxpayers) due to shorter repayment terms by lowering federal spending accordingly
• Promises to scale back funding significantly for the Department of Education

 There is a test in economics known as the Baumol’s cost disease, or the Baumol effect. The assumption is a free market study whereas a rise of salaries in jobs that have experienced no actual increase in the labor productivity is a response to rising salaries in other jobs where there has been an increase in labor productivity growth. This Baumol effect operated counter to the classical economic theory which assumed real wage growth is closely tied to labor productivity changes.

In other words, let’s say the average wage is $10,000 annually. There is a shortage in IT developers. Suddenly they now pay $20,000 annually. The rise of wages in other jobs without any productivity gains whatsoever takes place as other jobs now have to compete with rising wages in an unrelated field. How many student have gone to school for medicine or law simply because they were the higher paying jobs.

There are quantitative studies that have shown that there are significant rises in tuition for college that is disproportionate to the rise in potential income one would earn (see Tuition-Study). The Federal Student Loan Program (FSLP) has fuel the increases in the costs exponentially because the colleges know they will get paid. They do not have to compete so the costs have increased beyond the increase in wages. Forbes Magazine showed that 60% of students cannot find a job in what they paid for in college. If this was finance, they would be in prison for 25 years calling in fraud. We have consumer fraud laws, but none of this applies to education. Students are burdened with loans that are for degrees that are totally worthless.

College tuition rose 106% between 1987 and 2010, which was far more than the 78% increase salaries. Tuition studies have shown that the FSLP alone generate a 102% tuition increase. Such studies have stated that their findings “cast doubt on Baumol’s cost disease as a driver of higher tuition.”

This is the greatest of all frauds because the Clintons handed to the banks to exempt students from the bankruptcy laws. They go into debt to pay loans for degrees that are worthless. Then, the bankers are clever. They won that exemption from the Clintons, which Larry Summers supported, under the pretense that these students had no collateral and were thus risky warranting that they could not go bankrupt. Then the bankers would demand the parents cosign. Hence, they played fast and loose with the laws and managed to get collateralize loans exempt from bankruptcy.

The State of New Jersey refused to forgive a student loan co-signed by a mother after her son was murdered. This was not unique. A mother from Michigan ended up in the same position. “That’s when American Education Services (AES) and National Collegiate Trust (NCT) turned my son’s dream into a nightmare for me and the two year old son he left behind.”

MY RECOMMENDATION TO TRUMP:

If a student cannot find employment with a degree after 3 years, then the loan should be forgiven COMPLETELY and the college will have to reduce what it received by 50%. End exceptions to the bankruptcy law NOW and state publicly that the Clinton laws for the bankers are being REPEALED.

“The Congress shall have Power To…establish…uniform Laws on the subject of Bankruptcies throughout the United States….”

ARTICLE I, SECTION 8, CLAUSE 4

The Bankruptcy Clause was to prevent a debtor who won a discharge of a debt in his state being prosecuted by a creditor trying to collect the debt in another state. That was the original intent and implicit within that clause is Equal Protection of the law. Therefore, I contend that the Clintons violated the Constitution by exempting student loans from the bankruptcy law.

EQUAL PROTECTION CLAUSE

No State shall…deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

AMENDMENT 14, SECTION 1

Mexico recover from this political mismanagement? appears to be due in 22 years — 2038

From Behind the Wall – Mexico

Posted Jan 20, 2017 by Martin Armstrong

US-Mexico Border in Arizona

COMMENT: Greetings from the other side of the Wall (i.e. Mexico)

Mr Armstrong! First, I would like to thank you for what you do, as a young person committed with helping the world thrive I cannot tell you how empowering it was to discover your work and get to know your story, and how inspiring it is to see upright people like yourself and your team take on the biggest challenges we face today as a planet, being consistent with what you say and actually doing something! That been said I wanted to share something that’s happening here in Mexico City, and because it is related to one of the main topics of your blog, i.e. the hunt for taxes I thought it would be worth sharing. Right now, Mexico City is going through some administrative changes. Beginning in 2018 Mexico D.F. (D.F. stands for Federal District) will no longer be the center of the powers of the federation but the 32nd federal entity of the union. That doesn’t only mean that Mexico D.F. will officially change its name to Ciudad de Mexico (CDMX) but that by the end of this month (January, 2017) CDMX will have its own Constitution. It is here that it gets interesting. In its 21st article, the draft proposed that “the increase in the value of the land derived from the process of urbanization, will be considered part of the public wealth of the city” that effectively meant that all the capital gains of a property will be taxed!! This resulted in a strong opposition specially from groups, associations and businesses concerned with the real estate business. The mayor of the city, surprised and pressured, answered that he would veto any new tax that comes into his desk and proposed an immediate modification of this article, which makes you wonder if he read the draft of the constitution in the first place! After the announcement, the commission in charge of the ruling of that article said it would be revised and modified so that a tax of this nature would not be allowed.

Fiufff!! That was close and everybody went home or headed out to the beach for some sunny winter holidays. Oh wait, except that our “public servants” being the way they are, apparently removed the provision from the draft of the constitution but still added it to the Housing Act which authorizes the administration to “implement mechanisms to capture capital gains, generated form urban development actions”. The Act was passed a nd approved the 26th of December!! The press reported this until the 28th which in Mexico is our April fool’s day, making us wish it was a terrible “December fool’s day” joke. I guess you have to have a sense of humour. I mean this guys are relentless when it comes to making a dishonest buck. I don’t know what Socrates says about Mexico but from my biased point of view it doesn’t look pretty. Higher prices, higher taxes, insecurity, a higher dollar, a debt worth almost 50% of GDP and growing, which at least I think it’s in pesos so I guess it could be worse. I was not alive then but there was a time when the peso fell greatly against the dollar maybe Mexico’s cycle is back down but I’m sure you know that. But there was also a time when the peso was close at par with the dollar, which makes me wonder when does the cycle turn up. Anyway, I guess by that time it’s either a strong peso or a worthless dollar!

Again, thank you and your team for all your work. Have a wonderful and spectacular year!

XA

REPLY: Hello from the other side of the wall. Most people do not realize that the Mexican 8 reales silver coin was commonly known as the “pillar dollar,” and cutting it up into pieces like a pie is what we hear in pirate moves — a piece of eight, meaning a piece of this coin. Here is a piece of eight stamped “St Lucia” for a Caribbean island.

These pillar dollars or Spanish dollars as they were known, were widely used by many countries as an international currency in modern times because of its uniformity. Some countries countersigned the Spanish dollar so it could be used as their local currency, as did even Britain during the shortage of currency under George III. In fact, these pillar/Spanish dollars were the coin upon which they originally constituted the United States “dollar” as they refused to adopt the British system of pounds. In fact, pillar/Spanish dollars were actually considered to be legal tender in the United States up until the Coinage Act of 1857.

Most people have no idea that the Mexican peso (8 reales ceased to be issued in 1897 after it was replaced by the peso) was on par with the dollar, and in fact, the US dollar was based upon the peso. The debasement of the 8 reales (peso) began slightly in 1729 when it was reduced to .7972 of a troy ounce down from .8102. It was debased slightly again in 1772, dropping to .7858 oz followed by another slight debasement to .7797 in 1791.

It was restored back to .7859 oz in 1811 where it remained until the 8 reales was called the peso with .786 oz. It returned to .7859 oz in 1910, which lasted only until 1917. As silver rose in value during the Panic of 1919, and European demand rose for reestablishing a monetary system, the Peso was sharply debased to .4663 oz before it dropped further two years later in 1920 to .3857 oz where it remained until the end of World War II.

In 1947, the peso was debased to .2251 oz and then the financial crisis of 1949, which saw the sharp collapse in the British pound, impacted the peso by dropping it further to .1286 oz in 1950. The crisis hit again in 1957, and the peso was debased to .0514 oz where it remained until 1967. The rising US dollar postwar was critical worldwide and Mexico was not exempt. That was the Recession of 1958, also known as the Eisenhower Recession, which began in 1957 and lasted for eight months. That led to a sharp worldwide economic downturn in 1958, aided by the Fed raising interest rates to try to fight postwar inflation. Then in 1967, silver vanished from the monetary system with the birth of the two-tier gold market in London during 1968.

The answer to the question, “When will Mexico recover from this political mismanagement?” appears to be due in 22 years — 2038. This is most likely reflecting the younger generation really taking charge.