Martin Armstrong Discussion

[iamnotback]

I have nothing more to say to you fools who don't recognize that Armstrong has been correct (you all go on ignore for being useless noise trolls and will no longer even be responded to! Waste of time!):

We are witnessing what a Private Wave is all about. The Italian Referendum came in on point with the NO vote at  59.4% against 40.6%. Our model is now four for four with BREXIT, Trump, Hollande in France exiting the election, and now Italy. We will see the same defeat for Merkel.

What politicians do not grasp is that they have destroyed the world economy with taxes and regulation. Enough is enough. In Europe, the single currency has totally failed because it required a single debt. The refusal to consolidate the debts has been the death of the Euro.

This is all playing out into a major dollar rally for like a game of musical chairs, it’s the last place to park money.

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[vokain]

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iamnotback, deisik, vokain

Yes, it looks like the whole turning BTC into something tangible (at least at scale) really is a problem, and hard to solve.

First, buying a ranch in Peru (which might be a special case), automatically puts you in the computers of the tax authorities, which, believe it or not, are much more controlling than the IRS in the USA.  Our (small) business, for example, must send monthly EVERY Invoice with various details including customer ID (like our Social Security No.) as well as each item bought, price, address, etc.  Rather burdensome.  All that is sent on MS Excel spreadsheets.  They are super-strict.

Second, I agree w/ iamnotback that Tax Havens will soon be out of business!  Ouch!

I don't see how being in those computers means anything. In this case, the less customers for a supposed rental business, the better.

In terms of converting crypto to fiat for the asset purchase and associated expenses, authorities would have to prove that the capital didn't come from something that can't be taxed. I don't know if my question about anonymous loans was too dumb for any of you to bother commenting much upon but say I wrote a contract on an anonymous blockchain stating I need a loan with open-ended terms ("I'll pay it back when I can", or for example, 0% interest anytime by the end of 100 years (and we may or may not be dead by then, either way who cares)) to start this business. The Internet provides the capital to start this wonderful business opportunity up. I purchase assets, leaving aside some of the principal for expenses. Keep operating at a loss. As far as I know, it's not a crime to never market your business and end up getting 0 customers.

[freshman777]

Armstrong has been correct

Twice a day, like a broken clock.

[deisik]

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iamnotback, deisik, vokain

Yes, it looks like the whole turning BTC into something tangible (at least at scale) really is a problem, and hard to solve.

First, buying a ranch in Peru (which might be a special case), automatically puts you in the computers of the tax authorities, which, believe it or not, are much more controlling than the IRS in the USA.  Our (small) business, for example, must send monthly EVERY Invoice with various details including customer ID (like our Social Security No.) as well as each item bought, price, address, etc.  Rather burdensome.  All that is sent on MS Excel spreadsheets.  They are super-strict.

Second, I agree w/ iamnotback that Tax Havens will soon be out of business!  Ouch!

I don't see how being in those computers means anything. In this case, the less customers for a supposed rental business, the better.

In terms of converting crypto to fiat for the asset purchase and associated expenses, authorities would have to prove that the capital didn't come from something that can't be taxed. I don't know if my question about anonymous loans was too dumb for any of you to bother commenting much upon but say I wrote a contract on an anonymous blockchain stating I need a loan with open-ended terms ("I'll pay it back when I can", or for example, 0% interest anytime by the end of 100 years (and we may or may not be dead by then, either way who cares)) to start this business. The Internet provides the capital to start this wonderful business opportunity up. I purchase assets, leaving aside some of the principal for expenses. Keep operating at a loss. As far as I know, it's not a crime to never market your business and end up getting 0 customers.

You can't tax something which is illegal

In this way, you shouldn't care so much about taxes (that may turn out to be your least pain in the ass at the end of the day) as about authorities not interpreting your actions as something intended toward money-laundering. In respect to your idea, i.e. asking for a loan with open-ended terms as a cover for converting your own bitcoins to fiat, that could be considered as a sham transaction aiming specifically at money-laundering. But it still seems to have more substance overall in comparison to the bullshit that has been suggested before

[OROBTC]

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It looks like I will need further dialogue with you guys to come up with better and safer ideas on how to protect wealth.

Passive income would be nice too...   

I definitely agree with the thrust of iamnotback's ideas re a Knowledge Age, THAT may be the very best defense against tyranny in the end, as well as give some incentive to any and all of our children a way out as well.  Caring for childrens' (and grandchildren, some of my ancestors were long-term thinkers) futures is an old tradition in my family.

I still argue that the future is not know-able: so as far as I am concerned, being diversified, knowledgeable and attentive is best for me as not having any particularly valuable technological knowledge at 60 years old...

[trollercoaster]

It seems there's sweet jack shit we can do about paying "our fair share" whatever the government deems that to be.
So I suggest you begin now earning a secret income that does not cross over into the dying system at all, or as little as you are technically capable of doing.
What you build there, keep there and use it to grow a new economy.

[sidhujag]

It seems there's sweet jack shit we can do about paying "our fair share" whatever the government deems that to be.
So I suggest you begin now earning a secret income that does not cross over into the dying system at all, or as little as you are technically capable of doing.
What you build there, keep there and use it to grow a new economy.

+5

[OROBTC]

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One of our alert members notified me of a pair of Armstrong pieces of interest.

This first one is about the likely PEAK of US bond (Treasury) prices:

https://www.armstrongeconomics.com/markets-by-sector/bonds/us-30-year-bonds-the-party-is-over/

I would agree.  The party looks over.  Spending under Trump is likely to go up, and it will be financed more likely with DEBT than raw money printing, IMO.  Trump is OK w/ debt obviously....

* * *

Armstrong does not like gold short-term:

https://www.armstrongeconomics.com/markets-by-sector/precious-metals/gold/gold-headed-lower-under-1000-into-the-abyss/

I personally love gold as an investment and security hedge (vs .gov mismanagement).  INDIA now has at least some door-to-door tax collectors confiscating gold from people's houses!

To be honest, I doubt that would happen here in the USA, but should it start, I think it would stop after 50 - 100 LEOs were shot by outraged gold owners.

India <> USA

But, gold could fall to under $1000.  To me: so what.  It may be losing its safe-haven status, but I doubt it.  It is rarely "different this time."  Gold goes under $1000, I'll buy more.

The Democrats will eventually be back in power with their Socialist ideas.  Gold owners (and BTC owners) will likely have some protection vs. them.  I hope.........

[r0ach]

That is why you invest in crypto-currency, not gold. Gold is at the end of its utility as we are transitioning away from a physical economy. That is why gold is dying. You have the wrong antiquated model.

It doesn't take much effort to figure out why this is not true.  All it takes is for you to go outside and attempt to explain Bitcoin to an average 50-60 year old (the demographic that probably has the most investment capital).  The ones I've talked to have all heard of Bitcoin before, but none of them even knew it has a finite supply.  I try to explain to them how it works and they just reply "but who runs it?".  Then I explain it's supposedly held together by a continuous revolving door of parties in a Nash equilibrium (that may or may not exist).  Then they look at me like I'm from Mars and repeat, "but who runs it?"

This demographic of people (as well as most other humans on earth) don't understand or trust Bitcoin.  The only way they would get involved with it is a speculative punt, but there are literally millions of assets you can speculate with, so even if they were a part of the small percentage of day traders on the planet, they might easily pass up Bitcoin for something else.

As for the other scenario of everyone just being locked in homeostasis with their fiat dollars until shit hits the fan and they're forced into something else, when that time comes it's all about trust, and these people who think Bitcoin is some company like Paypal with a CEO are all going straight to gold and silver instead.  I'm sure Bitcoin will go up a lot as well, but the so called "capital flows" are going to be around 99% going to metals and 1% at most going to Bitcoin.

If every millionaire hedged 1% of their wealth into Bitcoin, the price would be around $8000 per coin fully liquid, fully capitalized.  But markets aren't fully liquid, so the price per coin would be something like 10x that at maybe $80,000 per coin.  So a +100x from current price.

Now, looking at metals instead, if they do a new Bretton Woods, they would take gold to at least $20,000 at the 40% historical backing rate.  The GSR (gold to silver ratio) would spike somewhere between 15:1 to 30:1 off that, putting silver anywhere from $666-$1333.  That is a +39 to +78x.  As you can see, the upside on silver for wealth transferrence is basically the same as Bitcoin while otherwise having far less risk attributes.  

I own large amounts of both so I'm not biased - use Bitcoin as a checking account and metals as savings account.

[OROBTC]

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r0ach, interesting post!  Hah!

Actually, IMO, silver is unlikely to get back to its historical typical range of 10 - 20 times less than gold.  I think that, given time, gold will go MUCH higher (like your $20,000 number) while silver will be left, relatively speaking, in the dust.

Maybe I read too much FOFOA (ask iamnotback).  FOFOA posits a possible 500:1 GSR  !!

I too have a "fair" amount of BTC and more ($-value) of gold, much more.  My main problem with BTC is that it's a real pain in the ass to buy it in my city (ah, yeah).

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Check your messages... 

[r0ach]

Actually, IMO, silver is unlikely to get back to its historical typical range of 10 - 20 times less than gold.  I think that, given time, gold will go MUCH higher (like your $20,000 number) while silver will be left, relatively speaking, in the dust.

Maybe I read too much FOFOA (ask iamnotback).  FOFOA posits a possible 500:1 GSR  !!

Completely impossible.  Gold and silver move at something like 0.85 correlation and it's much easier to move the silver market than gold.  Whatever happens to gold, silver is coming along for the ride.  You've seen how easy it is to move the Bitcoin market and the silver market cap is barely even larger than BTC.  The fact that Bitcoin is even nearing the silver market cap while not having any real mass adoption is kind of a red flag actually when much of the items you use in your day to day life have silver in it and it's still legally considered a monetary instrument in many places.

The GSR could never go to some ridiculous number like that either because the AISC for a lot of these mines is already near cost of production for both of these metals.  People who are familiar with metals also tend to completely ignore gold and buy only silver when the GSR is over 50:1, then dump silver for gold when the GSR is 30:1 or lower.  If the price of gold spiked to some insane number and the silver price had not caught up, everyone and their mom will immediately dump gold to buy the undervalued silver.  There is no viable situation in the universe where the price of gold skyrockets and silver doesn't.

For actual market analysts and traders, the GSR charts have a hard triple top right under a hard double top, indicating there is nowhere for the value of silver to go except up in relation to gold and that it will likely return to 30:1 or lower in the near future:



After it breaks into the 20's:1 area, that's when people will start dumping silver for gold and it reverses to start the cycle all over again.

If we have a deflationary crash rather than hyperinflation, the DOW floor is around 6000.  The historical DOW to gold ratio seems to trend to around 3-5:1, so even in a deflationary crash the value of gold can still go to $2000, which would probably take silver to a 30:1 GSR of $66.



TLDR:  There is no point whatsoever in buying gold over silver right now.

TLDR2:  Trust nobody, especially some greaseball with a pinky ring named Martin Armstrong

[OROBTC]

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iamnotback

I am posting the below recent quotation of yours to my informal investment group that I mentioned to you (and to three others):

Martin Armstrong, perhaps you might want to take note of my name and pay
attention to what decentralized currency could do to bifurcate the economy
into physical versus virtual (with the physical economy dying into a Dark
Age of liberalism/socialism). I am about to replace Bitcoin with the
future electronic money of the world. I alone have figured out how to
remove the power vacuum from the global ledger. I am not joking. I have a
white paper that I should release roughly Q1 2017. I realize
crypto-currency is currently too small to be of any significance w.r.t. to
international capital flows. And I am aware of your stance that the
government will ban any escapes from capital controls. But you are missing
a key point. The virtual economy of microtransactions (e.g. every blog
comment) recorded onto a decentralized blockchain can't be regulated, at
least not without a powerful world government with 666 level of control.
How can you regulate trillions of tiny transactions? This virtual economy
will blast off exponentially and go sort of unnoticed by the mainstream
politics until it has already become an entrenched trend that can't be
stopped. It is analogous to how Trump undermined the MSM employing social
media. But the social media companies have to become decentralized so they
can't censor content (as Twitter recently did censoring the far right).
The decentralized blockchain is analogous to the distinction in network
effects from open versus closed source software development. There is
paradigm-shift coming and you have the luxury of having been told early.
Pay attention!

Recently I have explained that gold is dying because the physical economy
is dying. You need to understand what is growing. This is creative
destruction. This is the transition from the Industrial Age (wherein fixed
monetary capital dominated economies-of-scale) to the Knowledge Age
(wherein knowledge creation capital will dominate and fungible stored
monetary capital will die and lose relevance).

* * *

I will mention to them a little bit to them a little bit about you and provide a link to your essays you wrote (that you sent in the PM).

I will also mention that you are more-or-less a follower of Armstrong, as you know more about him than anyone in my group.

"Keep the baby, Faith."

[r0ach]

Anonymint financial advice makes no sense for a few reasons.  Different demographics of people have different wealth accumulation and preservation strategies.  It's already a given the dollar is going to die in the near future:

The death of the dollar is set in stone now with what's happening in the bond markets.  No foreign countries want worthless US debt paper at all anymore.  They're not only not buying it, they're also dumping the ones they already have.  When the debt market has no buyers, the interest rates skyrocket, then the price to service the debt exceeds what can be paid and the debt is defaulted on.  Or they can just print and buy their own bonds, monetizing the debt and end in hyperinflation.

Regardless of how it plays out, the end is drawing near for the dollar and metals are going to the moon soon.  There might be a deflationary crash as all the debts are defaulted on that takes the price of everything down, but there's no way I'm sitting on the sidelines with worthless fiat waiting to buy that when there will be bank holidays and capital controls when it happens preventing you from doing anything.  

There may also be a surprise new Bretton Woods that comes out of nowhere where they just revalue gold at $10,000 - $20,000 overnight.  Having 0 metals or sitting on the sideline waiting for a deflationary crash to buy isn't a very good idea.

So knowing that the bond markets are pure shit now and that other countries have no interest in propping up this ponzi scheme, the question becomes where do you put your wealth to avoid losing it when the debt is defaulted on or hyperinflated away.  Anonymint always says, oh, don't buy metals, that's a horrible idea.  Oh, don't buy Bitcoin, that's not good either.  What's left out of those options?  Sitting on fiat or stocks.

Sitting on fiat works IF YOU'RE A MASTER DAYTRADER WITH INSIDE INFORMATION on when or if the deflationary crash will occur and believe you can waltz in like a carpet bagger to avoid capital controls and bank holidays to buy things on the dip.  Except it's entirely plausible they might just pull a surprise Bretton Woods and revalue gold overnight to $20,000 to avoid the deflationary collapse from occurring at all that brings the entire system down.  Regardless, you can't service that debt forever and it either ends in default, sending fiat to zero, or hyperinflation, also effectively sending it to zero - so fiat is all around a stupid choice.

Next option is stocks.  Like I was saying before, just who is Anonymint's financial advice supposed to be for?  Nobody utilizing passive investment strategy should even be in the stock market in the first place, and lol are you kidding me?  Buying stocks at the top of the biggest bubble ever?

It's true stocks and gold tend to be a function of the sum of the debt markets, meaning if Trump runs the debt up to 30 trillion before it implodes, stocks might also go to DOW 30,000 , but metals ALSO follow the exact same function and would see the same benefit.  The difference is that metals have been manipulated downwards and are currently on sale for 30-40% off in relation to debt levels, while stocks are NOT on sale.  If they took the DOW to 30,000 as a function of enormous debt levels, that manipulation they imposed to try and tank metals to prevent bank runs while having NIRP/ZIRP will break and metals will skyrocket.

So in the endgame, there is no actual good choice besides silver at the moment unless Bitcoin caught on big.  But like I said, the silver upside is just as much as Bitcoins while having much less risk.

[OROBTC]

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r0ach

My group is a pretty diverse set of people, all of whom want to carefully examine investment ideas, particularly ones you do not see in the MSM.  Yes, our group is of varying ages (but most about my age, ha ha), their financial situations are all different, but likely wealthier than AVERAGE.

I do not have any problem with presenting ideas I do not agree with, sometimes I learn something.  With more eyeballs on various ideas, that helps me too.

iamnotback (AnonyMint) is the most knowledgeable (for better or worse) re Armstrong among those I know, whose ideas, yeah, are "sui-generis", and he is a bright guy (as of course I am learning that you are).

Some of my group know little about Bitcoin, but are curious.  BTC has its problems (tell me about it), if he is able to batch his claims re a better Crypto, well that would be a great accomplishment.

He is not "in" yet, as he has not yet gotten back to me, and my folks are CALMER about discussing financial matters.  No Zero Hedge "Fight Club" ethos is wanted.

* * *

Agree re stocks, BTC and silver.  I own something of all of them.  But leaning towards buying more gold.

[freshman777]

People go into so much trouble to dig out gold and have been doing for millennia. Now we're supposed to believe this is going to end in a few years.
Gold is dying because physical economy is dying, what are you going to eat in the Knowledge Age, computer bytes, and transport yourself around on radio waves? LOL, this guy AnonyMint is so funny.
This is scary how the mine is 2.5 miles deep underground.
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-12-11/descend-worlds-deepest-gold-mine

[OROBTC]

People go into so much trouble to dig out gold and have been doing for millennia. Now we're supposed to believe this is going to end in a few years.
Gold is dying because physical economy is dying, what are you going to eat in the Knowledge Age, computer bytes, and transport yourself around on radio waves? LOL, this guy AnonyMint is so funny.
This is scary how the mine is 2.5 miles deep underground.
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-12-11/descend-worlds-deepest-gold-mine

Saw that ZH gold piece myself, even dropped off a comment there.

I have only been thinking A LITTLE about when & how a Knowledge Age might hit.  For it to affect most of us, I think that is fairly far-off into the future.  Especially in the Third World and among illiterates.

Gold might not be good forever and ever, but it should be good for me, my child and (with luck) any grandchildren...

He might be right in the longer-term though.  But, I am too old to learn to program in C++ or whatever horseshit is the language of the moment.

[r0ach]

what are you going to eat in the Knowledge Age

When complex systems collapse, you go into a dark age, not a knowledge age.  You don't get an age of enlightenment from regional instability.  Sometimes I think Anonymint believes you can will things into existence, but willing a new renaissance into reality amongst a bunch of dindus looting the local storefronts isn't going to happen.

[tabnloz]

what are you going to eat in the Knowledge Age

When complex systems collapse, you go into a dark age, not a knowledge age.  You don't get an age of enlightenment from regional instability.  Sometimes I think Anonymint believes you can will things into existence, but willing a new renaissance into reality amongst a bunch of dindus looting the local storefronts isn't going to happen.

It is interesting to absorb both of the arguments put forward here. You are both thinking on a higher level and it is much appreciated. My position has always been to never discount an opinion because I disagree with it, simply because no one can know the future without some kind of insider knowledge. Much of what we agree with may be down to our personal biases.

The deflationary / inflationary debate is everywhere at the moment. Either situation is plausible and the signs are there for both. But we are in such unprecedented times that it is hard to know which way the dominoes will fall. This isn't a national crisis but a global one.

So thanks for the ideas and also for keeping the debates civil enough that we don't lose track of what is being discussed.

[freshman777]

what are you going to eat in the Knowledge Age

When complex systems collapse, you go into a dark age, not a knowledge age.  You don't get an age of enlightenment from regional instability.  Sometimes I think Anonymint believes you can will things into existence, but willing a new renaissance into reality amongst a bunch of dindus looting the local storefronts isn't going to happen.

I'm inclined to agree with you, r0ach. You make a lot of sense recently. The odds of a dark age happening are much higher than those of a knowledge age. Even with the latter it's difficult to imagine the physical economy shrinking significantly, we're not spirits nor electrons, we need physical stuff to be produced, and by the way women (that includes every second western woman, and 99% of women in the rest of the world) love gold bracelets. Good luck trying to change women's innate, caveman age born desires

[r0ach]

Some nice bogus predictions on this FOFOA site:

I highlighted that bit at the end about $10,000 gold and 50 cent silver because I want to explain my take on it. On the day FOA wrote that post, gold was $261 and silver was $4.37

So they were completely wrong and silver did a +10.6x and gold a +7x after that post.  We're now back in the same position again where the silver upside dwarfs that of gold upside.

Usually, they function along side whatever major reserve currency is in vogue. Today, the dollar, tomorrow the Euro. Make no mistake, the entire internal US sector can and will function as its currency runs a price inflation just like these third world countries. We will adapt as they have by dropping our living standard accordingly and adopting the Euro as our second money.

Another obviously wrong theory that the US dollar collapses before the Euro and the US starts using....Euro notes as a last resort.