Join Us at the World Economic Conference in Orlando, Florida! Nov. 17-19, 2023
Join Us at the 2023 World Economic Conference in Orlando, Florida!
? Dates: November 17, 18, and 19 ? Location: Orlando, Florida, USA (or tune in from home with our virtual ticket options)
Are you ready to unlock the future of economics and finance? Prepare for an unforgettable World Economic Conference experience in sunny Orlando, Florida! This premier event is your gateway to insights, networking, and valuable resources that will supercharge your understanding of the global economy.
?️ What’s Included for In-Person Attendees:
- Event Admission: Enjoy reserved seating assigned based on the order of ticket sales, ensuring you have a prime view of every presentation.
- Presentation Slides: Gain access to the presentation slides from all speakers, allowing you to delve deeper into the topics discussed.
- Video Recording: Can’t make it to a session? No worries! You’ll receive access to video recordings of all conference presentations, so you can catch up at your convenience.
- WEC Event App: Connect with the conference on a whole new level. Access presentation slides, bonus reports, recordings, and more via the official WEC Event App.
- Bonus Conference Materials: Get a package of bonus conference-related materials, including exclusive bonus reports and videos (as provided by Martin Armstrong).
- Morning Information Sessions: Don’t miss out on important morning information sessions, screened on-site in the meeting room on Saturday and Sunday.
- Networking Opportunities: Exclusive access to the Event App Networking Feature allows you to connect with fellow attendees, both in-person and virtual, fostering valuable professional relationships.
- Culinary Delights: Savor delicious breakfast and lunch on Saturday and Sunday, prepared to keep you energized throughout the day.
- Cocktail Reception: Kick off the conference in style at our Friday evening cocktail reception. Meet and mingle with fellow attendees while enjoying refreshing drinks.
- Swag Bag: As a token of our appreciation, each in-person attendee will receive a swag bag filled with goodies, including an Armstrong Economics notebook, pen, and an event collector’s mug!
Unable to travel? We also have two different ticket options for those wishing to attend virtually!
Don’t miss this opportunity to be part of a global gathering of economic and financial minds. Secure your spot at the World Economic Conference in Orlando, Florida, and gain the knowledge, connections, and resources you need to thrive in the world of finance and economics.
Space is limited, so act now and reserve your seat! Visit our Events page to register and join us in sunny Orlando this November.
NEW BOOK Now Available : "Mark Antony & Cleopatra"
"THE PLOT TO SEIZE RUSSIA - THE UNTOLD HISTORY"
The second edition of “The Plot to Seize Russia – The Untold History” is now available for purchase in paperback and hardcover on Amazon and Barnes and Noble. The ebook will be available shortly.
Book description:
“Take care of Russia,” Boris Yeltsin said as he departed his presidency in August 1999. These words were directed at current Russian president, Vladimir Putin. Yeltsin specifically picked Putin as his predecessor to prevent the takeover of Russia.
So, who was Yeltsin warning against? Newly declassified documents from the Clinton Administration prove that there was a plot to rig the Russian election of 2000. These never-before-seen documents confirm numerous attempts to implement pro-Western policies using the Russian oligarchy headed by Boris Berezovsky.
On the other side were the communists who desired a return to the glory days of the Soviet Union. As one of the largest international hedge fund managers, author Martin Armstrong found himself in the middle of perhaps the greatest espionage, or attempt at a regime change for Russia, in modern history.
The Plot to Seize Russia pulls back the curtain to expose the most extraordinary attempt to seize power in modern history, but with the pen rather than armies. These declassified documents reveal a plot that has altered our thinking about the relations between the United States and Russia. The thirst for power comes seething through every line of these papers that alter our perception of reality, change the course of history, and now threaten us with World War III.
Market Talk – June 23, 2026
AMERICAS:
US Markets:
- DJIA declined by 45.87 points (-0.09%) to 51,666.84
- S&P 500 declined by 107.33 points (-1.44%) to 7,365.46
- NASDAQ declined by 579.56 points (-2.22%) to 25,587.039
- Russell 2000 declined by 28.92 points (-0.96%) to 2,975.481
Canada:
- TSX Composite declined by 74.80 points (-0.21%) to 34,927.38
- TSX 60 advanced by 3.63 points (0.18%) to 2,055.75
Brazil:
- Bovespa advanced by 1,112.36 points (0.65%) to 171,482.74
Canada’s Inflation Problem Is Far From Over
Canada’s inflation rate accelerated to 3.2% in May, coming in above expectations and once again exposing the fantasy that inflation was somehow defeated. Policymakers spent the past year congratulating themselves for bringing inflation down, yet the cost of living continues to rise while the economy itself is sliding toward recession. This is precisely the type of stagflationary environment that governments hate because there is no easy solution. Raise rates, and you deepen the economic slowdown. Cut rates and you fuel inflation once again.
What makes Canada particularly vulnerable is that inflation is rising while economic growth remains weak. Canada has already slipped into a technical recession, household debt remains among the highest in the developed world, and housing affordability has become a national crisis. Citizens are struggling with food, energy, insurance, housing, and taxes, yet government spending continues to expand. The political class always assumes it can spend endlessly without consequence. Eventually, the bill arrives.
I have warned that Canada faces a much larger structural problem than inflation alone. The country has become excessively dependent on government spending, real estate, and debt expansion. Investment has been declining while capital continues flowing south into the United States. When governments begin relying on debt growth to maintain living standards, they enter the same dangerous cycle that has destroyed countless nations throughout history. Debt can create the illusion of prosperity, but it cannot create real wealth.
Government debt at the federal and provincial levels has exploded over the past decade while entitlement obligations continue growing. The assumption has always been that interest rates would remain low forever. That assumption is now being challenged throughout the world. As rates rise, governments are forced to devote larger portions of tax revenue simply to servicing debt rather than providing services.
This is why our long-term models continue to point toward 2032 as a major sovereign debt turning point. Governments everywhere borrowed as though there would never be a reckoning. Canada is especially vulnerable because its economy remains heavily tied to commodities, housing, and government spending while productivity growth has lagged. The inflation report is not the story. Inflation is merely a symptom. The underlying disease is a debt-based economic model that requires constant expansion to survive.
Looking ahead, the period from 2026 into 2028 aligns with our broader forecasts for rising volatility, recessionary pressures, and increasing civil unrest across many Western nations. Canada is not immune.
Germany’s Political Class Wants Your Children for War
German Defence Minister Boris Pistorius declared that “not all deployed soldiers will be volunteers” as Germany continues expanding its military presence in Lithuania. For years, the public was told that military service would remain voluntary. Pistorius is openly stating that a military conscription is coming. Some may believe this is solely about soldiers volunteering to be stationed in Lithuania, but in truth he is saying that Germany will do everything to honor its agreements to foreign governments and foreign wars.
Germany suspended conscription in 2011 and spent years portraying itself as a modern, peaceful nation. Now politicians are openly discussing mandatory military service, compulsory registration, mandatory medical examinations, and the possibility of forcing young men into military service if volunteer numbers fall short. Pistorius has already stated that if the military lacks sufficient volunteers, recruitment could become mandatory.
“We to achieve that everybody who is coming here do this on his on his own decision. But still it might happen […] that some will not go because they wished to go. But this is not unusual in the German Bundeswehr. So we see about what’s going to happen in the next months,” he said. “Once we have fully exploited all available means, we will start looking into alternative options,” the German minister said.
The real question nobody wants to ask is simple: who exactly are they preparing to fight? European leaders continue talking about Russia as though Moscow is preparing to invade Berlin tomorrow. Instead of fixing domestic problems, they are now spending hundreds of billions on military expansion. Germany’s military budget has surged dramatically, with plans to build what officials openly describe as Europe’s strongest conventional military force.
Governments never begin with full-scale conscription. They do not want to panic the public, and in this situation, the nation is not yet at war. Germany already enacted a system requiring young men to provide information to the military and is preparing mandatory examinations beginning in 2027. The infrastructure is being built before the public fully understands where the road leads. The government is openly declaring that Germans will face warfare.
Young Europeans who cannot afford homes, who face rising taxes and shrinking economic opportunities, are now being told they may have a duty to serve. Politicians who helped create many of the geopolitical disasters of the last decade are increasingly willing to place the burden on the next generation.
Our models have been warning that 2026 marks a Panic Cycle year tied to rising geopolitical tensions and military escalation. The trend extending into 2027 becomes increasingly dangerous. Once governments begin preparing populations for compulsory service, they are implicitly acknowledging that they no longer expect peace. The era of purely voluntary military service is ending.
Starmer’s Fall & The Rise of Farage
Keir Starmer’s resignation comes as absolutely no surprise. The shocking part is not that he quit, but that it took this long. The British people delivered one of the largest electoral victories in modern history to Labour in 2024, only to discover that changing the party did nothing to change the direction of government. The economy remained stagnant, the cost of living crisis continued, migration remained out of control, taxes rose, public services deteriorated, and confidence collapsed. Even members of his own party eventually concluded that Starmer could no longer survive politically.
What we are witnessing is not merely the failure of one politician. This is the collapse of confidence in the entire political establishment. Britain has now burned through six prime ministers in less than a decade. That level of turnover is not normal. It is a symptom of a government that no longer knows how to govern and a population that no longer believes anything politicians say. The old system is fracturing before our eyes.
The Labour Party spent years attacking the Conservatives, promising competence, stability, and growth. Once in power, they quickly discovered that slogans do not create prosperity. Britain remains buried under excessive regulation, soaring debt, rising taxes, and an economy that has struggled for years. Politicians continue pretending they can tax, borrow, and regulate their way to prosperity. History shows that every government eventually learns the same lesson. You cannot spend your way out of structural decline.
The most significant political development is not Starmer’s resignation. It is the continued rise of Nigel Farage. The establishment spent years treating Farage as a fringe figure while millions of voters quietly agreed with him. Reform UK has been leading national polls and delivered major gains in local elections because people are desperate for an alternative. They no longer trust either Labour or the Conservatives. Farage understood something that Westminster refused to acknowledge: ordinary people feel abandoned by the political class.
The establishment can dismiss Nigel Farage all it wants, but the numbers tell a very different story. Reform UK has spent much of the past year leading national opinion polls, something that would have been considered impossible only a few years ago. An Ipsos poll conducted in May placed Reform UK at 27%, seven points ahead of Labour at 20%. Even in April, Reform was leading both Labour and the Conservatives. For the first time in modern British political history, a party outside the Labour-Conservative duopoly has consistently held a national polling lead. That is not a protest vote. That is a political realignment.
The local election results confirmed what the polls had been showing for months. Labour lost more than a thousand council seats while Reform UK surged across England and established itself as the primary challenger to both traditional parties. Starmer’s resignation did not occur in a vacuum. It followed months of collapsing support, disastrous local election results, and growing fears within Labour that Farage was successfully capturing working-class voters who once formed the backbone of the party.
What is unfolding in Britain resembles the collapse of establishment parties across Europe. Voters are abandoning the old political order because they no longer believe it represents them. Immigration, the cost of living, energy prices, taxation, and declining public services have created a crisis of confidence that neither Labour nor the Conservatives have been able to address. Farage’s popularity is growing because he is benefiting from that anger. Whether the establishment likes it or not, Reform UK is no longer a fringe movement. It is increasingly viewed as a potential governing party.
The British establishment will now attempt to replace Starmer with another carefully selected manager and pretend everything has changed. We have seen this movie before. The names change, the speeches change, but the policies remain remarkably similar. Andy Burnham may become prime minister by September, but replacing the captain does not repair a ship that is already taking on water.
What I find remarkable is how closely Britain now resembles the broader crisis of confidence unfolding across the Western world. Voters are rejecting establishment parties from Germany to France, from Canada to Britain. This is exactly what our models have been warning about. The 2026 Panic Cycle was never simply about markets. It is about confidence in institutions. Governments everywhere are discovering that people have reached their limit.
Farage’s appeal is not that everyone agrees with him. His appeal is that millions of people believe he is at least willing to say openly what others refuse to discuss. Immigration, national sovereignty, the cost of government, energy policy, and the destruction of the middle class have become impossible to ignore. Whether Farage ultimately succeeds or not, the political trend is unmistakable. The British public is searching for an alternative to the establishment that has dominated politics for decades.
Market Talk – June 22, 2026
Your Car Was Never the Target

For years, governments assured the public that license plate readers were simply tools to catch stolen vehicles, fugitives, and dangerous criminals. That was always the sales pitch. Now the mask is coming off. According to reports, a new surveillance platform called SignalTrace is being marketed to law enforcement and government agencies that goes far beyond reading license plates. The system can collect identifiers from smartphones, smartwatches, Bluetooth devices, vehicle infotainment systems, Wi-Fi hotspots, tire pressure sensors, RFID devices, AirTags, and even pet microchips. They are no longer interested in tracking your car. They are interested in tracking you.
The frightening part is how openly this is being discussed. The stated goal of the technology is to “bridge the gap between vehicle and occupant.” In other words, the authorities no longer want to know where a vehicle traveled. They want to know who was inside, where they went, who they met, and how often they traveled together. The system creates a unique electronic fingerprint based on the collection of devices surrounding a person. Your phone, your watch, your headphones, your car, and even your dog’s microchip become pieces of a digital identity that can be followed everywhere you go.
This is exactly how governments always expand surveillance. They begin with a limited purpose that sounds reasonable. Then the technology advances and suddenly the scope becomes limitless. License plate readers were sold as crime-fighting tools. Then they became databases of vehicle movements. Now they are evolving into systems that can reconstruct an individual’s entire pattern of life. Privacy advocates have warned that these systems can reveal where people work, where they worship, where they seek medical treatment, and who they associate with. Once that information exists in a searchable database, every government agency will want access.
What is unfolding is part of a much broader trend. Governments around the world are building digital identification systems, expanding financial surveillance, monitoring communications, and centralizing personal data. At the same time, law enforcement agencies are seeking nationwide access to license plate reader networks that provide near real-time tracking capabilities across the United States. The infrastructure is being assembled piece by piece. Most people only see each individual step. They fail to recognize the larger picture until the system is fully operational.
The argument will always be security. It is the oldest justification in history. Every expansion of government power is presented as necessary for public safety. Yet once these surveillance systems are built, they are rarely scaled back. Instead, new uses are constantly discovered. Today the target is criminals. Tomorrow it may be political opponents, protesters, journalists, or anyone deemed suspicious by those in power. History has repeatedly shown that governments never surrender tools that enhance control over the population.
The greatest threat is not the technology itself. Technology is neutral. The danger lies in believing that governments, corporations, and bureaucracies can be trusted indefinitely with unlimited access to information about every citizen’s movements, associations, and daily life. When your phone, your vehicle, your wearable devices, and even your pet become tracking beacons feeding a centralized surveillance network, we are no longer talking about crime prevention. We are talking about the creation of a digital leash attached to every individual. Once that infrastructure exists, the temptation to abuse it becomes inevitable.
England: Where the Police Investigate Babies
There are moments when a society reveals just how far it has fallen. This is one of them. According to figures from Kent Police, a one-year-old baby girl was recorded as a crime suspect after allegedly causing a minor injury to another child. The same figures included 6 two-year-olds, 11 three-year-olds, and 20 four-year-olds. In what was once the nation that gave the world Magna Carta and the foundations of common law, police are now compiling crime statistics on babies.
Kent Police defended the practice by explaining that they want to understand what causes children to become involved in crime. We are not talking about teenagers. We are not talking about young adults. We are talking about toddlers and infants who, much like the Kent Police, have not yet developed the cognitive skills for advanced thought.
Welcome to the new reality where every incident from birth to death must be logged, categorized, measured, and entered into a database. Governments continue to build systems that collect more information while common sense quietly disappears. Instead of concentrating on violent crime, organized gangs, terrorism, or the growing social tensions facing Britain, officials are recording playground disputes involving children who are not even old enough to attend school.
So even babies are not immune to the two-tiered justice system. The authorities seem perfectly capable of recording a one-year-old baby as a crime suspect, yet when serious crimes involving violent offenders make national headlines, the public is often told there is insufficient evidence, investigations take years, or victims are ignored until it is too late. People look at cases like Henry Nowak who was arrested for racism after a migrant stabbed him to death. Dangerous individuals are permitted to terrorize the public, and the police are warned to turn a blind eye. Police resources are being used to classify toddlers as suspects when there are hundreds, if not thousands, of open rape cases against one particular subset of the population.

That is why confidence in government is collapsing. The average citizen cannot understand how a government can find the time to build police records on babies while repeatedly failing to address the crimes that genuinely threaten public safety. It is impossible to take the British legal system seriously, let alone maintain the belief that the law is there for the benefit of society.
Britain has become obsessed with monitoring, tracking, and documenting everything. Everyone, including your baby, mother, and grandmother, is considered a criminal. They will create whatever evidence they believe they need. Thousands are arrested over online communications, surveillance powers continue to expand, and government agencies increasingly treat ordinary citizens as subjects to be managed rather than people to be served. Recording toddlers as crime suspects may seem ridiculous, but it is simply another symptom of a system that has lost all sense of proportion.
The problem is the mindset that believes a one-year-old belongs in a police database. Every empire eventually reaches a stage where bureaucracy expands beyond reason. When police are officially recording babies as criminal suspects, perhaps it is time to ask whether the system itself has become the absurdity.

California’s Hunt IPO Taxes

California never seems to learn. Instead of asking why companies are fleeing the state, politicians immediately look at a successful IPO and see a new tax opportunity. The latest excitement surrounds the massive SpaceX public offering and the possibility that thousands of California employees and investors could generate billions in capital gains taxes for Sacramento. State officials have openly acknowledged that these gains could help plug budget holes and support spending programs that have become increasingly dependent on volatile tax receipts.
This is precisely the problem. Governments begin to treat one-time wealth creation events as recurring revenue streams. California has built a fiscal structure that relies heavily on a small percentage of wealthy taxpayers. When the stock market is booming and IPOs are plentiful, tax collections surge. Politicians then expand programs and spending commitments as if the money will continue forever. When the cycle turns, revenues collapse and deficits explode. We have seen this movie repeatedly, from the dot-com bubble to the technology boom of recent years.
Elon Musk moved both Tesla and SpaceX headquarters out of California because of the state’s hostile business climate, regulations, and taxes. Yet California still hopes to collect a substantial windfall because many employees remain in the state and will owe capital gains taxes when shares are sold. Instead of recognizing that entrepreneurs are escaping, politicians are celebrating one last opportunity to reach into their pockets.
California is simultaneously debating a billionaire wealth tax that could impose a one-time 5% levy on the state’s richest residents. Supporters claim it could generate roughly $100 billion, while critics warn it would accelerate capital flight and ultimately reduce future tax collections. The very fact that such proposals are being seriously considered tells you everything about the mentality in Sacramento. They see wealth not as something to encourage and cultivate, but as a resource to be harvested whenever government spending gets out of control.
Governments never solve fiscal problems by raising taxes on success. They simply encourage capital to move elsewhere. California became an economic powerhouse because it attracted innovators, entrepreneurs, and investment. Now the state increasingly views every successful company, every IPO, and every wealthy resident as another source of revenue. That mentality marks the transition from encouraging growth to hunting wealth.
PRIVATE BLOG – Germany Claims It’s Ready to Fight Russia Tonight
PRIVATE BLOG – Germany Claims It’s Ready to Fight Russia Tonight
Private blog posts are exclusively available to Socrates subscribers. To sign-up for Socrates or to learn more, please visit Ask-Socrates.com.
Interview: Will the US/Iran Deal Hold?










