The Fed Can’t Stop Inflation (Uncut) 03-06-2025

Martin Armstrong: The Fed Can’t Stop Inflation

We live in a fantasy world now. Reality has been destroyed. This is the time that we really need to pay attention.

The probabilities are overwhelming on gold’s side. That is the best environment to see gold increase its value. Welcome to Palisades Gold Radio.

I’m your host, Tom Bodrovix. Joining me today is Martin Armstrong from armstrongeconomics.com. Thanks for joining me today, Marty. How are you? Oh, not too bad.

Trying to survive the wild world. It seems like a never-ending tidal wave, where we’re barely being able to keep our heads above water for the news flow. And I actually remember this feeling from the first Trump administration, although it was a little bit different, because it was always just, you know, crap being thrown at him from the media, versus, you know, just almost this nonstop news roll of dramatic, dramatic situation after dramatic situation.

Well, Trump 1.0 was, you know, when he went in, even General Flynn, there’s a documentary about him, and he said he was naive when he went in. And that’s very true. When he went in, they said, oh, well, you know, you’re not a politician.

You have to give confidence to the world that the government’s still going to be run correctly. And they picked his cabinet. And all the neocons, the deep state, and everybody was there stabbing him in the back for everything, like you said.

And that’s why this time, it’s much different. Now he understands the game. So he picked his cabinet before he even got to Washington.

And so you have the media still preaching the propaganda side. Oh, these people aren’t, you know, inexperienced, blah, blah, blah. Well, I’m sorry, but that’s what we need, because somebody from the deep state is not going to clean out the deep state.

It’ll do what they did in Trump 1.0. I mean, they’ll just stab him in the back all the time. So that’s why I think it’s getting interesting, because you’re starting to see. I mean, I’ve been dealing with Washington since the 80s.

And everybody down there always knew that USAID was just a slush fund for the Democrats and CIA, et cetera. So, I mean, it was just a standing joke. And that’s why I went after them first.

I mean, because everybody knew it. And, you know, and all these people out there, oh, this is outrageous. Well, do you really want to fund? One of the items was transgender opera in Columbia.

Transgender, I mean, what? You have to be transgender to be in the opera? What is this? It’s crazy. I don’t know. I mean, some of the things are just off the wall.

Well, I mean, it just goes to show and I think illuminate how much waste there has been within these government programs that, you know, is beyond people’s consciousness a lot of the time. And just the fact that it’s being brought to light, I think, is really important. Whether that ends up actually making a difference, you know, right now with the actual, you know, with the real debt level that we’re facing, I think that has yet to flesh itself out.

But I think it’s important for these programs and for these ideas to be brought to light. Well, I think it’s part of what our computer’s been forecasting. As you know, that, you know, basically we’re looking at most governments falling by 2032.

And this is part of the process of making people aware that, look, the government is just corrupt. All of them are the same. And I think that people domestically here in the States, they don’t understand.

They’re all, you know, they’re all flustered about the U.S. national debt, this, that, all the dollars, fiat. Take a look outside the United States, because every country is the same. This is not unique.

The only difference is that everybody else is forced to use the dollar. Well, the main reason even that happened was because the U.S. has a consumer-based economy. So Germany’s got to sell its BMWs here.

Japan’s got to sell its Toyotas. So all these countries had to basically price their product in dollars to sell it to begin with. And then they get dollars coming back.

And also, I mean, one of the reasons we became the largest firm in the world on this stuff, I was opening an office in 1985 in Geneva. And, you know, I knew there was anti-Americanism there. So I had lists of European names, like European advisors or whatever.

I went to lunch with one of the heads of the top three banks there in Switzerland. And I was asking his advice, what name do you think we should use? And he said to me, name one European analyst. And I couldn’t at the time.

And I was embarrassed. I’m thinking, oh, shit, I’m an arrogant American or whatever. And he laughed and he says, there are none.

He says, you don’t realize why everybody uses you. And I said, no. And he says, you don’t care if the dollar goes up or down.

I said, it’s just a trade. But in Europe, what happened was after World War II, the currencies were all starting from zero. So the politicians used that.

Say the Deutsche Mark’s up 10% against the dollar. That proves I did a good job. So consequently, no analyst in Europe could possibly come out and say that Deutsche Mark would go down because it became a political statement.

Even to this day, you won’t find any of them out there. You know, if an analyst, one of the top banks came out and said, oh, the euro is going to crash by 50%, the ECB would pick up the phone and say, fire that guy. There was one economist in Estonia who actually came out and said, look, 2007, we’re going into an economic crash.

They put him in jail for six months. You know, so what we saw here in this cancel culture has been in Europe in the financial thing back to the 80s. So that’s how our firm rose, because you really didn’t have any competition in Europe.

You know, I didn’t understand it at the time. And that’s why the dollar became really the reserve currency. The ability of any leader to get accurate information is, you know, of utmost importance.

We’ve seen these cycles over time where you end up getting into these situations that you just described, where nobody wants to actually be able to give bad news to whatever leader that is in power, because then if it’s something that they don’t like, exactly as you said, they get put in jail. Yeah, I mean, it’s, you know, I mean, I was called in back when they were forming the G5 in 1985. And they stood up and they said they were going to lower the dollar by 40%, you know, to help trade.

And I wrote to Reagan. I said, hey, you do this, you’re going to cause a crash. You know, and, oh, you went out of committee.

That’s outrageous. You’ll never be called again. I said, I don’t care.

That’s fine. You know, go call somebody that’s going to say what you want them to say. But I was told back then I could make $5 million a year just producing economic studies, but they tell you what it’s supposed to say, you know, so you back into it.

I mean, I mean, all the economic statistics are everything. They’ve revised CPI so many times. Why? Because after 1980, you know, the CPI was rising rapidly going into 1980 and Jimmy Carter kind of really screwed the economy in a way.

He thought it would be more efficient if all these agencies didn’t have to submit a budget every year. I need money for this, that, the other thing. So he put it on automatic pilot.

So they got whatever they were given the previous year, and it was indexed to CPI. So when you had the CPI going up 10, 15%, these agencies were getting extra money if they needed or not. So then they realized that, oh, that’s a problem.

So then they changed the CPI. They took out real estate and then they said, oh, well, real estate’s really an investment. So they replaced it with rents, you know, and then when that keeps going against them, then they’ve replaced them with rents from areas that are controlled.

I mean, this is what’s been going on. I mean, it’s, you know, you, and I’ve watched it for just decades. I mean, this is why everybody wants to know, ask how can our computer forecast all these elections correctly? It’s because it’s only looking at the numbers, the real numbers.

I mean, you want to take a poll. If you just call people in Washington, you’d be lucky if Trump got 5%. You know, I mean, you can manipulate those polls very easily.

Our computer projected that Brexit would win. Every newspaper said it would lose. Nigel Farage even came to our conference in 2019 in Rome and he said, of course I’m here.

He’s the only one that said I would win. I said, look, it just looks at the numbers. That’s it.

You know, it’s not looking at, and it’s very simple, really. I mean, you take, if the economy goes down, whoever’s in power, Republican, Democrat, whatever, Labour, Conservative, they’re thrown out. Like Herbert Hoover just won in 29.

He gets blamed for the Great Depression. Cornel Hoover was his son. It wasn’t his fault.

All right. But whoever’s there just gets blamed. That’s it.

Well, Marty, do you think, do you think that Trump might be facing the same type of circumstance here? Are the markets pricing in this honeymoon period of his victory versus ignoring the real economic conditions that America and the rest of the world, frankly, is facing right now? Well, yes and no. A lot of the domestic people were expecting this big honeymoon saying, like before. However, the situation has changed.

And most of these domestic analysts don’t look outside the country. And what’s going on with Ukraine is very important because Europe needs war. They always do this when they’re in economic problems.

They need a diversion. A diversion is always going to be, you know, some external enemy. You know, like Biden put on the sanctions against Russia and gasoline prices went up.

And so then you saw the, you know, he said, oh, it’s Putin’s inflation. You know, so then you saw those little stickers on gas pumps with Biden. I did that, you know.

But this is what they do. They cause something and they always blame someone else. And this is what’s going on in Europe.

And it’s all, you know, a lot, it’s just theater. It’s, you have to understand that. I mean, the latest statistics are showing massive exit from Canada to the United States.

And like 50% of the people, I mean, are leaving. I mean, moving, just getting the hell out. 50% of them are coming from Ontario.

You look at Europe, it’s an absolute basket case economically. And I had been told two days in advance. That Zelensky was coming here to try to embarrass Trump into continuing to fund Ukraine.

And they always send in Boris Johnson. He’s their little pet neocon in Britain. And he went over initially, killed the peace deal when there was a peace deal between them.

And that made the front pages of Ukrainian press. So Ukrainian people have basically been concerned and have come out outright. And many of them said, are we allowed to even have peace without permission from London and Washington? You know, who’s in charge of their own country? So Boris Johnson hopped on a plane and flew over about five days before the meeting at the White House.

The deal on the minerals was supposed to be just signed in Kiev. Zelensky suddenly changed. I believe it was Boris Johnson that told him to do this.

No, I have to come to the White House. And so the plans changed five days in advance. I was told about two days in advance what the scheme was going to be.

So if I heard that, I’m sure Trump did. And usually you have a meeting like that. There’s handshaking, whatever.

They go into the meeting and the doors close. They did this in front of the press because he knew what he was going to try and do. And they got all the media on their side.

And all the European leaders, which are basically should be standing on corners with a tin cup asking for money at this point. And this is basically what the deal was to try and embarrass him. And they thought they got the media, we can embarrass him and he’ll have to keep the money going to Ukraine.

And look, just before when Trump was running for election, NATO came out trying to raise $100 billion. And they called it to Trump proof the war. All right.

They need war with Russia. And honestly, the scheme is that Russia is the richest country in the world worth about $75 trillion in natural resources. So Europe thinks that they can take basically Europe or Russia.

And I mean, I’ve even been shown charts. I couldn’t publish them. I would just show them and say, look, you know, if them carving up Russia, who gets what? The minister of Estonia did publicly come out and say Russia is too big and needs to be carved up.

I mean, I can’t imagine what if China said that about the United States, you know? But Marty, what was the difference, let’s say, between these resource deals with the US versus the UK? And was that contingent upon signing a peace agreement? Yes. Trump knows what this is going on, what it’s about. I mean, I had even spoken with RFK before, and I knew he was against the war.

And look, when Zelensky went in, he ran on peace. And the death toll was 13,000. It’s now 1.1 million.

He has no interest in peace because he’s told just to keep it up. NATO is out there saying they no longer need the United States because Ukraine has weakened Russia significantly. And they can go in.

I mean, just had Tusk, I posted that on my blog. He made a speech before hopping on the plane to go to London for this meeting right after, you know, on the weekend. And he says, you know, there’s 500 million, you know, Europeans, only 300 million Americans and 140 million Russians.

And we need to stand up. We’re the most powerful in the world. I mean, this is the attitude.

And what I’ve been told is that if they can conquer Russia, get all those assets, it’s worth twice the national debt of the United States. And at last, they’ll be able to make the United States a second world, you know, country and subservient back to Europe. It’s a colony.

Hey, look, you just get these people that, you know, the word from basically that Macron, he thinks he’s like, you know, Charlemagne and resurrecting the Holy Roman Empire. You have Erdogan and Turkey with the same stuff, you know, resurrecting the Ottoman Empire. As soon as the Hamas attack took place, we should all band together, you know, I mean, and he’s come out many times saying about that.

You know, I don’t know what it is, but I mean, these people want the old glory of whatever it was or something. I’m not sure. But so Trump was, I think at that meeting, you saw that Zelensky refused to even accept the ceasefire.

I mean, his people are dying all over the place. He doesn’t care. It has come out that he ordered the troops go over to the border.

They thought they were just going to the border. They didn’t know that they were going to invade Russia. You know, this is all orders not from military leaders.

He’s told what to do from NATO. That’s it. And look, let’s be honest.

NATO should have been shut down when communism fell. That was the whole purpose of it. All right.

Russia is not interested in invading Europe. I mean, that was the old days of Khrushchev. And I’ve seen the internal memos.

It was like, how do we remain relevant? Because all the money was going to climate change. They need war. They have to say, oh, Putin’s evil, blah, blah, blah.

All right. This is the neocon playbook. And back in when Ronald Reagan came to power and Gorbachev came out and communism had fallen, and Reagan wanted to go meet with him.

So the neocons could not say that he was a communist anymore. So now it was, well, you can never trust a Russian. So their object, and you saw it in the Biden administration, never talk to the opponent.

Why? Because then maybe you end up with a peace deal. So since Biden cut off all communications with Russia, Europe has cut off all communications. So there is no possibility of a peace deal.

You won’t even talk to them. Trump was the first one who actually spoke to Putin. And so, I mean, look, I mean, I know some Russians.

I had a Russian friend I knew from like maybe 40 years ago in Tokyo. And it comes down to the same question. Why does the West hate us so much? What’s the answer? You know, it’s like, you’re just Russian? This is racist? Well, I mean, do you think this is? I know Bill Kristol and those guys.

I’ve been to dinner with them. And Bill Kristol wrote the book of going into Iraq. I argued with him in the 90s.

Oh, if we remove Saddam Hussein, Assad and Qaddafi, we’ll create peace in the Middle East. I don’t know. I think that in the 50s, when we all had to hide underneath our desks, they were somehow mentally traumatized or whatever.

I don’t know. They just want war. And communism fell all by itself.

And they just got, you know, really pissed off that they didn’t get to shoot anybody. Well, I mean, I think the incentive structure there exists and shows you that they need to have it, you know, continue. That they need to have this conflict continue so that they can keep, you know, keep propagating this system and keep making the money.

Yeah. And look, we had staff in Germany. They asked me if they could, you know, leave and move to our Dubai office.

Because they have mandatory vaccines on children, stuff like that. And they said, look, people that are now friends that are 60 years old are being drafted, told the report. They are preparing for war.

Same thing in Poland. Look, they’ve done the same thing at the United States this time. They borrowed, you know, relentlessly with no intention of paying anything off.

And this is all coming to a head. How countries default is when you’re in these Ponzi schemes, they default when you cannot sell the new debt to pay off the old. When the buyers stop.

As long as the line is still there, you’re OK. So it’s not that it’s 35 trillion. It could be 35 quadrillion.

That’s not the issue. The issue is as long as somebody is willing to buy it, they can keep the game going. It’s when that confidence stops, then it all comes crashing down.

And they risk that much more in the United States because they went to negative interest rates in 2014. They’ve undermined their banks because the banks have to have government debt as a reserve. And then they’re not mark to market.

So they can have bonds that are worth 40 cents on the dollar or on the euro, I should say. And but they don’t have to report the loss until they take it. That’s what Japan got in trouble with in the US.

They have to report the remark to market. That’s why that one bank in California went down quickly. So.

Europe is in serious trouble, and that’s why they need war and all this other kind of nonsense about. Now, from a market standpoint, you have to understand that. This tends to push up the dollar.

Against these people, they all the dollar is going to crash its fee, the debt, blah, blah, blah. OK, that’s very nice. You’re only looking at the United States.

The US was basically, as I’ve said before, bankrupt in 1896 when J.P. Morgan had about 100 million gold to bail out the Treasury. But after World War Two, we ended up with 76 percent of the world gold reserves. All right.

Europe was blowing itself up, you know, and it all came here. Basically, when you got tanks running down the street, are you going to leave your money in the bank? You know, and. Also, they put capital controls on.

So, as you know, our computers also have been able to forecast wars. And I know I didn’t design it to do so. You know, I’ve told the story many times.

You know, back in, we had a bank in Lebanon that found a ledger. Somebody wrote down all the Lebanese pound. They asked me to create a model.

I did. I didn’t know anything about the fundamentals. And I thought there was something wrong with the data.

I called them. I said, hey, listen, it says your country is going to fall apart in eight days. Something’s got to be wrong with this data.

And very calmly asked me, well, what currency would you recommend? Which I thought was a strange. Eight days, eight days later, the Civil War began. A strange acknowledgement.

Yeah, what it was, they knew. They didn’t come to me for the forecast. They came to me for the timing.

They could see the money moving themselves. All right, which is probably why they asked me to make the model. All right.

So, over the years, I’ve seen this. You know, we forecast the collapse of Russia and turned into a long-term capital management crisis. We saw 100 billion going in, but 150 billion coming out.

And this is what’s happening right now. All right, this is why the gold’s coming to the United States. You know, got these people, oh, it’s coming here to hide the losses at Fort Dix.

Blah, blah, blah, you know, nonsense. This is private gold. It’s not going to Fort Dix.

All right. It’s leaving London, but it’s also leaving Switzerland. Why? I was on the phone for a week.

As clients know, they think war is coming. So the money moves out. That’s what happens.

Some people always know. Okay, maybe they’ve spoken to leaders, whatever. But I was getting nothing but phone calls all week long.

They move gold out. They move assets out. You name it, it’s leaving.

All right. And that’s what happened for World War I and II. It all came here.

And as I have warned them, what happens? When that first bullet is shot, Europe will put capital controls on. Just look at the charts from World War I. They immediately shut down all the stock markets. So are you saying that all of the gold is leaving specifically London and Switzerland, but let’s say as a bigger whole, Europe, because of war coming to Europe? That and the tariffs.

Trump probably will put a 25% tariff on Europe. And you have to understand the way the trade statistics are done. And this is a problem that we have.

Why the trade numbers are kind of bogus. All they do is track the amount of money going back and forth. There’s nobody at the dock counting the number of Toyotas coming in or BMWs.

So when you understand how the statistics actually work, I was helping the Japanese reduce the trade surplus that they had. We would buy gold in New York, ship it to London. Okay.

Oh, it’s an export. Doesn’t matter if it’s manufactured. They’re only looking at the dollars.

Okay. So I could buy a billion dollars worth of gold in New York and move it to London. And that reduces the trade numbers.

So this is, you know, the smart money understands this. There would be, you put a 25% tariff on. It would be everything unless there’s an exception.

All right. So that’s what we’re looking at. And then you add war into this.

You know, you should be getting your capital out of Europe because they will put on capital controls. And you can look at, Google up Zelensky. The Washington Post found out that he knew when Russia was going to cross the border.

And so they asked him, why did you not inform your people? His response, and this is printed in the Washington Post. If I told them, would it cost me $7 billion? The money would have fled the country in advance. Right.

So he did not tell them when Russia was going to cross the border. He had all the American satellite information. They knew.

All right. So this is all, you know, total BS. And this is just the way money functions globally.

It always flees wherever there’s going to be a war. So you have to understand, initially, with this beating of the war drums in Europe, this tends to push the dollar up. OK, so.

Because of demand for safety. Yeah, it’s. You know, Japan dumped 50 billion of euro debt last week.

China’s doing the same thing. I mean, this is, everybody knows Europe is just, forget it, it’s a basket case. You know, the whole nonsense.

I mean, after what they pulled in Romania to overrule the election. All because they have a, they were building a secret, the largest NATO base in all of Europe, in Romania. It’s by the coast, you know, so that they can attack Crimea, etc.

And that’s why they overthrew the election. And Lincoln was there as well. But then, a former, I’ve posted it on Euro Weekly, he came, a former minister of the EU, because they were afraid of the AFD winning in Germany elections.

And he actually came out and said the same thing. He says, well, you know, if something like that happens, we can nullify it as we did in Romania. In other words, you don’t have democracy.

You know, this is all just propaganda. If we don’t do what they want, I think it was Mark Twain that said, if voting really made a difference, they wouldn’t let us do it. Right.

So, Marty, in relation to kind of this gold situation, Scott Besant was talking about the US monetizing its balance sheet. And then he came out after that and said that he wasn’t specifically speaking about gold. What part of the balance sheet do you think that he’s talking about to be able to monetize? I haven’t spoken to him.

I intend to try. Back in the 90s, I was asked to create a wealth fund for the United States by Congress. And I went through everything, reformed Social Security.

And basically, we would have simply converted Social Security into buying equities instead of government debt. I mean, had we done so, I mean, Social Security would never have a problem. I mean, we’re looking at a few thousand.

The Democrats wouldn’t vote for it. And I asked, what’s the problem? And they said that they wanted to change the fund managers if they got back in power. I said, I don’t care who the guy voted for.

That’s not on the questionnaire. What’s his track record? I don’t care if he voted or he didn’t vote. They wanted to be able to change the fund managers to just Democrats then.

This is why nothing gets done in Washington. I think somebody has perhaps looked at my testimony before the House Ways and Means Committee on some of this stuff, the debt. Because I had put out the maximum tax rate on corporations should be no more than 15 percent.

Mainly because I was being asked why no American company got any of the contracts back then to build a Yellow River Dam in China. I said, because we tax worldwide income. A German company does not.

So a German company bidding on something in China was not taxed in Germany. So already he was 35 percent cheaper. And they’re like, oh, wow, really? We didn’t realize that, you know, because nobody looks outside the window, you know.

But I recommended 15 percent maximum because that was what Hong Kong charged. And that’s why everybody was setting up headquarters in Hong Kong. I said, if we did that here, eliminate the worldwide taxation, U.S. would become the new Hong Kong of the world.

So I think basically what you’re looking at, monetizing it, you can. I had even did a video in a conference on the solution. It’s on YouTube.

The idea is basically we issue coupons, swap it for the debt. It’s a debt for equity swap that I would do for a company that was in trouble. All right.

So you got a 30 year bond. We’re going to swap it. Give me the 30 year bond.

Here’s a coupon. The coupon, basically, you can then take to your your brokerage house, Merrill Lynch or whoever, and say, OK, fine. You can only buy domestic securities or corporate debt.

All right. Then take the coupon and go back to the Treasury. Treasury redeems it.

So that’s monetizing the debt. OK, so we would transfer the debt, the thirty five trillion into thirty five trillion in investment domestically. We create the biggest economic boom in history.

I mean, every. And you have to realize mortgages, you know, because, you know, the rate government debt, a triple A, you go into the bank for a mortgage. Well, you know, your risk here, the government, there’s no risk.

So I want to hire yield from you. So you’re competing with the government even for a mortgage. So if we eliminated the government from this.

And they’re no longer the biggest elephant in the room bidding for money, your mortgage rates going to come down. All right, because it’s it would be the best. Asset class, because it’s collateralized.

All right, so. That. I’m not sure if they’re taking my full proposal, but it is on YouTube has been there for.

But that’s what I mean by monetizing the debt. You basically. Get rid of the debt itself, swap it out and a debt to equity swap.

And then interest rates would actually decline. We could get back to. The Fed could actually do something that most people don’t realize they blame the Fed all the time.

I mean, you know, look, that’s nonsense. When the Federal Reserve was initially created. Back in 1913, it was set up brilliantly.

They basically used what J.P. Morgan did in the panic in 1907 as the as the blueprint. Why, you know, they called all the, you know, the Jekyll Island evil, whatever, you know, people just didn’t understand what this was about. All right.

It was. Yes, the banks owned the Fed. Why? Because they were defunded.

It was supposed to be a bailout for them, not taxpayer paying it. OK, that’s what J.P. Morgan did. Got all the banks together.

We don’t bail out this one bank. They’re going to come after us eventually. So that worked.

All right. And to stimulate the economy, the Fed was to buy corporate paper. All right.

So the thing was that you had 13 branches and each branch was independent. So you can look at the newspapers from the 20s, you know, which areas, some were four percent, some were three percent. Because they managed the economy locally.

And. So really what happened was World War One came in. And.

When it was corporate debt. OK, so if the banks were in trouble, the corporation could issue 90 day paper, the Fed would buy it and they didn’t have to lay off employees. World War One came and Congress told the Fed.

Well, we have to issue this debt to pay for the war. Stop buying private by hours. They never put it back.

Then you got Roosevelt. He’s trying to push through his socialistic New Deal. So what does he do? He usurps all the power and to Washington and creates one interest rate.

So he ended the independence of all the individual Fed branches. So why do we have them today? Well, what’s the point? So the Federal Reserve. This idea, oh, they’re the evil.

No. The vast majority of the money supply is debt. That’s, you know, the amount of paper dollars that actually exists is minuscule compared to the economy.

And 70 percent of those are outside the country anyhow. So the real issue is the debt. And like China own 10 percent.

OK, so we have a trillion dollars in interest expenditures for 24. So if they own 10 percent, so 100 billion went to China. So it doesn’t even stimulate domestic economy anymore.

The Fed. Has been neutered and all central banks have. Keynesian economics have failed.

You know, when Keynes came up with this back in the in the 30s, U.S. had a balanced budget. So raising interest rates, lowering interest rates made sense because it was directly impacting us. But today, the governments are the biggest borrower in the room.

So you raise interest rates to try and fight inflation. And what happened? Interest rate expenditures, the government went up. The Fed cannot stop inflation today.

This is what people don’t understand. The very system of government and borrowing forever. Has neutered the central banks.

They can’t, you know, they can’t really manipulate the economy as Keynesian economics. It dictated originally. Now, you can look on our site and just Google rediscovery of the business cycle.

It was it was Paul Volcker in 1979. And he came out and said Keynesian economics is dead. So he knew it back then.

I mean, I spoke to Paul and the guy before him. Arthur Burns, who was the Fed chairman when Bretton Woods collapsed. He said the business cycle always wins.

So, you know, it’s we’re living in a world of a lot of confusion, myths and stuff that make people not understand what the hell is going on. War sends money this way. The central banks cannot really control the inflation anymore because the governments are the biggest borrowers and they never pay anything back.

So eventually that does lead to collapse. But the collapse comes when you don’t have a buyer for the new debt. Where is that going to take place? Probably in Europe or Japan first, not the United States, because with war, the money’s coming here.

All right. So. Look at this, step back, take a look at it from a global perspective, not just, oh, gee, what’s the Fed going to do to us next week? You know.

This is much more serious. Watching where the smart money is headed versus. You know, looking at these very, let’s say, zoomed in symptoms.

Well, it’s mainstream media. And look, they don’t tell the truth about anything. All right.

They just don’t. It’s not they are fake news and it’s not just about politics. I mean, down here in Florida, they were like, oh, it’s going to be, you know.

Hurricane, there’s going to be a 10 foot wall of water and everybody flees and turns out to be six inches, you know, I mean. So it’s they always sensationalize whatever it is to get you like the joke is down here, tune in and we’ll tell you one minute you’re going to die, you know. And it’s just the way it is.

So in finance, it’s the same problem. You know, mainstream media, they’re not going to put me on because basically I’m not going to play their game. Oh, let’s see, the Fed’s going to raise interest rates.

So how far down do you think the stock market will go? Now, if you look at. I wrote a book, which we will republish. It was called The Greatest Bull Market in History back in 1986, and I did all the research, read all the newspapers before and going into 29 and the crash, etc.

And what struck me was when interest rates went up. Before 29, everybody cheered and the stock market went up. Why? Government wasn’t the biggest borrower, but.

It’s they basically said that proves there’s still demand for money. Look at it objectively. Interest rates collapsed in recessions and depressions.

Twenty nine dropped from six percent to one percent. It dropped dramatically 2007 to 2010. So did lower interest rates mean improvement of the stock market? Come on, just, you know, this is the nonsense that mainstream media puts out all the time.

It’s the same fictional, you know, myths that they constantly state. And so they’re not going to call somebody like me who’s going to say, sorry, you’re wrong. You know, they don’t want it.

No way. Absolutely no way. So, I mean, they have to have their, you know, their pet people who are going to say the same thing all the time.

Unfortunately, that has. Really. Brainwashed a lot of people, I guess.

All the stock market, you know, stock, you know, and lower interest rates for all rates go up in the stock market should crash. You know, just. Step back and take a look and you’ll see that interest rates rose.

All the way through the Trump rally. We didn’t pay attention to that. Oh, it’s Trump.

They called it the Trump rally, but the Fed was raising rates all the time. Marty, you know, with this, let’s say this objective view of, as you said, the business cycle. How do you think this ends up affecting countries like, let’s say, specifically Canada and Mexico, if these higher, let’s say, 25% tariffs get implemented? What happens to these economies when these when and if these tariffs get implemented like that? Oh, they economically declined.

Mainly because they’re surviving on selling stuff to us. From Trump’s perspective, if we have a trade deficit. And we put on the tariffs, then our deficit declines.

From their perspective, that’s a trade surplus. You put on the tariffs, they decline. So.

Unfortunately, I think what Trump doesn’t take into consideration. Is that what the tariffs would also do is reduce their economies. So if they reduces it, you then have the risk of creating a contagion.

So you look at like the Great Depression or even going back to the panic of 1857. I mean, these things are international. So you create a contagion.

That just becomes like an economic flu. And goes from one country to the next. I suggest reading.

It’s online for free. Read Herbert Hoover’s memoirs for 1931. And talked about how capital acted like a loose cannon on the deck of a ship in the middle of a hurricane.

He said we’re shooting off in every which direction so fast. We couldn’t figure out, you know, get a committee to figure out what was happening. He was talking about how the gold was rushing from one currency to the next, to the next.

Eventually it all came here. But. And then that pushed the dower up so high.

Because virtually all of Europe defaulted, including even Canada. In 1931. And then the dower was pushed up so high.

That an economist named George Warren advised FDR that, look, when Britain left the gold standard. All right. The economy inflated out and ended their depression.

That’s why Roosevelt, you know, basically shut down the gold standard. Domestic use. He wanted to fund his socialistic new deal.

So he confiscated the gold at $20.67 and then raised it to $35. That was profit for him to fund his socialistic agenda. And he eliminated gold domestically.

Which is the same argument behind a lot of these cryptocurrency things. If they eliminated cash. Okay.

Then. And all money in banks is just electronic. You can’t go down and say, give me my cash.

You know, you got to go down there with the USB and say, here, stick it on here, please. So they view it as moving to digital would eliminate bank runs. And, you know, you’ll hear them say, oh, we also eliminate crime, et cetera.

How do you pay a hooker or something like, you know, if there’s no money. So, you know, you hear those arguments, too. But the main thing that I’ve heard is that digital currency would eliminate bank runs.

And this is what Roosevelt did. Take the gold out. Okay.

And people can’t go running down there. Give me my $20 gold piece. So it’s more of a control factor, I guess.

Marty, what do you make of the idea that’s been making its way around that Canada is in probate, that it’s being liquidated in order to be taken over by the U.S.? Now, look, there have been many separatist movements in Canada. There was even a party in Quebec that was called the 51st State. They wanted to leave Canada and join America.

I mean, this has been going on for a long time. Some provinces have wanted to split, et cetera. And rightly so, because Canada followed the Fed model.

When I said, you know, Roosevelt usurped all the power into one interest rate and Canada ended up doing the same thing. They thought, oh, that’s good. Well, then you were raising interest rates to fight the real estate speculation in Toronto and putting miners and farmers into bankruptcy in the West.

One size does not fit all. So that always put tensions between the provinces. And what most people don’t understand is these provinces act like their own individual countries anyhow.

They put towers on goods from other provinces. Economically, it certainly would be more beneficial for all the different provinces to come into Canada, I mean, to the United States as separate states, not one giant state. And I mean, I’m just talking at it from an economic standpoint.

I mean, we have basically really the same culture, the same languages. There’s really not much difference between Canadians and Americans. They say, hey, you know, that’s about it, you know.

But that’s pretty much it. So, I mean, you have Christine. She did her speech, we should form a union with France and Britain for nukes against the United States.

And, you know, Canada, people are fleeing Canada left and right because of the crazy policies anyhow. What they did to the truckers certainly showed the world, you know, again, they’re not much different than everybody else, you know. But even worse, they froze people’s accounts who even donated to the truckers.

I mean, come on. I mean, so a lot of Canadians I know would benefit and see the benefits of joining America, that that stuff will be illegal. The tariffs between states would be illegal.

But, you know, look, it’s a coin flip one way or another. But they go bankrupt, you know, and that’s nonsense. It’s not going to, you know, Britain would come in and whatever.

They’ve done that before. But Canada did also default in 1931. That’s usually a hush hush, you know, point of fact.

But they have. Marty, one of the other, I guess, pieces of news that we’ve seen out of the Trump, let’s say, camp here he wanted to release the Epstein files. Is there.

You know, is this actually a bigger question and situation that we should be thinking about in a in a broader sense, rather than just finding out who was on this list? Yeah, I think basically they were just listening to the media. Oh, he’s this pedophile, blah, blah. I know who all these people that went down there.

Step back a minute. All right. If he was really a pedophile.

You don’t go bragging to the top people in the world. All right. And, you know, flying them down your jet.

I mean, this stuff costs a lot of money. Who’s paying for this? All right. You know, honey traps have been going on, you know, they were very dominant during the Cold War.

In 2010, there was a very good, you know, I think her name was Chapman and a Russian gorgeous redhead model. Who was really a spy, they even called her, you know, Putin’s mass distraction. And then they swapped her for somebody else.

But she was, you know, getting in bed with different people in politics to get information. Now, this is pretty standard. So the real.

Sixty four billion dollar question with F.C. And why I think there’s they stepped in something they didn’t realize. This is not some junk at some people of going down with 17 year old girls. He could have bought.

You know, I went just to the a few hundred miles the other way to the British side with a legal age of 16. So why would you do it here? We’re taking the highest in the world. The people that probably went down there were his marks.

They were the really probably the victims. I mean, by that is that. Probably getting taped, something like that, some incriminating evidence on them to be blackmailed.

So the real question is, and I think that’s maybe what they stepped into. Who was funding FC? Who is doing this? It wasn’t just him. All right.

And I don’t think, you know, the press presented as like some junket to go get you underage girls or something. You know, you don’t spend that kind of money for that. This and if he was doing something like that, then you’re going to get the guys from the local pub.

You know, you’re not going to go get Bill Clinton and Prince Andrew and stuff like you’re getting people who putting them in compromising position. Is valuable from a blackmail standpoint, not some buddy that you have a drinking buddy at the local pub. So I think.

The real question here is, particularly because I think Bondi said there was like 200 or 250 girls involved. That’s an awful lot of women. All right.

And so what was really behind this? You know, it’s clear if he had that many women, it’s not for himself. All right. Something’s going on here.

And I think it was basically a classic honey trap, which has been used in espionage for a long time. And the people he was he was bringing down there were all high ranking people that had something to give up. It could be blackmail.

I mean, J. Edgar Hoover used to do that. And. He walked into a congressman, gee, you know, the FBI found this.

I just wanted to let you know, because if we found it, probably your opponent could. Oh, gee, thank you very much. Now that guy’s on your leash.

All right. I mean, this is pretty standard stuff. So, well, the press is always focusing on, oh, you know, the sex side is something more to it than that.

And that, I think, is the real issue. It’s like the 64 billion dollar question. And there are rumors.

It was actually maybe this. Yeah, it was maybe that Israel was behind it. So the question is.

Also, all right. If you release the names. Of people who were on there.

They were actually the targets of Epstein. Have they been bragged? Did they do things because of that? I mean, you end up opening up a can of worms that could be much deeper than anybody really expects. This is not just a sex deal.

Who knows where it leads? It’s, you know. Then did they give up. You know, trade secrets, national security secrets.

Then that’s treason. I guess. Where do you go? I’m not sure they want to know all the answers.

At this point. That may be, I would suspect, is probably what they encountered and has been. Oh, wait a minute.

What do we what? What is going on here? What is this about? Which is why I think they killed Epstein. You can’t. I have somebody like that stand a public trial.

God knows what’s going to come out. So I think it’s very simplistic. Oh, he was after 17 year old girls, whatever.

Very nice. I think, you know. In middle age, we look, we wouldn’t be able to tell the difference between the 17 and 18 year old.

Something else is going on here. And I really think the question is, who was he doing this for? Because there was a lot of money involved. Too many girls involved.

So this was definitely. Probably the biggest honey trap case, maybe in history. Well, Marty, I appreciate you coming back on to help illuminate and explain a lot of these situations for us.

Is there anything that you’d like to leave us with to think about before we wrap up? Just, I mean, I think one of the biggest issues right now is pay attention to what is going on in Europe. And I mean, there was one comment I saw that Zelensky ruled out even apologizing. And I think Johnson came out and said he should resign.

Trump just cut off the money. That’s probably the most important step. Because in doing that, then the politicians, you know, Biden was paying all the salaries of all the politicians there in Ukraine, plus their pensions.

So why would they come out against Zelensky? And they lose everything. So now you cut off the money. I think you’re going to see the dissent.

I mean, I’ve spoken to Ukrainians, and all honesty, you know, they hate this guy. I mean, just look at it. He’s kidnapping kids off the street.

If you have a son, he’s been kidnapped, sent to the front lines. And your house is bombed. And you’re going to be out there cheering for Zelensky? So, I mean, look, I even posted on my blog.

I couldn’t believe it. He even sent down syndrome people and didn’t even give them a gun. He said, well, get a gun, you know, when somebody dies in the battle.

What? You know, I mean, I posted it. It was like, what the hell is going on? He has no remorse, no care about anybody whatsoever. So let’s see.

He went to criminally prosecute the previous Poroshenko. He wanted to deny him bail. So if he had a peace deal and there were elections, he knows he’s going to lose.

They probably would indict him and throw him in prison. All right, so I don’t see to his advantage to even accept peace at this point, which is what seems to be going on. To pay attention to that, he has the neocons saying, you know, war, war, war.

And that has the impact of sending the dollar higher capital flows coming here. And pay attention because that can disrupt all the markets. I mean, we can see initial decline.

As people go, war, whatever. But that decline is offset by the rise in the dollar. So from a European perspective, it’s not crashing.

It’s just, you know, a buying opportunity. So. That’s basically what I would say, it’s a little bit more complicated than what the newspapers are just saying.

And. So open your minds, keep your ears open and pay attention to what is going on in Europe. Great advice, and I think, you know, the capital flows.

That’s an interesting point as well. For those that want to read more of Martin’s work, that’s all available at Armstrong Economics dot com and also on Twitter at Strong Economics. Bernie, thanks so much for your time today.

Always appreciate it. Well, thank you. And good luck out there.