Economists

 

How Our AI Computer Forecasts the Failure of Schwab & World Economic Forum

Posted Nov 22, 2020 by Martin Armstrong

I find it really interesting how Klaus Schwab champions the 4th Industrial Revolution and how Artificial Intelligence (AI) will change the world so we have to help shape it by destroying what we have to design the Great Reset. Only an academic would be that arrogant. The AI system I designed was from being a programmer and a trader – not an academic economist with book theories. I find it ironic that the economic theories that dominated the world during the 19th century, with the exception of Marx, had hands-on experience. Today, academics who lack any hands-on experience claim they have degrees. The world these people are trying to create is nothing more than a theory with no real-world experience.

I was a trader and one of the first hedge fund managers, not an academic economist. They also do not have degrees in hedge fund management. And as far as economics is concerned, of course, the first economic course was at Cambridge in 1902. Therefore, that means all those who preceded 1902 were self-taught in economics from Adam Smith and David Ricardo to Karl Marx and John Maynard Keynes who also had no formal Economics Degree – John Maynard Keynes was educated at King’s College, Cambridge from 1902–1906.

And, BTW, when John Maynard Keynes put forth his ideas the academics said he was wrong, absurd, and nobody should listen. Only when the Great Depression unfolded did they turn to Keynes when the academics failed back then as well. But Keynes NEVER advocated deficit spending perpetually and also advocated lowering taxes as a tool to stimulate the economy. These solutions were ONLY during a recession. It was the academics and their socialist agenda that supported deficit spending year after year but always advocated raising taxes to achieve Marx’s social justice. Sadly, what many believe is Keynesian Economics is a socialistic distortion of what Keynes actually advocated.

It was always traders who advanced the study of economics – not academics. If you look at the first analyst to establish supply and demand, it was John Law who was a trader on the exchange in Amsterdam and observed it from market activity. Even Adam Smith used John Law’s examples in “Wealth of Nations” actually investigated Law’s work to come up with his invisible hand. There was David Ricardo, who also made a fortune as a trader. Those are the three greats and NONE of them had a formal economics degree.

Those of us who come from the real world of trading, do not have the luxury to create Utopian theories that sound nice. We had to come up with ideas that worked because your money was really on the line. Unless you have traded, you will never understand that the market is always right. If you do not listen to the market, you will lose everything.

Of course, I call this Communism 3.0 because what is different is that he is not planning on confiscating the assets of the elite. He will not surrender his status, medals, and honors. They are there to demonstrate that he is competent to sit in judgment over us. Klaus argues that “equality” stops at the superrich for we need these people to retain their wealth and BigTech platforms so they can control the world and keep us all in line – establishing the 21st aristocrats. It is people like Schwab who are anti-religious as was Marx because they do not believe in such things as a divine power because they know far better how to redesign society and since it is flawed in their mind, God cannot exist.

 

Trading is the Only School to Learn Real Economics

Posted Jul 3, 2020 by Martin Armstrong

QUESTION: I noticed that all the economists who are not academics are the people who actually discovered something. The academics always advocate for manipulating society like Keynes and Marx. Why is that?

PD

ANSWER: If you look at the first analyst to establish supply and demand, it was John Law. Even Adam Smith used his examples in “Wealth of Nations.” Adam Smith actually investigated his work to come up with his invisible hand. There was David Ricardo, who also made a fortune as a trader. Those are the three greats and NONE of them has a formal economics degree, which was first taught as a separate course in 1902 at Cambridge.

Those of us who come from the real world of trading, do not have the luxury to come up with Utopian theories that sound nice. Unless you have traded, you will never understand that the market is always right. If you do not listen to the market, you will lose everything.

Quantity of Money theory is simply not correct. Govt always seeks to turn people against one another in order to retain power – DIVIDE & CONQUER.

Is There a Way Out of This Financial Mess?

Posted Sep 25, 2017 by Martin Armstrong

We need to open the door to the future but that is only possible by understanding the past. Paul Volcker back in 1979 in his Rediscovery of the Business Cycle said:

“Not much more than a decade ago, in what now seems a more innocent age, the ‘New Economics’ had become orthodoxy. Its basic tenet, repeated in similar words in speech after speech, in article after article, was described by one of its leaders as ‘the conviction that business cycles were not inevitable, that government policy could and should keep the economy close to a path of steady real growth at a constant target rate of unemployment. … But it was not until the events of 1974 and 1975, when a recession sprung on an unsuspecting world with an intensity unmatched in the post-World War II period, that the lessons of the ‘New Economics’ were seriously challenged.”

It gives me no pleasure to point out all our problems. My objective is straight forward. If we understand what is unfolding and why, then we can apply the correct solutions rather than turn toward more government authoritarian control – which will be the preferred solution. Make no mistake about this, we are in a battle for our freedom. This era of “New Economics” was set in motion by Karl Marx who advocated that government could control the economy and thus create Utopia. While Russia embraced the Communism of Marx, the West adopted his position trying to be just a little bit pregnant. We rejected everything that Adam Smith discovered and the Invisible Hand, rushing into Socialism for it empowered government rather than the private sector and Laissez–faire. Government always pointed to the rich to justify raising taxes to help people, but like fake charities, the bulk of the money goes directly to government.

Our current crisis, therefore, originates with government not the private sector or the hated rich (defined as anyone who earns more that the person listening). Of course we need government which provides a stable rule of law and provides a benevolent administration truly FOR THE PEOPLE & BY THE PEOPLE rather than authoritarian, which assumes we are stupid and only they know best.

This is a battle to the death of Marxism, which in all its various flavors, empowers government that always seeks to turn people against one another in order to retain power – DIVIDE & CONQUER. Because government is really a tornado that just keeps growing consuming an ever larger portion of GDP that surrounds it, we are faced with sharply reduced economic growth which is now colliding with the new age of technology further reducing employment because of taxes.

Constantly arguing class warfare and pretending that government can raise the minimum wage as if this will somehow benefit society rather than eliminate their taxes, only furthers the dangers we face ahead. The rising taxation upon labor creates the incentive to replace workers with robots. Even the government is trying to replace soldiers with robots. This is a trend that is on all sides. Russia has its robot soldiers, and the USA has been following suit. Using drones carrying machine guns is a dangerous development for they can be turned against the people in civil unrest. Those who think that would never happen need only look at Barcelona where the Madrid government just sent in 16,500 soldier to invade Catalonia  and stop any Independence Referendum or the Bonus Army of 1932 that the USA sent troops in killing civilians.

Unfortunately, we are in a battle for our freedom and that of our posterity. Governments are broke. Everything is moving against them from every possible angle. They borrow with no intention of paying anything off and are blind to the trend they have been caught up in. How can we make them see that this is not going to work nor will it end nicely?

We need to stop the borrowing, we need to drastically reduce the size of government and various departments should be PRIVATIZED because government is incapable of managing anything for its own self-interest always stands in the way. At least then any pensions offered would actually be there for private companies cannot default and then refuse to prosecute themselves as does government. There are simply no checks and balance when prosecutions are a political decision and judges are political appointments.

When paper money first began after the Revolution during the Civil War, it paid interest to entice the people to accept it. Then we adopted the idea put forth in this New Economics was that government could “stimulate” by borrowing and that would be less inflationary than printing. This became the Quantity of Money Theory, which has been proven to be complete wrong.

While Draghi has expanded the money supply for almost 10 years, deflation has prevailed proving once and for all that the Quantity of Money theory is simply not correct.  This entire idea of borrowing would be less inflationary is just insane. There was once upon a time when you could not borrow against government debt and that was the entire foundation of borrowing was less inflationary. Since then, we have reached at times 70% of the entire national debt was composed of accumulative interest expenditures. So the money never went to build roads, schools, or help the poor as politicians pretend. Now government debt can be posted as collateral for anything so now debt has become money that just pays interest. So we are only fooling ourselves. Taxes have risen as deficits expand because government thinks inflation is the evil danger as Merkel has championed in Germany. All that governments have been doing is to systemically reduce the standard of living and job creation. Nobody will even look at what is unfolding before our eyes and ask – What is going on?

Until we are ready to review this theory of “New Economics” and the Quantity of Money Theory and deal with it, our future is doomed. If we cannot start a dialog, there is no hope. The press is bought and paid for and is no longer truly free to protect our rights. The media is not there in our corner anymore. They are part of the entire problem.

The Phillips Curve No Longer Works

Posted Jul 28, 2017 by Martin Armstrong

QUESTION: Mr. Armstrong; Thank you for coming to Frankfurt. Nobody gets that big of an audience here ever. What you illustrate with the three faces of inflation means that the Philips Curve no longer functions. Was this something like Kondratieff’s Wave that it was based upon a period that is outdated?

Thank you once again. I hope you do more of these type events.

BC

ANSWER: Yes. The Phillips curve is a graph describing the relationship between wage changes and price level changes on the one hand and the unemployment rate on the other.  The basic assumption was a fixed exchange rate so there was no issue of currency inflation. The Phillips curve was published in 1958 by the English statistician and economist Alban William Housego Phillips in the magazine Economica. It has been modified several times since. Paul A. Samuelson and Robert Merton Solow in 1960 expanded the Phillips curve. They created a link between unemployment and the change in the inflation rate but this was again under Bretton Woods and a fixed exchange rate system. The Phillips curve  assumptions are simply irrelevant today and yet central banks have continued to try to manipulate society based upon these antiquated theories. Every assumption they make to manage the economy is dead wrong right down to the Quantity of Money Theory.