CW 673 FBF - Monetary Futures & History with Master Economist Martin Armstrong Former Chairman of Princeton Economics International

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It's my pleasure to welcome Martin Armstrong to the show. He heads up a fantastic website with all sorts of fantastic economic data and his tagline is comprehending the true monetary history of the world. And it's an essential understanding of the evolution of money for the future. Martin, welcome. How are you?

Oh, thank you very much. Not too bad. The weather is actually starting to warm up a little bit.

Are you coming to us from this global warming? Yeah, yeah, yeah. This year has been a tough year for global warming. Of course. That's a snarky comment. Are you coming to us from New Jersey by chance or where are you looking?

Yes, in New Jersey.

Good Good stuff. Well, you know, first of all, before we dive into some economic stuff, it's always intertwined, of course, Martin, but the big headlines now are Russia and the Ukraine and, wow, Mr. Putin is an aggressive guy. What's your take on the whole situation?

Well, you have to understand that Putin came out and he said that he thought that the greatest tragedy of the 20th century was the collapse of the Soviet Union. He's still very old school in the sense that he thinks that the strength of a nation is how much territory it has. So he has actually even said before all this started, that he wanted to see the. All the satellites return to Russia by 2020. And this is largely his agenda. And of course he has. The economy of Russia is declining along with the other emerging markets. So when you get in a situation like that, honestly, a head of state has two choices. I mean, either he's going to be booted out by his own people because the economy is going against them, or he has to find an external enemy, and that's what he's doing.

And so, I mean, finding an ext. Enemy, is that. Is that really it or is it more just about a land grab?

It's. It's basically it. It's both at the same time. One, the economy is going against him, so he needs to do that. But two, he actually believes that restoring all this area to Russia will impress the world. And actually, Adam Smith really said it well and is in his wealth of nations. And the wealth of a nation is not how much gold it has, how much land it has or anything like that. It's really the total productivity of the people. And proof of that is Japan. Japan was a tiny little island, no natural resources, and it rose to the second largest economy in the world. So, I mean, if Putin was really economically smart, he would basically let the country, you know, boom and, and go. But, you know, unfortunately, communism fell, but it was only replaced by oligarchy.

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So what you have in Russia, if you've been there, I mean, yes, there's plenty of big modern restaurants, et cetera, but they're all owned by oligarchs. And you can't start a small business to compete with them. They'll kill you. So you basically just replace the government with a mafia. You don't still have an entrepreneurial atmosphere. And that's what the Ukrainian people were largely rising up against. I mean, we had three staff members from there, so, you know, pretty good connections with Ukraine for, you know, for some time. And, and they were upset about corruption. That's what it was. And because, you know, the former president's two sons were basically trying to bring Russian style oligarchy to Ukraine. In Ukraine you do have a lot of small businesses in Kiev and they're walking in and like the old mafia day, saying, you pay us or you're out.

You've gotta, you've gotta, you've gotta pay the toll. You know, I remember Martin, about six, maybe six, seven years ago, I had a couple of housekeepers, a couple man and woman who would come in and, you know, they'd clean my house. And I got to talking to them, you know, in depth one day and they were Polish and they said that they owned three very successful nightclubs in Poland. And I said, why did you leave? I mean they spoke good English, they impressed me with their intellect and they said they both had degrees in engineering and then they owned these nightclubs. And basically the thugs, the mafia thugs said they'd destroy their business if they didn't pay the toll. And so that's just the way it's done. So they were fed up with it.

They came to the U.S. yes, this is the core of the Russian way of doing things. I mean, honestly had a Russian girl that worked for us and she was going to go back to her mother and, and for the visit for Christmas and she wanted to go get a fake large diamond ring. I said, what? What for? I mean, something like, you know, like 10 carats. And she said if she had that on a ring, then everybody on her hand, everybody would leave her alone because they would think that she was engaged to some oligarch.

It's funny, you would normally think that would be dangerous to have something that looks valuable on you.

Well, something that big, they would assume somebody important had to give it to her very interest. It was an interesting ploy. I had to laugh at that one. But yeah.

Well, talk to us about the war cycles. You talk about a 25 year cycle, I believe.

Yes, war is connected directly into the economy. And there's been a creation of what was called the Wheeler Index, which you can see on our website. But we were basically took everything back to about 600 BC, all the activities, how many countries involved, how many people proportionately, etc. And so we were able to put that into our computers and then really develop models off it to say, okay, fine, when does this actually occur? And it occurs at a very regular interval of about 25.03 years. And we were Able to split it between civil unrest, domestic disputes, revolutions, where it's internally within the country and externally, like in between, you know, international war. And what's interesting is that this is the first time those two cycles are converging and they both turned up here in 2014. And so we just had a big conference in Philly and people flew around the world for this thing. It's the first time this has occurred in 300 years.

The first time. What has occurred exactly?

This convergence between these two models. The last time was in the 1700s where we had the overthrow of monarchy. So there's a rising trend globally. Ukraine is just one aspect of it, but all southern Europe, you've got down to Brazil, Thailand, et cetera. What is the common bond to all these countries? Starting to rise up in Turkey as well. And it's corruption. People are fed up, really just fed up with government. And we'll see more of it here. Our economic confidence model is predicting again, the next recession should start basically from about October 15th, and then that will go down into 2020. So we're going to start seeing more of that here. And all of Europe is pretty hard too.

I just want to make sure everybody's following. Seeing more of what here?

Civil unrest.

Okay, civil unrest. So people. So you're saying people are fed up with government around the world. And really government is a proxy for being the environment in which organized crime, whether it be directly government, it be done directly by the government, or it's done by proxy through the mafia, which the government allows to exist or in fact through its policies, encourages in many ways.

Yeah, like banking and such.

Right, the banksters and Wall Street. And you know, here in the US we just institutionalize it and make it look so much cleaner. Hardly anybody ever dies, but a few do. We can talk about banker suicides or strange stories like that, but, you know.

We don't call it corruption, we call it lobbying.

Right? Yeah, we call it lobbying. And so by and large, it's sort of institutionalized. And what kind of white collar here but around the world it's a little more thuggish, isn't it?

Yes. I mean, particularly in Russia and behind the Iron Curtain, it's still very much very thug mafia type thing. And they walk in, they'll break your bones. Right.

So people are fed up with this, but in the US we seem to be welcoming more government.

That's debatable. But I think largely what we have, we have many different conflicting trends developing. And in Europe, the taxes just keep rising. I mean, France Seems to be insane. But the thing that people are not paying attention to is that we also have, like a collapse in education. And in Europe, you have over 60% of the youth, and as defined as under 25, unemployed, cannot find a job. Forbes magazine reported that, you know, 65% of the American students, they go to university, they come out with their degrees, and they cannot find a job in what they went to school for.

Right. And the first question is, why are we allowing? Maybe it shouldn't be a government policy, because I hate to see more government in anything, but just sociologically, why are we allowing students to go get these silly liberal arts degrees that are just useless. They can't use them. I mean, you know, nobody's. Nobody's hiring.

Honestly, I've, you know, we advise a lot of major corporations around the world. I have met with CFOs of everywhere, and the vast majority you will find are engineers not trained in. With no MBAs. Engineering seems to be the best because they at least teach them how to.

Think out of the box and they create real stuff. I love it. Right.

In economics, they say, here are the rules and that's it. And if you disagree, you flunk. So that most of your social sciences teach you just not to think. Only engineering seems to. And so Most of the CFOs that I encounter have engineering degrees. And it's almost pointless to go spend all this money to go get a very nice degree in economics or finance, and then you have to be retaught.

You know, that's so interesting that you say that, Martin, because I was just watching an interview with Elon Musk, one of my favorite CEOs, and the interviewer asked him, what do you consider yourself? Do you consider yourself a CEO? Do you consider yourself a startup guru? And he says, no, I really consider myself an engineer. It was a telling comment to me that was interesting.

It is. I mean, an engineer is basically taught to solve a problem. How you solve a problem, well, every time it's a different problem. So there's no set rules per se. You have laws of physics, etc. But other than that, you know, you have to figure out a way out of this thing. And the other. Our other sciences do not.

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And I mean, even. It's pretty pathetic. But I mean, if. Even if you look in archeology, for example, Heinrich Schliemann, anybody that's gone on a tour of Europe or whatever, he's the One who found Troy, my scene, most of the ancient cities. Why? Because the academics said that Homer, oh, it was just a fairy tale written for, written for children. Nobody got up and went out to prove that statement. Schliemann said, no, I don't think you're right. And he took Homer, went to the place Homer said, they set sail to go to Troy. Walks in, says, anybody heard of Troy? Yeah, it's over there, you know, and I mean, I've taken home where you walk into, into my scene, and it basically says, turn right. And Agamemnon's buried in a shaft grave down at the bottom. And you go there, and that's where it was. His mask is now in the Athens Museum. But, you know, your, your academics that were in Harvard and Yale and Oxford, they all declared without ever stepping out, that it was just a book for children.

Very interesting. Very interesting. Well, you know, Martin, our time is somewhat limited here, but I wanted you to talk a little bit more about the economic confidence model, if you would, and kind of drill down on that and tell us where we are and what we can expect. And then I want to ask you a little bit more about some things we might expect before you go.

Largely, everybody has conceded from every, you know, even Paul Volcker wrote a book on it, Rediscovery. The business cycle, he said, and he concluded was about eight years. We've basically defined it. It's, it's 8.6 years, to be precise.

Which is the business cycle is 8.6.

The business cycle in general right now, the way it functions is that people largely just, it is really confidence that makes something boom or bust. Like interest rates have been down, you know, virtually zero in Japan. And honestly, the economy doesn't turn until somebody sees higher interest rates and expects inflation. As long as the average person thinks it's going to be cheaper tomorrow, they hold off. As soon as they think it's going to cost them more now, they get up and they start going out.

And this is one of the reasons, by the way, that I say that deflation is so dangerous to an economy. As much as I like to rail against fiscal policy and monetary policy, especially inflation, really, as long as it's somewhat moderate, is kind of a good business plan for governments.

But, well, you do need inflation to keep pace with population growth. That's mandatory. I mean, because if you had, if you had $10 and 10 people, in theory, everybody could have $1. But if you now have 20 people and still only $10, that's deflation.

We only have 50 cents each.

Right. So I mean you have to have, you can't have it both ways. You can't have your home improving in value. You're, you're going to get a raise every year, etc. And at the same time money is going to be flat and always have the same value. It's impossible because assets rise, then the value, purchasing power, money has to decline. They're on the opposite side of a seesaw. So it, it's always a boom and a bust, back and forth, but each cycle that we go through, it moves from real estate one time, then stocks the next time, then bonds the next time, commodities next time, then it will go right back again and start all over again. Real estate, that seems to be the same thing twice in a row.

Yeah, it seems to be by design that it runs that way. You know, it's like get the people off one. I mean Greenspan, it just, it seemed like exactly the way he designed it. Get them off one thing, get them on another. You know, this thing's failing. So let's just switch gears here.

Well, the other thing with monetary policy that people, you know, I think are not appreciating is that the dollar is the reserve currency. And I know a lot of guys, oh, hyperinflation, etc, they're only looking at the United States and most your third world country issue bonds, dollars. Why? Because they can't sell it in their own currency. And you have basically Europe is a basket case. China is really out, has surpassed Europe even in trade now and. But where do you put your, you know, where is money? Russians still want dollars, they don't want rubles.

Can you blame them?

So there is a demand for dollars that is actually beyond our bor. So yes, if they could increase money supply and everybody goes, oh, you know, I got this, gotta be inflationary. No, if you look at what China did, they said, thank you very much. They had a bond portfolio of U.S. assets that were long term. They sold all the long term and they brought it down to under five. So now they're below five years. And they said, thank you very much. So that's why when The Fed and QE1 stood up and said, okay, fine, we're going to help the real estate market by buying in 30 year bonds that will in theory create more money, but it will create a shortage and long term. So therefore though, the private sector will start buying the real estate and they didn't because they assumed that they're buying the 30 year bonds from an American. It was China was selling up to them. So the money went straight out the back door. You know, the global economy is very porous. So you know, you can't necessarily run this on theories that were from long time ago because things have changed. And you can have inflation with no change in money supply. You know, if there's a shortage of goods, you know, storm like Katrina something and the same thing that you, you'll see with, with anything. If they start getting very bullish on anything and they decide to start buying, it doesn't require the Fed to increase the money supply. So it's a lot more complicated than people suspect. There's more going on and it's global. And we have to look at this as the dollar money supply is actually international. And actually when they were coming out with the new $100 bills you flew international, they would have little ads coming on. You know, the old hundred dollar bills are still good. You don't have to worry.

Right, right, right, yeah, very interesting. Well, I mean, but that's nothing new. America has been for a long, long time the so called Brinks truck of the world. And the dollar has been certainly the reserve currency for a long time. And you know, people debate whether that's legitimate.

Well the main, the biggest problem is not that how long it has been. The problem is what's happening to the all the other players.

Yeah, right, right. Say it's relative. It's a race to the bottom with these.

Right. So, so basically they're collapsing. First US will eventually have its problems. But the same thing in the Great Depression you had in 1931 you had all of Europe basically default except for France. Britain went into a moratorium. I'm talking about permanent defaults on their bonds. Most of South America defaulted and so did China. So the US was the last one largely standing and the dollar went up dramatically in value. And US politicians didn't understand what was going on. So that started protectionism and then the dollar. Roosevelt when he finally realized, oh okay fine, the dollar is too overpriced because everybody else was down. That's when he basically devalued the dollar and confiscated gold. So that brought the dollar down. But we have that same problem going on globally right now. So it's largely an issue of you have Europe got rid of all these individual currencies, then they went to the euro, but then they didn't have a national debt. They left every country. And that was crazy. And that's why that's been falling apart. So by default the dollar is becoming almost the only World currency because you largely have problems. I mean, you can't use the yuan, you can't use rubles. Europe never created a single currency that would last because you have to have a single national debt in order to absorb money. And that's what the whole problem is with Europe. Canada, Australia, they're just two tiny markets. So you know, unfortunately the only place to go is the dollar and we have a large national debt. True, but that means also that capital can be absorbed. You can't call up Britain and say, gee, I want to buy, you know, $2 trillion worth of bonds. You know, they just don't have it. So the dollar ends up becoming, being pushed up as it was in the Great Depression. And as that happens, that creates more deflation. So it's actually deflation that destroys the economy, not inflation. The idea of hyperinflation, et cetera. If you look at that, that really only goes to revolutionary type governments. Like Germany was right after they got rid of it was a Bolshevik basically revolution. United States, we had it right after, you know, that was the continental currency, French, etc. So that largely comes after war. And it's hyperinflation is associated largely means that the government prints because it cannot sell bonds. Nobody will trust it. So we're not at that stage.

Well, people say we're getting close to it. I mean, you know, at some point don't we have a boycott on our bonds because. And the reason, just to make sure people understand this, at least from my perspective, but chime in, is that if you buy a U.S. bond and the dollar is inflated, its value is inflated away, then you get paid back on that bond inflation, cheaper dollars. So it's a bad deal for the investor in the bond or a lender of any sort, which really is all a bond is, is a loan. So is there any real fear of people not buying our bonds or is that just a long way off?

Not yet. I mean what you're saying is basically applicable to everything and it's been that way since World War II. But hyperinflation is more is defined at 400% per month. So we're not, we're not anywhere close. Wow.

Well, because, you know, I've been searching and there's just no academic definition for hyperinflation, but 400% a month, mind you, that's still a lot lower than Zimbabwe was, but. Yeah, that's amazing.

Yeah, I mean you had Hungary, you had Germany and there have been, but they're all third world type countries. You don't have the core economy, which is the United States, go into hyperinflation. Because what would happen is, is that, number one, the corrupt bankers would prevent. But our problem is deflation. And why I say that is that what's happening is they keep raising taxes and they're raising enforcement. So, for example, the 2011 law that they put in, and Americans have been thrown out of banks everywhere, and that forces them to also bring their capital back home. So you can't invest overseas unless you're a multinational. You can't even start a business over there.

Oh, no, I agree. I mean, if you're an American and you try to do business overseas, which means you've got to form an entity probably and open a bank account. It's like you have a scarlet letter. Nobody wants to do business.

Yeah. They will not let you. They will not let you open a bank account.

Yeah. And so that really has created not only, you know, a way for the US to tax more and to make sure that there's not a lot of tax evasion, but also to repatriate dollars.

Well, I think that the bureaucrats aren't quite that smart. They're just looking for taxes and they assume anybody doing anything overseas is illegal. And they don't realize what they're doing is they're destroying the world economy. The velocity of money has been collapsing since 07 and has not turned back up. So that's part of the deflationary cycle. And so what we have is really serious problems here. You have Europe going into deflation, and, you know, you had the head, the IMF come out and say that Europe's problem is low inflation. They have to, you know, actually increase money supply, but that's not going to change it. You can increase the money supply. It's the question is confidence. If people don't believe that they're going to be able to do something with it in the future, it doesn't matter. We ran correlation studies. For example, interest rates and the stock market say, okay, fine. Do higher interest rates prevent the stock market and make a peak? The answer is no. 1899 call. Money rates peaked at nearly 200%. The biggest stock market rally was 1929, and they peaked at 6%. What it is is that it's the differential accounts. If you think the stock market is going to double next year, and I say, Well, I want 20% interest, you'll pay it. But if you think the stock market's going to go up 5%, and I say, I want 5%, you're going to Say no. So it's what, there has to be something left on the table that you think you're going to make in order to borrow. And that's the key. It's when the expectations reach whatever level of interest rates are, then the market will crash. So that's why the stock market's never peaked with the same level of interest rates twice in a row. It's always different.

So is it fair to say that you're somewhat bullish on the dollar?

Well, yes, but what's happening, you have to understand is what, what actually makes the economy go down. And that's deflation. And what is deflation? Deflation is the rise in the purchasing power of the currency. So as the capital from this new taxation hunt that they've been going on, Americans having to pull back their money and pushing the dollar up will actually create what a lot of people keep saying, oh, there's a collapse across. But the collapse doesn't come from inflation, it comes from deflation. That's where how all the great empires collapsed, Rome included. And if you look, for example, like the difference between gold and other assets is quite significant. And in a hyperinflation, everything goes up, all right, Real estate, art, whatever, and. But the society, the entity still lasts, it's still there. So Germany collapsed, but okay, fine, the country was still intact. The difference is, is when the country is not intact, all right, for example, like the Russian Revolution, etc. That's when gold becomes rises when the others don't. And the difference is it's a movable asset. And this is what happened to Rome. They kept raising taxes and taxes and taxes to the point that people just walked away from the houses. You can't take it with you where you can at least take gold or something like that with you. That's the distinction that people have to understand. So gold is the hedge against government, but it's not the hedge per se against inflation. Everything becomes the hedge against inflation, including your wages.

And I want to say something. You know what the best hedge against inflation is? It's not gold. It's debt. Long term, fixed rate debt attached to a commodity. And the one I like is real estate in terms of income, property that produce income because that debt is debased by inflation. So you pay the debt back in cheaper dollars. But the debt is also tied to commodities. And when you look at the commodities that are the ingredients of an apartment building or a single family home that you rent to somebody else, number one, you've outsourced the debt to somebody Else, so you don't even pay your debt, the tenant does. But number two, inflation pays the debt off for you. So the tenant and inflation are both paying the debt. And number three, the commodity, the ingredients, the lumber, the petroleum products, the copper wire, the glass, the steel, the concrete, you know, all of those things as well as the energy it takes to build them all are hedged against inflation pretty well.

Yes. I mean this is why the big institutions can't buy gold. Gold is more for the retail market mainly because it doesn't pay interest.

Right. It has no income.

Let me just go back to income.

Yeah, exactly. And that's a very good point, Martin. I love that you mentioned that because when you look at the real estate asset class, and when I say that, I mean income tax property only, not one's own home that they pay their own debt for. In a deflationary environment it also works well because in a deflationary environment, you know, investors are running anywhere they can to get yield and you just can't get yield. Of course gold doesn't produce income, silver doesn't produce income. But in an era where, you know, interest rates are 0 to 1%, which is what we have now, where are you going to get yield? You got to get it from somewhere. And cash flowing. Real estate is about the only, only real place.

This is also why the stock market's rising. Because the pension funds were based upon models where they anticipated they needed 8% where long term bonds used to be. And they're mostly going into insolvent. And we have a. I think after 16, you're going to see the next crisis won't be real estate, will be pension funds or student loan debt. Well, most of them are basically insolvent. But that's why long term debt has collapsed in price because there's too much money out there and pension funds trying to lock in something long term. So they've bid interest rates to the point they can't even function anymore. So now they need to go out. And that's why you start seeing the stock market rising. Real estate, exactly the type of property you're talking about. I'm not talking about the homes in Detroit, but you know, income producing. You have foreigners coming in buying the top properties in New York, Florida, California. But that's largely because they are trying to get capital off the grid outside of Europe.

Right. They're looking for the Brinks truck called America.

Yeah. And you have the Chinese doing the same thing. And so they've been buying up property in Australia, all the farm Property, things of this nature. So they're hedging into their currencies. And this is part of the whole issue here, that emerging markets look like they're going to continue to go lower into about 2020. And the more geopolitical problems we have emerging with Korea, we have China and Japan rattling sabers back and forth at each other. And then you have Putin on this quest to re establish the Soviet Union. The only other place for capital go is the United States. And that's what happened with World War I, and it happened again in World War II, and looks like it's happening again. And people should keep in mind that the United States was actually bankrupt in 1896. That's when J.P. morgan became famous. He organized a loan for $100 million in gold. So from 1896 to 1914, World War I, we became the number one economy. And then at the end of World War II, we ended up with 76% of the entire world gold reserves. So we were the breadbasket and the arms dealers.

The breadbasket and the arms dealers of the world love it.

And it looks like it's coming back again. The one advantage of the United States is that we really cannot be invaded by land. Okay? They got to get a lot of people on boats. So that has always tended to be the difference. Whereas Europe, if Russia wanted to run tanks down the Paris, I mean, it could do it in probably less than a month.

We've got the luck of geography, but we've also got the largest military on earth by a long shot. And, you know, as much as it. You can argue that it's built on a house of cards, but we do still have the largest economy. But, you know, other economies are built on a house of cards, too. It's not like we're the only one.

Well, this is largely, it's like, you know, the question is, who's the prettier of the two ugly, you know, the twins. That's about it. And we're, we're, we have the largest economy. We still do have the lower tax rates, which has been improving it, but that's been our primary advantage. And we've been less socialistic over the years as far as determining who can open up businesses. I mean, anybody's free to open up a business. I mean, now it's, can you afford it with all the regulations? But nobody's there to, to come in like in Russia and say, no, you can't do it.

Right. Right. And even though the regulatory burden is higher, technology has made it a lot less expensive and a lot more accessible for more people. So it's, it's like you trade one for the other.

Yes, well, I mean, our own business, I mean, you know, everybody, we tend to be touted as the most expensive in the world largely because, yes, when we began, our reports were going out by telex. So it was 50 bucks in Western Union fees to send a telex from here off to Europe. So it was very expensive back then. So only the top institutions could, could even subscribe to us. And then faxes came. So it goes from 50 bucks down to $3. And now, you know, basically it's out by email. So now we have, you know, clients all over the world that the cost of communications has gone from 250 grand a year just to access us. We'll forget what you, you were paying us to zero.

Well, very, very good points. So the website is Armstrong Economics, armstrongeconomics.com and this has been a fascinating conversation. Just any anything you want to say in closing before you leave us?

No, I think that pretty much is it. I mean we just have to realize that it's a global economy. We are all connected and one change in something over in China does impact us and it impacts Europe. So it's not purely domestically driven.

Very good points. Well, Martin Armstrong, thank you so much for joining us today.

Oh, thank you for inviting me.

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