I don't have specific advice, but generally my thought is don't wait until the "writing on the wall" is so clear that everyone wants to cash out, because the authorities will likely confiscate as they sense a stampede out. The retirement funds are already targeted in government white papers. They do not think that is your money. Perhaps the public retirement funds are the largest target, and perhaps only the wealthy private retirement accounts make sense to expropriate. I will go find a nestmann.com blog about that. Edit: http://www.nestmann.com/why-the-feds-wont-confiscate-your-retirement-plan-but-they-will-do-this |
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It is really great that we are thinking about the needs of the investor. And we should. But also we need to think about how to create a compelling use case for the currency. Anonymous currency is useless if we have to convert it back to fiat and slam into capital controls (confiscation via taxation, penalties for hiding wealth, guilty until proven innocent, totalitarianism, gestapo, etc) before we can spend on it merchants. And merchants can't survive if they don't also accept credit cards so the capital controls (deflation and bankruptcy dominoes) can destroy the merchants long before we get around to spending our anonymous currency (assuming they also accepted crypto currency along with credit cards but they went bankrupt before we got to spend our anonymous currency). Crypto currency needs a virally popular use case pronto (before the Sovereign Big Bang ETA 2015.75 ideally!) that can't be done with credit cards (the mainstream banking system). Edit: the modern economy requires holistic economies-of-scale. We need to be scaling up the use of crypto-currency faster if we are going to be ready to displace the capital controls abyss that will accelerate after 2015.75. especially interested in Roth IRAs (I am predicting the future tax rate will be higher)
No doubt it will be higher. But you also have the very real risk of a meltdown of law and order and thus Roth terms will not be honored everything will be taken from you. I truly believe we are heading off the rails entirely (2018ish). Is this not enough hard evidence for you of what we are up against (make sure you note the image of the SEC letter admitting what was destroyed in the WTC twin towers on 9/11). |
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Terrifying. You are hitting a wall trying to go with traditional banking systems, also I recall Dwolla was involved with the feds seizing MtGox account. This is the MP3 thing all over again, the music industry embraced the sharing technology so late that piracy was already miles ahead of them when they entered the market. I guess the same will happen to Bitcoin, most Banks will fail to embrace the technology and Bitcoin will get it's side market that sooner or later will make the traditional banking system obsolete. Anyone that has used Bitcoin to transact any amount of money over borders or to pay for any product online knows it. Bitcoin is freedom from banksters and governments. Unfortunately crypto-currency appears to lack an equivalently popular use case. |
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the primary use case of bitcoin currently is speculation
you don't own bitcoins if you own such an ETF True, but if people prefer to own ETFs rather than own Bitcoins then that is a fault of Bitcoin, not of the users. The technology isn't meeting the needs of the target market. We need to do something about that and pronto. I know most of you all don't share my doomsday outlook and by the time you realize my (Armstrong's) timing is correct, it will be too late for us to avoid a collapse into the abyss of capital controls. The idealism is nice, except the poster misses the point that file sharing had a virally popular use case. |
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So Dwolla denied me even though I sent them a scan of my (USA) passport, (Philippines) driver's license, and USA Social Security Administration card with my SSN on it. I even gave their system the login credentials to my online banking in the USA! (which I was very wary to do and probably did it only out of desperation)
Below I am not referring to the "unbanked". I think those who have a need for a bank account can get one in much of the third world. I am referring to the banked becoming merchants. I have a bank account, but the damn system won't let me easily become a merchant. Much more so for the billions who are not westerners. The issue is for example not being able to experiment and innovate with different business models without having to walk on egg shells for fear or violating your merchant provider's paranoia.
I appreciate the reply and prompt decision, so we don't waste time.
I understand you allude to other unstated reasons, but the stated reason doesn't make sense to me. I had written that I would not be using it for virtual currency and would ask permission before if ever wanting to use Dwolla for a virtual currency project. I mentioned virtual currency only to share the the fact that I am busy working in numerous areas, including Android apps. This was part of openness and relating my background as a successful entrepreneur. What have we become as a society if we have to hide things about ourselves and walk on egg shells?
I clearly described my current project to you, which has nothing to do with virtual currency and is a common upstanding online entertainment business with no dubious moral aspects.
Last night (my time in Asia) I edited my account information online to give you the url of the website of this new business. I stayed awake until 2am trying to bring the website up, but will not be able to get it online until perhaps later today.
Btw, I hope you can (at least personally) appreciate the following frankness. This process is indicative of why the autonomy of virtual currencies are going to pummel the existing banking system into the dust. Imagine a talented programmer such as myself who has generated $millions in derivative GDP being stifled by the paradigm of insecure financial systems and kafkaesque KYC theatre. There are billions of creative and innovative people in the world eager to start businesses and totally out-of-reach of this anarchic financial system. If we don't escape from that noose, we will continue to drive the velocity of money into the abyss. It is already down more than -50% since the Patriot Act of 9/11. I assume you can wikipedia the Quantity Theory of Money.
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> Brett | MAR 03, 2015 04:03PM CST
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> iamback
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> Thank you for your email. After a careful review of your account it has
> been decided that we will not be able to move forward with your Dwolla
> account. One of the reasons this decision was made was because Dwolla
> does not support virtual currency. We are sorry for any inconvenience
> this may cause.
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http://armstrongeconomics.com/2015/03/03/us-v-europe-the-divergence/QUESTION: ... Usually these people only talk about P/E, Debt to GDP etc etc however this time cycles were mentioned and how everything was revolving around 8+ years, boom and bust!! I have been attending these meetings for over 8 years and not once has a bicycle been mentioned let alone a cycle.
I was speechless and these so called economists started to talk about the EU and the USA. The error they made was they said the USA would rally along with Germany(DAX) into 2017! It was just one day later when you released your post on how the USA may rally into 2017 but Germany(Dax) may top in 2015.75(ecm). I laughed to myself when I read your post as clearly these fools read your blog and then try their very best to somehow pass it off as their own work.
I think that the DAX topping in 2015.75 and the USA markets rally for a further 18 months or so is something that has caught everyone by surprise ...
ANSWER: ... The divergence was rather significant. They closed the US stock market in July 1914 at the start of the war assuming stocks would collapse. They were under pressure to open the market and you can see there was the initial panic selling that formed the low. The US share market rallied from there on during the war. Capital fled to the USA and this created the huge divergence.
If we see the DAX form a high here in 2015 and it FAILS to press higher following the USA, this would be indicative of war. This is my concern given our Energy Model showing a spike high in the DAX but not the USA.
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Black Swans, by definition, cannot be predicted.
Yogi Berra himself said that we could not predict the future, especially because it has not happened yet...
There are too many factors even for Armstrong's supercomputer(s) to deal with. If M.A. could predict the future with anything much better than average, he would be VERY RICH...
Martin Armstrong is very rich and does not need money. He has stated numerous times he is doing this now for mankind, for the challenge, and his loyalty to his long-term clients. And also because for a man of his drive and intellect, he would be bored to tears sitting on a island. Cripes the man was isolated in prison for a decade and wants to cover lost time on his productivity (similar to myself with a lost decade due to chronic illness and now very eager to be productive). http://armstrongeconomics.com/2015/02/18/what-makes-me-tick-good-question/http://armstrongeconomics.com/1113-2/I will demonstrate to you my long-term memory (it is a vague memory, so I must rely on Google to locate the url for the underlined phrase I remembered): http://armstrongeconomics.com/2013/12/15/gold-promoters-are-part-of-the-manipulation-against-investors/I have been forced to come out in front of the curtain. I can retire and go off to some island and wait it out until I die. But I too have family and what kind of a future they face because of all this nonsense does not let me sleep beyond 3 hours at night. What I have been put through was for a reason and those who try to ignore me are only exposing their own lack of integrity or bias. I really do not care what they think of me. It means nothing to me. I just consider the source. They will one day wake up and see while they are fighting with their own egos, they risk losing all liberty because the real battle is not with me, it is the man with the tanks and guns. That will start to become very clear in 2014. All they are interested in is filling their pockets and forgetting they are playing with the risk of war and a Dark Age unless we steer this ship through the treacherous waters ahead. Sorry there are no blackswans, in the sense of truly random events. They are long tail distributions (actually a multi-dimensional pattern). Remember that randomness is intimately related to the entropy. If one can sample all of the entropy, the randomness can be modeled. Armstrong input extensive data since 6000 B.C. http://armstrongeconomics.com/2015/03/02/27739/When I wrote the Global Market Watch, which is a pattern recognition AI model, I allowed the computer to explore on its own and report back to me the results. This REQUIRED tons of data. It cannot be achieve on databases only back 50 years. You need hundreds of years so the computer can learn form every instance. It is calculating patterns with unbelievable complexity of variables.
All of this said, the key to any model is the UNDERSTANDING of its functionality. So what you are doing may not be able to achieve what our system does, but you are on the road to knowledge and that leads to CONFIDENCE in your decision.
When this model has made some of its most outstanding calls at the most extreme points in a panic, it is hard to retain that CONFIDENCE to do what it says. At the collapse of the markets in 1998, the New Yorker Magazine reported that I covered my shorts announcing that to our trading room and walked out and went to the beach. Some read that as arrogant or rejoicing I made more money than anyone in the shortest amount of time. In truth, it was discipline. It was knowing that my inner self was saying are your crazy? Over time, I came to realize when the computer would put out a forecast and it could make me say OMG is this crazy, it was 100% spot on. For if it could invoke that emotion within me, it must be devastating the majority in which case it was ripe for the change.
So NEVER give up on your quest to understand. That is what life is all about. Trying to use fundamentals to forecast is hopeless. A good trader uses them in the opposite manner – buy the rumor and sell the news of the fundamental. This model and watching how it functions has taught me a lot. Plus having clients everywhere has forced me to open my eyes and see the world through everyone’s perspective. I am vaguely familiar with Taleb's math on modeling systemic responses to long tail events: http://unheresy.com/Information%20Is%20Alive.html#Knowledge_AnnealsNote Taleb was working closely with Benoit Mandelbrot, the father of fractals before the latter's death. Note also Armstrong's comments about the fractal nature (hidden order) of time and events. |
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Who attempts to do an IPO in a crashing market that has not yet bottomed? Obviously people lacking business experience. Sorry I have been critical, because I sigh when I see technically capable developers who share some of my concerns about the macroeconomics of the world, not respect that they need someone more experienced to lead them. But that is the way it works. People only learn from experience. We can't give them experience with words. Especially not very smart guys; they are not going to listen to me. |
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Socialism in the USA (and watch this soar when the economy turns down in 2016 and especially 2017):  |
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... http://armstrongeconomics.com/2015/03/02/consumer-credit-moving-higher-into-2015-75/Consumer Credit Moving Higher into 2015.75
Subprime consumer borrowing — encompassing auto loans, credit card loans and personal loans — climbed to $189 billion in the first 11 months last year, the highest total since 2007, according to a study compiled for The Wall Street Journal by Equifax. This is precisely what I mean about living with the cycle. People will spend when they SEE everyone else spending. This provides the foundation to consumer confidence. This is why the rich are important. If they are driving around in flashy cars and going out to dinner, not only are they spending, they are creating the impression everything is OK and this becomes the contagion that spreads as consumer confidence. If they spend nothing and save, the rest of society will follow. It is an interesting leadership role.
This is right on time. We should see the peak in debt on a private level whereas when the economy turns down [after 2015.75], governments will be desperately trying to borrow more and more. Student loan debt stood at $660 billion when Obama was sworn into office in 2009. The official reported default rate was 7.9%. Obama and his administration took complete control of the student loan market shortly after his inauguration. They have since handed out a staggering $500 billion of new loans (a 76% increase), and the official reported default rate has soared by 43% to 11.3%. Of course, the true default rate is much higher. The level of mal-investment and utter stupidity is astounding, even for the Federal government. Just some basic unequivocal facts can prove my case. There were 1.67 million Class of 2014 students who took the SAT. Only 42.6% of those students met the minimum threshold of predicted success in college (a B minus average). That amounts to 711,000 high school seniors intellectually capable of succeeding in college. This level has been consistent for years. So over the last five years only 3.5 million high school seniors should have entered college based on their intellectual ability to succeed. Instead, undergraduate college enrollment stands at 19.5 million. Colleges in the U.S. are admitting approximately 4.5 million more students per year than are capable of earning a degree. This waste of time and money can be laid at the feet of the Federal government. Obama and his minions believe everyone deserves a college degree, even if they aren’t intellectually capable of earning it, because it’s only fair. No teenager left behind, without un-payable debt. Yellen, Draghi, and Kuroda speak as if they know what they are doing, perform confidently when on stage, but continue to act in desperate manner five years into a supposed economic recovery. The emergency measures they continue to employ and expand upon reveal their angst and inability to implement a monetary solution. Their only tool is the printing press and when confidence in their infallibility dissipates, the system will fail. The stench of fraud, cronyism, corruption, and hypocrisy of the moneyed interests permeates our degraded culture of materialism, greed and criminality. The party was fun while it lasted, but it is reaching its sordid drunken climax in the near future. There is no means of avoiding the final collapse of this Federal Reserve created boom.     If prices had fallen to the $100,000 to $150,000 level, based on the historical correlation, first time home buyers would be buying hand over foot. But the Federal Reserve, their Wall Street owners, connected hedge funds, and the Federal government has created an artificial price bubble with 0% interest rates and trillions of QE heroin. The 1% can still afford to buy overpriced McMansions, but the young are left saddled with student loan debt, low paying service jobs, and no chance at ever owning a home.  |
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I edited my prior post. There is no doubt that Europe will be in severe crisis by 2017. If you can't hedge the decline in the value of the house, then don't dare do it unless you are sure you can sustain a multi-year (probably decades) waiting period for the value to come back up again (and that your income to pay the mortgage can't be in jeopardy when Europe collapses starting next year). That is what the Armstrong link I gave you said.
Right now the strongest economies of Europe are receiving an influx of capital because capital is fleeing the peripheral economies of the world which are already collapsing. But this contagion will spread to the core of Europe next year. Germany's DAX will peak Oct. 2015, then collapse into an abyss. Then capital will flee to the USA. Then the USA dollar and stock markets will peak in 2017, and then we collapse into war by 2017 or 2018.
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I edited my prior post. There is no doubt that Europe will be in severe crisis by 2017. If you can't hedge the decline in the value of the house, then don't dare do it unless you are sure you can sustain a multi-year (probably decades) waiting period for the value to come back up again (and that your income to pay the mortgage can't be in jeopardy when Europe collapses starting next year). That is what the Armstrong link I gave you said.
Right now the strongest economies of Europe are receiving an influx of capital because capital is fleeing the peripheral economies of the world which are already collapsing. But this contagion will spread to the core of Europe next year. Germany's DAX will peak Oct. 2015, then collapse into an abyss. Then capital will flee to the USA. Then the USA dollar and stock markets will peak in 2017, and then we collapse into war by 2017 or 2018.
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Apologies for the miscommunication. I mean I think we will begin an upward trend in cryptocurrency in 2016 and that should go on for some years as it will also for all "off the grid" assets such as gold. The crypto-currency ecosystem is maturing during this correction. This correction is an exhale from an overly idealistic europhia where the adoption and network effects were not pacing with the speculative fever. This is also the strengthening of the dollar as the rest of world collapses. Which is driving investments back towards sovereign bonds of Germany and the USA, as we are on the precipice and peak before Sovereign Debt Big Bang collapse in 2016. Europe's 1.5 trillion Euro QE is the last gasp of Europe. Once Germany goes in crisis, it will all unravel over in Euroland. Don't forget Exter's Inverted Pyramid (with gold at the tip just above sovereign bonds). We are on the precipice of the final move into Sovereign bonds, before the collapse into the big move in gold (and now crypto currency as superior to gold in some respects). Edit: as I wrote before, the low for gold and BTC could come slightly before the 2015.75, which is apparently also the prediction of Jim Rogers and Nadeem Walayat. |
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I know you are trying to talk yourself into doing it. Moving to NL was the wise move, but not if you fall into the debt trap there! Save up your cash to buy BTC at the coming bottom below $150, then get rich and pay cash for very cheap houses in 2017 or 2018. Don't turn yourself into a debt slave like this other fools who are commenting in your thread. The confidence party ends in Europe in 2016. You know I agree that the direction the West is going is not good. I am just wondering if this can kicking cannot go on for a long time yet- just look at the freak show in Greece right now, it's like watching a punch and judy show. I think that there is some argument that as everything is falling apart, real estate in affluent major cities could retain some safety- see London for example where wealthy multinationals have been buying up huge chunks of houses, largely French and Chinese.
 http://armstrongeconomics.com/2015/03/02/consumer-credit-moving-higher-into-2015-75/Subprime consumer borrowing — encompassing auto loans, credit card loans and personal loans — climbed to $189 billion in the first 11 months last year, the highest total since 2007, according to a study compiled for The Wall Street Journal by Equifax. This is precisely what I mean about living with the cycle. People will spend when they SEE everyone else spending. This provides the foundation to consumer confidence. This is why the rich are important. If they are driving around in flashy cars and going out to dinner, not only are they spending, they are creating the impression everything is OK and this becomes the contagion that spreads as consumer confidence. If they spend nothing and save, the rest of society will follow. It is an interesting leadership role. |
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