Economists Uncut

NEXT TWO Countries to FALL (Uncut) 01-25-2025

đź”´ Martin Armstrong Reveals the NEXT TWO Countries to FALL

The real risk in the Middle East is off most people’s radars, and that’s Turkey. Turkey was behind the fall of Syria. And if you Google Erdogan, you’ll see he is the one that wants to resurrect the old Ottoman Empire.

 

When Hamas attacked Israel, he cheered. He’s called for all the Arab states to unite behind him. Turkey was the head of the Ottoman Empire.

 

He sees himself as maybe rising to be the next caliph. And the U.S. is building a huge embassy, I mean, an absolute fortress there over in Lebanon. And Lebanon has the risk of falling, as does Jordan.

 

You’re watching Capital Casa. My name is Danny. Today’s guest is the legendary Martin Armstrong.

 

Martin, thank you so much for coming on. Well, thank you for inviting me. Let’s just dive right in here, Martin.

 

Obviously, there’s so much stuff going on. What is most topical for you, however? What’s got your eye on the radar screen, so to speak, right now? I think we’re largely, you know, some of the people who are advising Trump are, you know, they’re pushing us towards really a very, very serious recession. And mainly, this evolves, I think, with this real problem with analysis.

 

The vast majority of people are just domestic people. Oh, look at the Fed. What are they going to do? Whatever.

 

You know, they don’t realize there’s a world outside the United States, you know. I mean, right now, if we look at this objectively, putting tariffs on, threatening sanctions, more sanctions against Russia, I mean, you’re only going to create a depression. Germany has been committing economic suicide.

 

Their economy’s actually shrinking. All right. And the problem here is that Germany is the economic power behind Europe.

 

I mean, they went crazy on the COVID restrictions. They did the whole climate change nonsense, Merkel outlawed all, you know, nuclear power. Then they jumped on board with this, you know, the sanctions against Russia.

 

You had Nord Stream 1, which, you know, looks like the Ukrainians and CIA blew up. But Nord Stream 2 is still there. And the Germans have voluntarily turned it off.

 

So, I mean, it’s no, you know, really mystery why Shultz’s government collapsed one day after Trump was elected. I mean, it’s just, I don’t know what to say. It’s just everything they do is, it’s just committing economic suicide.

 

The economy has actually shrunk. You’ve cut off fuel. Climate change, you’re on board with NATO.

 

You know, if you look at even the military strength, it takes basically UK, France, and Germany combined. All right. They’re less than the military power of Turkey.

 

It’s just, it’s completely insane. You have UK, you know, sending off troops to Romania to like impress, you know, Putin. And you have Macron threatening to, wanting to send in troops directly into Ukraine to start World War Three.

 

These people, they know the European economy is collapsing. They have a major, major debt crisis. They went to negative interest rates in 2014.

 

And banks must buy government debt and pension funds. All right. Oh, because that’s safe.

 

All right. Negative interest rates on bonds. I mean, honestly, you know, you’re looking at a serious banking crisis in Europe.

 

And as rates go up, then those bonds go down in value even more. It’s like whatever you could do possibly wrong, they have done. So I’m against Trump with his tariffs.

 

You’re basically just, you’re taking a man that’s dying and throwing gasoline on him. This is serious because the US economy is the main pillar of the world at this stage. And putting these tariffs on, you’re only going to send them into a depression.

 

And as they decline, we can sell stuff to them. I don’t care if they put retaliatory tariffs on or not. When you also go into war, people don’t spend.

 

They save because they don’t know what the outcome is going to be. Or, you know, inflation and things of this nature and rationing and capital controls. All this comes with war.

 

I mean, I’m finishing up a report on Canada. Canada, most people have no idea, defaulted also in 1931. They put in all kinds of, you know, capital controls for just about everything.

 

Moving money, trying to get it out of Canada, going to the United States, forbiddance. I mean, all sorts of things. Even during the American Civil War, Abraham Lincoln passed a law that, okay, fine, commerce, maybe you’re buying something from somebody in Atlanta, you know, whatever.

 

You were not allowed to pay them. I mean, they just shut down everything. Most people don’t realize that, you know, when the free markets were going against Abraham Lincoln, what did he do? He started shutting down newspapers like Salinsky, but he also shut down the gold market, just closed it.

 

You know, because gold was going up. In 1864, basically the dollar was collapsing. The British pound went to its record high against the dollar at that point, was $9.97. I mean, so gold was going crazy.

 

He shut down the markets. Okay, fine, you’re all saying I’m wrong. Well, you can’t trade foreign exchange, you can’t trade gold.

 

You know, this is the typical response that you get from governments. I mean, look at World War I, they closed all the stock markets in Europe. So my concern is Europe needs war because they’re going to end up defaulting, and they never want to do that without some excuse.

 

You know, you had inflation going up because of the sanctions they put on Russia. And what put you know, basically you had, you know, what was Biden saying? Oh, it’s Putin’s inflation. That is, they always have to blame somebody else.

 

Putting more sanctions on Russia. What do you have? You’re just absolutely crazy. Yeah, there’s this recent truth post from Trump, where he basically threatened more sanctions on Russia if they don’t make a deal with Zelensky.

 

This comes across as somewhat odd, given he said he would end the war within 24 hours during his campaign. What do you make of that post? If you’ve been watching my channel for a long time, then you know we talk a lot about protecting your wealth in uncertain times. And with everything happening in this day and age, in the markets, bank failures, inflation, geopolitical instability, and more, you need a solid plan to safeguard your wealth and your assets.

 

Here’s where ITM Trading comes in. They specialize in strategic gold and silver acquisitions, helping people just like you build real, tangible wealth outside of the system. Their team of experts doesn’t just sell metals, they create custom wealth protection plans and strategies tailored to your financial goals.

 

Their track record speaks for itself. Just look at their research and client success stories. And look at all these reviews here on Google.

 

Don’t wait until it’s too late. Give ITM Trading a call today or book a strategy session using the link in the description box or the pinned comments down below. I’ve personally looked at their strategies and let me tell you, they know their stuff.

 

If you’re serious about real financial security, ITM Trading is the team you want on your side. Check them out. I’m a little skeptical, mainly because I’ve had contact with Mark Rubio.

 

In my opinion, he is a neocon. He was talking about war and all this other kind of stuff. I said, hey, this is out of line.

 

I was very disappointed when he chose him for Secretary of State. I’m not so sure he’s going to be different than Blinken. I don’t know.

 

I know a number of these neocons. All I can say is maybe from the 50s when they had to hide underneath the desks in school or something, that they got psychologically damaged. I don’t know.

 

I mean, when Khrushchev was there and said, okay, we will bury you. That was communism against capitalism. Okay, we got our backs up.

 

I understood. They know I find we hated Russia, the Cuban Missile Crisis, etc. But communism fell.

 

Russia is no longer a communist country trying to spread it to the rest of the world. They’re not interested in that. When Yeltsin turned it to Putin, he soared in Russia.

 

He was one of the popular presidents ever. Why? Because the alternative was you go back to communism, which he was not a communist, and he wasn’t an oligarch. It was the best they could possibly hope for.

 

That’s why his approval rating was over 70%. You have to look at it from their perspective. Everybody that I know, even in Eastern Europe, nobody wants to go back to communism.

 

But we have not changed the rhetoric. This nonsense, oh, if Ukraine falls, Russia will take the rest of Europe. I mean, come on.

 

They’re not interested in that. The Russian people aren’t interested in that. American people aren’t interested in going over and occupying Russia.

 

The average person on both sides, we just want to take care of our family and get on with life. That’s it. Wars are created by the elite.

 

Go kill this guy, and they just fill their money. That’s about it. Look at Vietnam.

 

It’s all come out now. LBJ lied to the public. He even said they had no idea that they were shooting at whales that night.

 

We were never attacked. Robert McNamara, you can look him on YouTube before he died, he did a video. To apologize, some 58,000 Americans died.

 

He said, we were wrong. We thought Russia was involved. They were not.

 

That’s nice. It’s always Russia, Russia, Russia. That’s why I say I think these people just, when communism fell, I think they were just mad that they didn’t get to shoot anybody.

 

After spending decades, oh, they’re the enemy. Okay, then all of a sudden, your enemy’s not there anymore. I can tell you I was in DC back when Reagan came in.

 

Gorbachev had taken power and had made statements like he wanted to have peace, etc. Reagan wanted to go meet him. The neocons, they couldn’t say he was still a communist because he wasn’t.

 

They said, the excuse was, and I can tell you directly, that they said, you can never trust a Russian. It turned from communism to just racism, I guess. Look at the landscape.

 

Not one European leader is interested in even negotiating, possibly, peace. It’s just, you’re willing to blow up Europe for what? Just so you can point the blame at someone else for your economic troubles? Yeah, look. Most people don’t realize, but when they created the EU, I mean, I helped Margaret Thatcher keeping the pound out of the euro.

 

And she understood. I said, this is going to be a disaster. When they were creating the euro, they came to me.

 

I said, okay, fine. This is how you create a currency. And they were saying, oh, you know, everybody will pay the same interest rate like in Europe, and we’ll be able to defeat the dollar because our GDP will be bigger.

 

I mean, this was all the propaganda. And I said, that’s very nice. None of this is going to work.

 

You have to consolidate the debt if you want to compete with the dollar. And remember, Kohl of Germany, before he died, and you can Google this one up too, he admitted he acted like a dictator. The German people were never allowed to vote to join the euro.

 

He said if he put it to a vote, he would have lost seven to three. So he acted like a dictator, unilaterally took Germany into the euro. And his criteria was, you can’t consolidate the debt because the Germans wouldn’t want to be seen as paying off the debt for Greece.

 

And I warned him, I said, you do this, this is not going to work. You know, as a trader, you know, you were bullish Germany, bearish on Italian, you bought, you know, the Deutsche Bank, you sold the lira. All you did was you transferred it to the bond market.

 

You know, buy the bonds. I mean, you know, all kinds of spreads are going on. So nothing changed.

 

You just moved it from currency to the bond market. That’s all you did. You know, as I said, if I’m going to pick up the phone and say, you know, buy me $10 billion of what? Okay, I still have to make the same decision.

 

Do I want to be in Germany? Do I want to be in France? Do I want to be in Italy? There is no single European investment like that. So I said, you’re never going to compete with the dollar. I just call up, said, okay, fine, buy me $10 billion to Treasury.

 

That’s it. Done. You know, I mean, we got 50 states, they all have different, you know, credit ratings.

 

And they all have to compete. That’s what Europe has become. Nothing different.

 

You can see their power completely fade away. I don’t know. I’m sure you’re keeping up with the latest on Davos as we speak right now.

 

And from what I’ve seen, I mean, they’re talking to a half empty arena or half empty or auditorium, whatever you want to call it. And just the other day, they had a big panel and they were discussing the recent Trump win. And they basically admitted that they lost and Trump won.

 

Is Davos, Brussels, the EU admitting their defeat? I mean, is this just a positive sign or do they become, I guess, do they end up showing their fangs like a cornered wolverine at this moment? No, I think that’s probably the latter. I’ve never seen a government simply surrender like that. Oh, OK, you were right.

 

We were wrong. I don’t think that’s just going to happen. I really don’t.

 

You have to understand when they created the EU, Trump had his hand in it. All right. Look at it.

 

It’s anti-democratic. All right. Nobody can vote for the head of Europe.

 

They don’t stand for election or appointed by the heads of the different states. Next, you have the European Commission that makes all the laws that are dictatorial to everybody else. Nobody stands for election.

 

All right. There is no way a European has the ability to vote to get out. It’s kind of like almost communism.

 

You vote your way in, but you got to shoot your way out. It’s just not. Basically, I mean, Schwab actually does have a bust of Lenin on his bookshelf in his office.

 

All right. I would say that, you know, you had the three Greek philosophers, Plato, Aristotle, and Socrates. They were all against democracy.

 

Why? Because they thought the people were too stupid, basically, to vote. So that’s what Marx kind of picked up on. And it’s been hanging in, you know, on low fruit trees for people to pick off for a long time.

 

How do you reconcile? How do you reconcile their hate for communists in Russia, but they themselves being communist adjacent by being technocrats and having a bust of Lenin? Lenin was different than Stalin. All right. If you really look at what Lenin did, yes, communism, but it was modeled on the United States, that it would be a confederation.

 

And he argued that each republic should retain its sovereignty like the United States. They assume, many people assume, that Stalin poisoned Lenin and his wife. Lenin had even written a letter, do not let Stalin succeed me.

 

All right, Stalin did. What did he do? He grabbed all the power to Moscow. No, you don’t have independent sovereignty, anything else.

 

So he was more of a real dictator type thing. So that’s the difference between Lenin and Stalin. So they seem to be trying to cut the baby in half that the people are too stupid to vote.

 

So we, the elite, have to show society where to go. But we’re not communist. We’re not like Lenin.

 

I mean, we’re more like Lenin. We’re not like Stalin. I don’t know.

 

There are no movie mirrors in Washington or Brussels. They never look at themselves. They end up at the same level, the same area, because centralized government historically always fails.

 

Why? Take Camilla in abortion, for example. There was some guy that, you know, said, oh, you know, God, whatever. And she said, oh, you’re at the wrong rally.

 

Basically, her position was, no, I get in and this is it for abortion. And telling the Bible states, we don’t care about your religion, take it and stuff it. That’s not civilization.

 

All right. That’s why centralized governments always fail. They think they end up, they have the power to dictate and everybody must accept the same thing.

 

And then they couch it and, oh, equality and all this other bullshit, really. We are equal in rights, not in talent. Like I said, I don’t think you want to pay me $30 million a year to throw a football, you know.

 

But, you know, this is reality. Yes, we’re all equal in rights, but we’re not equal in talent. You know, in communism, human individuality didn’t exist.

 

All right. Okay, we got a job opening to, you know, here’s a room, go do that. Not, you know, there was no individual, gee, what would you like to do in life? You know, none of that.

 

That’s why communism failed. All right. Stalin was even teaching kids, I went behind the Berlin wall.

 

So I, what I’m speaking about is not speculation. I saw it myself. They were telling kids, your parents are not your real parents.

 

The state is. And if they say anything against the state, you are to report them. You know, you had like California’s moving in the same direction.

 

Oh, if a parent doesn’t allow the child to maybe even investigate transgender, that’s child abuse. And under the law, they could take the children away from the parent. What is this? You know, it’s the state was in California was directly interfering in the parental relationship.

 

This is what they do. It’s always more and more power. They never give anything back.

 

Once they have it, that’s it. I mean, I, you know, was arguing back in the 80s, that we should merge the SEC and CFTC. I said, everybody else has one regulatory body, we have two.

 

And if I obey the laws of the SEC, I go to jail with the CFTC. And I was told, no, we can’t do that, because we’d have to lay off 50,000 people. So it’s got nothing to do with what’s right, what’s wrong.

 

And I said, you’re going to force everybody offshore. That became the hedge fund industry. You wanted me to make the decision for you, should I be in bonds, stocks, commodities, gold, whatever, I can make that decision.

 

As a domestic hedge fund, or domestic fund manager, I could not. All right. I was offered a $60 billion to managing in equities.

 

I turned it down. Why? Because legally, I could only hedge up to 17%. If I went beyond that, oh, now I’m also a commodity fund.

 

I said, no, it would ruin my decision, my reputation. If I can’t hedge, and the market’s going down, and I can’t sell, then I’m basically the terrible fund manager. So I mean, that’s why you ended up Soros and rest of them, everybody moves offshore, because then you could make those decisions.

 

Should I go in currency, gold? What am I going to do? You make those decisions. That’s what a hedge fund manager, a real hedge fund manager did. So domestically, you have to make the decision yourself.

 

The bond guy’s going to say this is the best fund, stock guy’s going to say this is best, the gold fund, you have to have the same expertise. So it’s just crazy. Definitely.

 

Let’s return back to the topic of geopolitics. Do you see, let’s, for lack of a better term, give Trump a chance when it comes to his Ukraine, Russia negotiations, but do you see him shifting away from the East, the West East axis to the North South axis? In other words, he doesn’t really care too much about what happens in Ukraine, or the Middle East, or in Taiwan. It seems like his focus is to the North South, i.e. Canada, Mexico, Greenland, Panama, and potentially other portions of South America.

 

And if that is the case, can he afford to have any sort of energy directed towards the East? What’s your take on Trump’s kind of wanting to build out Fortress America in the Western Hemisphere? Because, I mean, I don’t know if you’ve said it, but plenty of other analysts that I’ve listened to are kind of forecasting the cyclical war cycle, crescendoing the late 2020s, early 2030s. And if that’s the case, could Trump be building a Fortress America across the Western Hemisphere? I don’t think that’s really his objective there. But back in the 60s, when I was involved in computer engineering, etc., I wasn’t allowed to talk about it back then, but RCA had all the government contracts.

 

They were the biggest really in computers at the time. They decided to sell their computer division went to Univac and IBM, but they retained the government contracts. So the married guys were getting Hawaii, London, Paris.

 

I was not married. I was offered Thule, Greenland, Guam, and Vietnam. Most people didn’t know, but what was up at Thule, Greenland? That’s NORAD.

 

It was all top secret back then. That protects the United States looking over the top of the globe, because if Russia’s going to send any kind of a missile, it’s going to come over the top. It’s not going to go across the Atlantic and in.

 

That would be more of a submarine type thing. It’s like going around your belly versus your chest. It’s a shorter distance over the North Pole from Russia to America that way.

 

That’s what NORAD was about. That’s what Greenland was all about. Maybe everybody’s just heard about this because of Trump, but this has been something argued in Washington for quite some time for national security purposes that we should control Greenland.

 

That’s really what that’s for. I think that Canada being the 51st state, the thing was just basically a shot across the bow because of Trudeau and his nonsense up there. I don’t think he’s serious about that.

 

I certainly wouldn’t want to take in Canada, honestly. I would be more inclined to take up their offer. Let’s swap.

 

I’ll give you California, Oregon, and Washington, and maybe even throw in New York City and give us Alberta and BC. The Panama Canal, that I understand, we paid for everything. China’s really using it a lot now.

 

Jimmy Carter just simply gave it to him. That was it. I’m not sure that was even legal without congressional approval.

 

These people tend to do a lot that I would say violates the Constitution quite often. Even Biden’s pardons are absolutely ridiculous. You can look at the Supreme Court decision.

 

I posted about it. The Supreme Court clearly stated a pardon is the equivalent of pleading guilty. You basically are accepting it is like a plea of guilty, period.

 

For him to say he’s pardoning his family, but they didn’t do anything wrong. Sorry, that’s amnesty, which he doesn’t have the power to grant, only pardons. It’s like a hybrid.

 

You’re pardoning the January 6th people and your whole family. Sorry, you don’t have the power to do that. I would say that Trump is maybe, hopefully, giving him the benefit of the doubt that perhaps with publicly putting that out is more of maybe a negotiating standpoint with Putin.

 

I don’t think a world leader would do such a thing publicly rather than privately. Maybe that’s the public statement and then the private one is something different. I can say that Putin has shown tremendous restraint, tremendous.

 

Knowing that Trump coming in changes the landscape and maybe all this nonsense. Zelensky should be thrown out of office, if not dragged out. I speak to a lot of Ukrainians and to quote them, if he basically was on fire, they wouldn’t urinate on him until he was dead.

 

Mainly because there was a peace deal and then Boris Johnson hopped on the plane and said, no, you’re not allowed that peace. We want war. Over a million Ukrainians have died since then.

 

You know, what are you fighting for? It’s nonsense that, you know, invading Russia. Why? You’re not defending the Donbass anymore. All right.

 

It’s because he was told to go invade Russia. Maybe then Putin would attack something in NATO and they could declare, oh, so he’s the aggressor. And that’s why I say Putin knows the game.

 

He knows what they’re trying to get him to do. And if he does that, we’re into World War III. Simple as that.

 

What the Europeans are trying to do is get him to attack anything in NATO so they can invoke Article 5 and now U.S. you have to send troops in. You know, the last time Article 5 was invoked, the U.S. did it over 9-11 to justify going in and attacking Iraq, which actually had nothing to do with 9-11 or weapons of mass destruction or anything other, every other lie that Dick Cheney made up. What do you think was the reason behind that hard-nosed post, however? I mean, and plus, what is there to sanction from Russia still? I mean, they pretty much sanctioned the entire country.

 

Do you think Russia cares whether or not the U.S. adds another irrelevant, arbitrary sanction and a few tariffs here and there? Look, these sanctions against Russia are absolutely brain dead. They are destroying the European economy completely. You just had Zelensky cutting off the gas to, you know, Slovenia.

 

I mean, you know, oh, but then you want them to give you money. You know, this is what created the BRICS. You know, if you go back to 2014 when Russia went into Crimea, Obama went to Swift and said he wanted them to be removed and Swift said, no, you’re not going to turn the world financial system into a weapon.

 

So what did they do? They replaced the head of Swift in 2019. Oh, okay. What do you want me to do this time? You know, so Swift has basically destroyed the world economy.

 

There is no global economy anymore. Once you put in these sanctions against Russia, that’s what created BRICS. All of a sudden, all these other countries began to realize, hey, if we don’t do what Washington directs us to do by dictatorial power, we remove from Swift.

 

Look, this whole nonsense started with Christine Lagarde when she was the head of the IMF. She’s the one that started this stuff and she was friends with Obama, which is why he tried it. She threatened all the tax havens.

 

You turn over everybody that has an account there or we’re going to remove you from Swift and you can’t get any money at all. She even threatened the Vatican. That’s where all this nonsense started from.

 

For her, it was, oh, we got to get those people, all these billionaires and got money in these tax havens not paying tax. We need that money. This is basically what it is.

 

So, what you’ve done is you’ve divided the world economy. China, you have Blinken. These people really are idiots.

 

They only look at their myopic issue. You have Blinken threatening China. Okay, if you help Russia, we’ll put sanctions on you.

 

Well, China owned more than 10% of the US national debt. They started selling. They created chips.

 

You idiot. In order for you to wage war, you need somebody buying your debt. Mm-hmm.

 

You’re telling the rest of the world, you do as I say, well, okay, well, I’m not going to buy your debt. You go into World War III, whatever debt China has, you think the US will pay it? Absolutely no way. Oh, we can’t transfer interest to them to buy weapons to attack us.

 

That’s your excuse. To the old default. I mean, I’m not even making speculation.

 

This is history. This is simply the way it goes. And then they put in all kinds of capital controls to stop money from moving.

 

There are major capital outflows ahead of FDR confiscating gold. The night before the election, the rumor was out that he was going to do that. And he addressed the nation, oh, that’s absurd.

 

I would never do such a thing. That’s just political rhetoric. He won the election and immediately that’s what he did.

 

They lie about everything. Given what you’ve seen from Trump so far, what are you forecasting out for him? What do you anticipate being the first, second, and nth order effects of his presidency? Well, I think the US economy will certainly bounce to some degree into 2026. After that, it does not look good going down into 2028.

 

Mainly because you’re looking at war. And as I said, the Europeans have got to wake up and drag these world leaders out of their office by their hair, if they have any. Because they’re not going to change their policy.

 

They’re not going to admit, oh, gee, I guess I was wrong. Not going to happen. Does Trump get out of NATO? Does he get out of NATO? I hope he does.

 

I think he certainly was in that direction before and he’s probably in talks of doing it now. What I can tell you what’s going on in Europe is you have Macron saying he wants to send in troops into Ukraine. He wants war with Russia.

 

Why? Russia is the richest country in the world from a natural resource perspective. And they have all told themselves if they conquer Russia, all this wealth will solve their problems. You can Google, you had Lindsey Graham, and I was shocked.

 

He was on, I think it was Face the Nation. And he actually said the truth for once. He said there was $10 to $12 trillion worth of natural resources under Crimea.

 

And he actually said on TV, we cannot allow Russia and China to have that. So in other words, we’re not fighting for democracy or all this other nonsense that they put up. It’s assets again, like oil wells in Iraq.

 

It’s a gas field that’s underneath Crimea that they know about. You had a Minister of Estonia coming out and saying Russia’s too big and needs to be carved up. How would people think if Putin said the United States is too big and should be carved up? I think they think a third time is going to be a charm.

 

Hitler tried, Napoleon tried. I guess they think, well, maybe the third time we’ll be able to get it. Most people don’t realize, but in 1917, the time of the revolution, Russia had the world’s largest gold reserves of anybody.

 

Somebody in the administration hid it. And there’s been this quest to find it, like the Knights Templar lost treasure or whatever. There have been rumors that it was buried in a forest, others that it was dropped at the bottom of a very deep lake, but they didn’t want the communists to get their hands on the gold.

 

So it’s never been found. So it probably would make a good lost treasure movie or something. So Russia is definitely the richest country in the world from a natural resource perspective.

 

The Greens in Germany, they want war because they want to stop to save the planet. We have to destroy Russia’s ability to sell energy around the world. This is the bullshit I’ve heard, even directly.

 

I’m not speculating on this stuff. But do they believe it? Do they believe their own BS? They seem to. I think they’re just indoctrinated into this stuff.

 

It makes no sense. Look, you even had a girl take tomato soup and throw it on the Mona Lisa. Oh, because it’s an oil painting.

 

Honey, that’s not crude oil. It’s linseed oil. They’re not that smart.

 

What do you want me to say? They’re just not that smart. Oil, oh my God. Let me get an oil massage.

 

Oh, you’re hurting the planet. It seems like that type of thinking has pretty much been dispensed with. Normal people, at least here in the United States, have had enough of this.

 

You see this formally achieved through the election of Trump, and you don’t really see much pushback anymore of Trump. It’s not like it was in 2016 or 2017 or during the first Trump term. This is a rising trend globally.

 

In Germany, you’re seeing AFD is rising. Oh, far right. Anybody that’s not far left is far right.

 

They’re in the middle of the road, really. It’s the same thing you’re seeing. There is pushback on all this stuff because it is destroying the economy.

 

It’s not just here. That’s why I say you saw the German government fall one day after Trump was elected. This is just the way it is.

 

Cyclically, we’re looking at the left simply went too far. On all this stuff, on climate change, I mean, you can Google transgender. What percentage of the population is transgender? You’re talking about less than 4%, 2% or 3%, something like that.

 

Yet, they made this such a big issue. You would think that 50% of the country is that way or something. Most people never even heard of it before they started that stuff.

 

Yeah. Well, let’s shift over to some other potential hot spots. Do you think there’s a real risk of a war with Iran in much the same way there could be a war with Russia? Probably less.

 

The real risk in the Middle East is off most people’s radars, and that’s Turkey. Turkey was behind the fall of Syria. If you Google Erdogan, you’ll see that he is the one that wants to resurrect the old Ottoman Empire.

 

When Hamas attacked Israel, he cheered. He’s called for all the Arab states to unite behind him. Turkey was the head of the Ottoman Empire.

 

He sees himself as maybe rising to be the next caliph. The US is building a huge embassy, an absolute fortress there over in Lebanon. Lebanon has the risk of falling, as does Jordan.

 

Turkey is the one that wants to really conquer the whole Middle East area. Israel used to be part of the Ottoman Empire. I think that’s more of a risk than Iran.

 

Iran is more on the religious side. I don’t think that they have the same visions of conquering all of the Middle East like Erdogan does. To them, it’s more of opposing the Jews, more on a religious type thing.

 

How do you see Turkey’s NATO status playing into all of this, especially in the north of Syria, where you’ve got US-backed Kurds seemingly going into combat against the Turkish-backed forces? Yeah, that’s the whole problem. Turkey being in NATO is kind of like an oxymoron. One of their archenemies is Greece.

 

Greece just got maybe a half a dozen F-35s or something, and they said, oh, now we can attack. You can Google this. They actually publicly said, now we can do a sneak attack on Turkey.

 

It’s another NATO country. What’s going on here? The hatred between Greece and Turkey, go back to Alexander the Great. This is thousands of years.

 

You’re not going to change this stuff. It’s not a negotiation. You can’t.

 

I don’t see a lasting peace between Iran and Israel either. These are things that just are deeply rooted. For those that haven’t been to the Middle East, it’s completely different.

 

We designed, we carved up the area and made these countries and put in dictators. We did that. In Syria, as you said, you’ve got the Kurds.

 

It’s tribes. They see themselves as tribes first. All right, Druze, you’ve got Sunnis, Shiite.

 

These are religious differences. They don’t say, yes, we’re all Syrian. It’s like, no, get that guy, get this.

 

The whole area is that way. The Palestinians, there was a war, an Arabian war. The Saudis won.

 

That’s why it’s called Saudi Arabia. The loser was the Hashemites. Jordan.

 

Jordan was supposed to be for Palestine. The head of Jordan, the king, he married a Palestinian to try and merge the two tribes. Didn’t really work, but nevertheless.

 

You have to look at the Middle East. It’s tribal. That’s a problem.

 

When you say Lebanon and Jordan could be the next two countries to fall, what does that look like? Is that like another Syria? Can you provide a little bit more detail? Look, Hezbollah is not all of Lebanon. They are a group within there that have captured the headlines. They have brought war to the region.

 

The rest of the people in Lebanon are against them. That’s what I mean. It’s all tribal.

 

It’s not one size fits all. So you’re looking at both them and Lebanon and Jordan are not stable countries per se. Lebanon has been really invaded by Hezbollah.

 

And it’s like Ukraine is our Hezbollah. They take our orders from us. Hezbollah basically takes his orders from Iran.

 

So like I say, it’s not as clear cut as a lot of people think. Do you see Iran somewhat distancing themselves from Hezbollah and Hamas? There was a recent interview with the vice president of Iran over at the World Economic Forum, and he basically just threw the resistance axis under the bus. Do you see Iran kind of trying to distance themselves away in order to normalize relations with the West, at least with this reformist regime with Pozeshkin and Zarif? Yes.

 

That’s why I say I don’t see them as the biggest threat turkeys more. They don’t have the agenda to conquer all of the Middle East. I think they’re trying to basically back down because they know that you have a bunch of neocons here.

 

I believe it has been leaked out. The real agenda going into Iraq was that they thought that they could take Iraq within a matter of a week. And the plan was to go from there directly into Tehran and to take out Iran at the same time.

 

They got bogged down in Iraq and never made it to part two. But you had generals out there and that was the agenda. I believe that has been leaked out.

 

So I think that basically has told Iran, hey, is this really the direction you want to go because you’re not going to survive? What’s the point of this huge embassy they’re building in Lebanon? What does this foretell? I think it’s really to protect Israel. I mean, it’s the biggest embassy and it’s a fortress. It’s an absolute fortress.

 

There’s nothing in the entire State Department even comes close to it. So it seems to be a major fortress, all concrete, withstand pretty much anything. And I think it’s largely anticipating the problems, not so much just from Iran, maybe it began that way.

 

But I think it’s also focused on Turkey. I see. And with Turkey, how does this affect their relationship with Israel? I mean, they have, don’t they send their oil to Israel? Don’t they have these strategic economic ties with Israel? I mean, how adversarial could they be though? Look, Erdogan is, it’s like, okay, fine, just look at Germany.

 

They cut off their own nose to spite their face. I mean, when it comes to his dream of resurrecting the old Ottoman Empire, I mean, he’s come out point blank. I mean, you can even probably Google and find many statements with it.

 

We should all rise up against Israel, join together against Israel. I mean, this is what he preaches all the time. So it might be having some economic ties, but that can be cut off in an instant.

 

Well, anything else you want to talk about here, Martin? I think we’ve covered pretty much every hot topic there is to cover, seemingly. Anything else you want to talk about that we didn’t get to? I think from an economic standpoint, anyway, my concern with Trump is this whole thing about currency value, saying he wants to see the dollar lower. I mean, I’ve been probably the leading FX advisor for since the 70s.

 

So I got called into just about every one of these crises. When they were forming G5, I was called in. I warned them, do not do this.

 

They were proposing to lower the dollar by 40%. And I said, if you do this, you’re going to cause a crash, which ended up being the 87 crash. And they go, oh, why? I said, because you sold a third of the national debt to Japan.

 

You’re now going to say you’re going to lower the dollar by 40% for trade. Well, everybody that bought any US assets are going to sell. They’re going to lose money.

 

Really? I mean, they don’t understand this stuff. It’s amazing how the stupidity in government that I encounter. 1997, look on our side, I wrote to Robert Rubin.

 

Same thing. Oh, Japan, we’re going to lower the dollar, blah, blah, blah. I wrote to him.

 

I said, hey, look, I was called in on the 87 crash. You keep this up and you’re going to cause a crash. Oh, well, we’re not into that, blah, blah, blah.

 

That was the 1997 Asian currency crisis a few weeks later. I’m just sick and tired of all this stuff. I was called in, I met with the Swiss Central Bank.

 

I warned them that PEG is going to break. Oh, well, we think we can hold it. I said, that’s very nice.

 

Okay. I think history’s on my side. Not a single country has been able to hold this.

 

PEG broke. I was advising Margaret Thatcher, kept the pound out of the euro. They staged a coup because they wanted to go into the euro.

 

John Major took the euro, and this is what politicians do. He wanted to make it look strong. He overvalued it and put it into the ERM, the European rate mechanism, which was the prelude to the euro.

 

Soros and everybody else, that’s how they made money. They started shorting it. I then get called.

 

Why? Because I’m the one that was advising Thatcher and said, don’t do this. I said, look, you overvalued the pound. You’re going to have to devalue the pound.

 

This is what I was told. Oh, well, John Major can’t say that because when he ran for election, he promised not to devalue the pound. How do you get out of this? I wrote the paragraph for we’re going to allow the pound to float to seek its own level.

 

Oh, brilliant. He didn’t do it. The market did it.

 

It’s all wordsmithing. You have to deal with these politicians. I’ve dealt with them for so long.

 

I understand what the issue is. It’s the word. Change the word and it’s okay.

 

It’s the same thing. I’m concerned that Trump is going down that same stupid road. Tariffs, lowering the value of the dollar so we can sell more overseas.

 

Not going to work. Sorry. What you’re going to do is you’re going to cause a crash.

 

You lower the value of the dollar. Then everybody that bought US assets, shares, real estate, whatever, they’re going to lose money. Then they sell.

 

Then you create a bear market. How many times do I have to get called in by governments to do this? All the time. I’m sick of it.

 

It’s one thing if you say, okay, fine, don’t do this again. They listen. I’ve been called into these things.

 

I can’t tell you how many times. The first one I got called into was the Franklin National Bank failure in 1974. It was a 10% move because that’s when the front woods broke in 71.

 

The bank went down for a 10% move in the Italian lira. You know about this stuff. Could you come take a look at this? That’s what brought it down.

 

After that, every financial crisis, get the guy that did that one. I’ve been in the middle of every one of these things. It’s just 97 Asian currency crisis.

 

I was even called in by the Bank of China. I’ve met probably more central banks than I think anybody in history. It’s always the same thing.

 

You don’t learn. No. They’re always going to make decisions in their own self-interest.

 

So you think it’s just human nature. It’s just human nature looking out for their own self-interest. I think so.

 

Look, individually, you learn. Okay, I did that. Bought the high.

 

Okay, I’m not going to do that again. Collectively, as a society, we don’t have that ability. That’s what I’ve concluded.

 

We don’t learn from our mistakes. I don’t know who’s going to take this role from me after I’m gone because they’re still going to make the same mistakes all the time. I’ve been doing this for 40 some years and I’ve seen no change.

 

When Trump is saying this, I’m like, oh shit, here we go again. Well, they start believing their own BS. They start drinking their own Kool-Aid in a way.

 

They don’t get it. They really don’t get it. Like I said, blank and threatening China.

 

So China sells 53 billion of US debt the first quarter. Well, why? Because you threatened them, you idiot. I don’t know.

 

There’s just no comprehension of how the world economy really works. They think that they vote for me and I’ll lower inflation or lower unemployment. You cannot do that.

 

You can’t shift the direction of your economy if the entire world is against you. You’re in the middle of a Great Depression. Sorry, you’re not going to create a boom.

 

All right. We’re all connected. This is what goes on.

 

The first G4 was 1927. Capital was fleeing to America, taking place in the auto booms going into 29 and Europe was in trouble. So they convinced the Federal Reserve to lower interest rates in 1927.

 

It’s the first G4 meeting. They did. What happened? The markets looked at it.

 

They said, oh, that proves Europe’s in trouble. Get the hell out. The 87 crash.

 

All right. You had the Plaza Accord. I warned them not to do it.

 

They stood up and said, we want the dollar 40% lower. Then after that, you basically have the Louvre Accord. I think it was in February of 87.

 

Then they all got together in Paris. Okay. The dollar went down enough.

 

All right. So we think that’s enough. When the dollar started making lower lows, that’s what caused the panic.

 

Oh, central banks can’t control it. Sell. When you make these kind of positions and then you have egg on your face, you are confirming to the free markets that you don’t have the power you pretend to have.

 

I’m going to do a little dot connecting here, Martin. I want to get your thoughts on this. Have you heard of this project Stargate initiative of where they want to funnel $500 billion into AI research? Did you hear about this? Yeah.

 

What are the odds that this is kind of a way to, I mean, are they trying to better understand the markets through AI? Could that be a big component to it? What are your general thoughts on that initiative? The main reason that we have really the only functional AI system on markets is because you’re not going to create an AI system and hope it learns how to trade. All right. Trading is something different.

 

It’s a nuance. It’s like driving. You’re driving and a guy just makes a slight move, looks like he’s going to come out in front of you.

 

He doesn’t, but he was thinking about it. So there’s a slight little move. That’s what trading is about.

 

It’s sometimes part of a gut feeling, but you have to know who you’re trading against. What are they doing? What’s their thing? What are they thinking today? So it’s more of a nuance that, for example, I mean, how many times we heard, okay, a good economic came out, a number, and the market still went down. Oh, well, it wasn’t good enough.

 

How do we know what’s good enough and what’s not? I’m not so sure that they’re going to be able to create an AI that learns how to actually trade because it takes more on an international level rather than domestic. But look, the open AI really sparked and made people think that this AI is suddenly attainable, but there are limits to it. I mean, Big Blue created, and they promised AI was going to cure cancer, and they threw it.

 

All the data, sorry, it didn’t work. That’s what I mean. You need expertise sometimes in certain areas, and you can’t expect a computer to simply get expertise out of nowhere.

 

I mean, that’s movie stuff. Create an AI system like in Terminator. Oh, suddenly I don’t like humans.

 

I think I’ll kill them all. But spending this kind of money on AI is typical. They don’t really know what they’re doing.

 

It sounds great. Oh, that will maybe solve a lot of problems. Even if it did, they’re not going to follow it, I’m telling you.

 

That would be, okay, fine, you should merge the CFTC and SEC. I’d have to lay off 50,000 people. I don’t want to do that.

 

Would they even follow that advice, even assuming it was correct? After 40 years of dealing with these people, I don’t think so. Martin, what is the point of these Trump meme coins that have come out? You’ve got the Trump coin, the Melania coin, I think you have a Barron coin as well. I mean, this just seems like a giant rock pole before he was inaugurated.

 

What do you make of it? I don’t. I think, bad idea. I think he should have.

 

To me, it taints the whole issue with my Biden family, Inc. Look, cryptocurrency, I don’t know what he’s smoking. Creative Bitcoin Reserve.

 

I mean, get out of here. Come on. This stuff is not a reserve at all.

 

It’s not a currency. In order for a currency to exist, it must be accepted everywhere. First of all, let’s get real here.

 

Bitcoin could never replace the dollar. Why? You would have permanent deflation. It would be the Great Depression all over again.

 

Why? Because basically, the money supply must increase with the population growth. If there’s $20 in the money supply, and there’s only 20 people, we all can have one. Now there’s 40 people, but there’s still only $20.

 

What happens? Now we’re down to 50 cents. It becomes deflationary. That’s what the Great Depression was about.

 

The Fed did not increase the money supply because they were afraid of inflation. They contracted it. It was one of the criticisms that Milton Friedman had about it.

 

They didn’t expand the money supply. He was correct. You can also go online and you can go on eBay.

 

Over 200 cities issued their own currency during the Great Depression. Why? Because there wasn’t enough cash. They couldn’t pay employees, couldn’t hire employees, couldn’t pay the bills.

 

I believe they also burned down farmland to create inflation, didn’t they? The supply side. There you go. We’re dealing with false narratives that come mainly from the German hyperinflation.

 

Oh, it was because they printed money. No, sorry. Completely wrong.

 

They printed money as the cause, as a reaction to it. Germany, in December 1922, and you can buy these bonds on eBay, they confiscated 10% of everybody’s assets in the bank. Now, they just took 10% of your bank account.

 

What are you going to do? Do you leave it there for them to do it again? Nope. I’m going to go and buy a bunch of tangible assets. They were converting it to French francs, Swiss francs, everything they could.

 

Hyperinflation comes the next year. The money fled. The socialists were rising.

 

The Weimar Republic had even gone as far as what they wanted. They overthrew the government and they were actually asking Russia to come take them. They wanted to join the miracle of Marxism.

 

If you had any real money and you just saw what they did in Russia, and this is what they’re asking you to do in Germany, you got the hell out of there quick. The printing of the money wasn’t the hyperinflation. That was the result of everybody fleeing.

 

It’s the cart before the horse. It’s not the increase in the money supply that creates inflation. It’s the collapse in confidence in government.

 

That’s why you had this new modern monetary theory. The Fed increased the money supply, there was no inflation. First of all, they don’t even understand what they’re talking about.

 

The Fed was just basically doing a swap, taking in 30-year bonds. China reduced its maturities and brought it down to five years. I warned them.

 

I said, that’s very nice. You’re buying in all these 30-year bonds. Who are you buying them from? They didn’t know.

 

The money was going out of the country. It didn’t stimulate the economy. It didn’t do anything.

 

It didn’t create inflation. Then you have these academics, oh, see, we can increase the money supply and it’s not inflationary because the money left the country, you idiot. I get very frustrated because people are confined to their domestic purview of what’s taking place.

 

Open your mind. We’re all connected. We were bankrupt in 1896.

 

It was World War I and II that brought all the money here. That’s what made the US the reserve currency of the world. Hello? If it wasn’t for World War I and II, we’d still be a bunch of farmers.

 

If we get into a big world war with the US involved, does a similar thing happen to another country, i.e. the capital just flees there? If so, what country would you bet on that being? Our computer shows it will be China. China will replace the United States after 2032. This is why the dollar is strong and Trump doesn’t get it.

 

The more war and sanctions you want to throw on Russia, the more they beat the war drums over there, the more capital that’s going to come here. Same as World War I, World War II. You better get it out of there quick because what will happen as soon as that first gun goes off, they put in capital controls.

 

They shut down the stock markets. This is what they do every single time. Just look it up.

 

Even the US shut down the stock market in 1914. One more thought here, Martin. We’re anticipating these big deportation operations to take place sometime soon.

 

What are some of the ramifications, some of the unintended consequences that might come from these deportations from an economic standpoint? Should we anticipate higher prices due to the lessening of the cheap labor supply? What do you see down the line? It’s hard to say. I don’t really see it here in Florida. They seem to be more settled elsewhere.

 

I would say it’s probably going to end up pushing up wages because we have shortages of labor to begin with. Here in Florida, you see a lot of stores, signs out, help wanted, help wanted. The biggest problem with what Biden did is he basically blocked immigration from Europe and Asia and took in all the dredge of the earth through South America.

 

A lot of them were Chinese that came in, Africans, Middle East. They weren’t all like Mexicans. Mexicans are generally hardworking people.

 

You’ve got a whole bunch of different things. Europe, much worse. Europe, they let in tons of Muslims.

 

Then you ended up with a religious cultural clash. In Sweden, they actually set portions of the city and said, Shira Law works here. They didn’t assimilate.

 

It’s not like I’m going there to be part of something. They went there to bring their culture with them. I have friends in Germany who will not even let a 13-year-old daughter walk two blocks to a bus stop anymore.

 

Over a thousand girls were raped on New Year’s Eve. The government said, don’t use the word rape, just use assault. They try to hide it.

 

Speaking of Florida, you’re starting to see these severe weather events. In the case of Florida, you had these massive hurricanes come in. I think Tampa was one of the recipients of it.

 

Then you have the LA wildfires on the West Coast side. I want to ask you, with all these recent anomalies or outliers, if you can call them that, what does this do? What is there a hidden impact on the real estate market by way of the insurance companies? The insurance companies are sure to jack up the rates for all these coastal areas. What impact will that eventually ticker down to real estate? Would this incentivize people to move out of the coast and into more inland territories? No, not really.

 

There’s practically zero impact on insurance companies. The first storm was a storm surge. It was a flood.

 

That’s FEMA. Sorry, that’s flood insurance. Homeowners, all that stuff, not covered for floods.

 

I don’t know anybody here other than going to FEMA. That was it. The insurance companies, I don’t think, got any kind of a real hit here in Florida from this stuff.

 

The second one with the hurricane was winds. Nothing really big. Not a big deal.

 

I didn’t have any damage. I don’t see anything around me that did. Now, California, Newsom let the reservoir run dry.

 

On top of that, State Farm petitioned to raise its rates before the fires. He denied it. They canceled policies just a couple months before all the fires.

 

Their insurance companies would be on the line with a fire issue rather than a flood. Insurance companies, to me, they’re just fraud. Throughout my life, I’ve never had an insurance company ever pay what they were supposed to pay ever.

 

I had a car at the top of a tree and a storm broke up in New Jersey, went in, hit the car. The car was three weeks old. I took it to the dealer.

 

They sent it to Bordentown Autobody. Bordentown Autobody burns down with it. That’s two separate deductibles.

 

Why? The car is gone. The tree first hit it. Then the second one is a fire.

 

My mother’s house, the pipes froze. They sent an investigator to see if she was there because there’s a little clause in the homeowner’s policy. If you’re not there, they don’t have to cover it.

 

She was staying at my sister’s house. It cost me 50 grand to fix my mother’s house. Zero.

 

I swear if I die, they’re going to say it’s not me, it’s a clone. One guy was paying $40,000 a year for insurance and zero. Absolute zero.

 

No, don’t cover that. Don’t cover this. That’s FEMA for self-insurance.

 

I’m not going to pay $40,000 a year in insurance when they’re never going to pay anyhow. He basically says, you’re right. Just save the money, put it in the bank.

 

I’ve been here for eight years. I paid enough, saved enough, and that I could rebuild the house. I see.

 

Well, okay. This has been a fascinating discussion as always, Marty. Thank you so much for coming on.

 

Thank you so much for your time. For people who want to hear and see more of you, where can they find you? Go to armstrongeconomics.com. We don’t sell advertising, so you have to keep pushing off things to read or whatever. You don’t have to put in your email or anything like that.

 

It’s a public service. It’s open for everybody. We’re not blocked anywhere in the world.

 

You can see it in China. You can see it in Russia. You can see it everywhere because everybody knows pretty much it’s a computer and you’re not going to find on page three, by the way, overthrow your government.

 

Fantastic. We’ll have the links to your website down below, so be sure to check it out, guys. We got value out of this video.

 

Be sure to give us a like and comment. Go, Marty, go in the comment section. If you disagreed with anything we talked about, do let me know.

 

I do read the comments and I’m always interested to get your takes here, guys. Remember to subscribe to the channel so you don’t miss another interview just like this. Then check us out on Substack to get early access and ad-free versions of all of my content, as well as uncensored versions for the videos that warrant it.

 

With all that said, I thank you guys for watching and I’ll catch you in the next episode. Bye, all.

Related Articles

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Back to top button