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:

1. Event Admission: Enjoy reserved seating assigned based on the order of ticket sales, ensuring you have a prime view of every presentation.
2. Presentation Slides: Gain access to the presentation slides from all speakers, allowing you to delve deeper into the topics discussed.
3. 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.
4. 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.
5. Bonus Conference Materials: Get a package of bonus conference-related materials, including exclusive bonus reports and videos (as provided by Martin Armstrong).
6. Morning Information Sessions: Don’t miss out on important morning information sessions, screened on-site in the meeting room on Saturday and Sunday.
7. 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.
8. Culinary Delights: Savor delicious breakfast and lunch on Saturday and Sunday, prepared to keep you energized throughout the day.
9. Cocktail Reception: Kick off the conference in style at our Friday evening cocktail reception. Meet and mingle with fellow attendees while enjoying refreshing drinks.
10. 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.

Now available at all major retailers!

The eBook will be available shortly.

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.

April existing home sales in the U.S. came in at an annualized pace of just 4.02 million units, barely rising 0.2% from March and missing expectations yet again. We are now looking at one of the weakest spring housing seasons in decades, despite population growth and years of underbuilding.

Real estate has always been driven by confidence in the future. People buy homes when they believe their job is secure, taxes will remain manageable, and the economy is stable enough to justify taking on long-term debt. That confidence has been steadily collapsing under inflation, rising insurance costs, property taxes, and geopolitical uncertainty.

Mortgage rates briefly dipped below 6% earlier this year and everyone rushed out claiming the housing market was recovering. Then rates shot back toward 6.4%-6.5% as inflation fears returned and war tensions escalated globally. That immediately froze buyers again. A $500,000 mortgage today carries monthly payments hundreds of dollars higher than buyers were paying only a few years ago. For younger generations already struggling with rent, food, insurance, and student debt, ownership is becoming mathematically impossible in many regions.

The median existing home price still rose to $417,700 in April, marking another record high for the month. This is the real crisis. Sales volumes are stagnating, yet prices remain elevated because inventory is still historically tight. We do not have a healthy market. We have a distorted market where people locked into 2%-3% mortgages refuse to sell because replacing that loan with a 6.5% mortgage would double their financing costs. That traps inventory and prevents natural market clearing.

The National Association of Realtors admitted inventory rose 5.8% to 1.47 million homes, but even that remains well below historical norms. A balanced housing market typically requires roughly a 5-6 month supply. We remain around 4.4 months. That means the market is simultaneously weak and expensive, which is the worst possible combination for society because it destroys mobility and locks younger generations out of ownership entirely.

What is unfolding now mirrors the broader sovereign debt crisis model. Governments kept rates artificially low for years to support endless borrowing and deficit spending. That created massive asset inflation in stocks, bonds, and real estate. Once inflation appeared, central banks had no choice but to raise rates, but they cannot normalize rates without crushing the very debt bubble they created. Housing is now caught directly in that trap.

The regional split is also important. The South and Midwest saw slight sales increases while the West continued weakening. That reflects the capital flow trend we have been monitoring for years. People are fleeing high-tax, high-cost regions in favor of states with lower taxes and cheaper living costs. California, New York, Illinois, and parts of the Northeast continue losing population to states such as Florida and Texas. Real estate is no longer just about location. It has become a referendum on government policy itself.

The broader danger is what comes next. Real estate historically drives consumer confidence because homes are the largest asset for most households. When housing freezes, consumer spending eventually follows. Construction slows, furniture sales weaken, appliance demand drops, and local tax revenues decline. The ripple effects spread throughout the entire economy.

The political class will eventually demand lower interest rates again to “save housing,” but lowering rates while inflation remains elevated only destroys purchasing power further. This is why the crisis becomes cyclical. Governments intervene to solve one problem and create a larger one. The housing market today is no longer operating under free-market conditions. It is functioning under constant monetary intervention, and every intervention creates another layer of instability.

The calls coming out of Spain for a unified European army are not some isolated political fantasy. This is part of a much larger shift taking place behind the curtain as Europe quietly prepares for a world where NATO may no longer function in its current form. What politicians are now openly discussing would have been politically impossible just a few years ago, yet the conversation has accelerated because confidence in the postwar order is breaking down.

Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez has openly called for the creation of a European army, warning that Europe must strengthen collective defense capabilities as geopolitical tensions rise. The fact that this idea is now being discussed seriously across Europe tells you everything about where this cycle is heading.

I have warned repeatedly that NATO was never designed to survive indefinitely. It was a Cold War alliance built around the Soviet threat and financed overwhelmingly by the United States. Once the Soviet Union collapsed, NATO lost its original purpose. Instead of dissolving, it expanded eastward, transforming itself from a defensive alliance into a geopolitical instrument used to project influence throughout Europe and beyond.

The United States is increasingly focused on China and domestic instability. Europe is facing economic stagnation, migration crises, sovereign debt pressure, and energy shortages simultaneously. At the same time, European governments are realizing they may no longer be able to rely on Washington as the unquestioned guarantor of their security. That realization is what is driving these calls for a European military structure.

The timing here is critical. Europe is discussing an EU army precisely as military spending across the continent is exploding higher. Germany alone is now committing hundreds of billions toward rearmament. NATO members are under pressure to raise defense spending toward 3.5% of GDP. Countries that spent decades dismantling military infrastructure are now rushing to rebuild it.

What makes this especially dangerous is that Europe lacks political unity even as it talks about military unity. Spain itself has already broken publicly with parts of NATO over the Iran conflict, refusing offensive involvement while distancing itself from Washington’s position. That exposes the core weakness inside the alliance. Once member states begin diverging on major conflicts, cohesion starts to collapse.

France wants strategic autonomy. Germany wants military leadership. Eastern Europe wants maximum confrontation with Russia. Southern Europe is more concerned about economic instability and migration. Britain remains tied to Washington but is struggling economically itself. These are not unified objectives. They are competing interests temporarily held together by fear and uncertainty.

At the same time, Europe’s economic foundation is weakening. Net Zero policies have driven energy prices higher, industry is leaving, debt levels continue rising, and growth remains stagnant across much of the continent. Yet governments are simultaneously discussing massive military expansion. Historically, that combination creates internal instability rather than long-term strength.

The irony is extraordinary. Europe spent decades dismantling borders, reducing national armies, and promoting the idea that war between major powers was obsolete. Now the same political class is discussing “Military Schengen” systems to move troops rapidly across Europe and openly debating nuclear deterrence independent of the United States.

The war cycle has been turning for years, and what you are witnessing now is the institutional response. Governments sense the geopolitical environment deteriorating, so they are attempting to centralize military power before the crisis fully emerges. But historically, creating larger supranational military structures often accelerates tension because it increases fear among rivals and reduces flexibility among member states.

The bigger issue is that the creation of a European army would fundamentally alter the balance of power inside NATO itself. Once Europe develops independent command structures, procurement systems, and military integration separate from Washington, NATO begins losing relevance. It does not disappear overnight, but it slowly transforms into something weaker and more fragmented.

What politicians are admitting publicly now is that they no longer fully trust the existing structure to survive the next major crisis. Once alliances begin questioning their own future openly, fragmentation has already begun behind the scenes.

Canada’s unemployment rate has now climbed to 6.9%, the highest level in six months, after the economy unexpectedly lost 17,700 jobs in April while economists had projected gains instead. More importantly, the country has now lost approximately 112,000 jobs during the first four months of 2026 alone, marking the steepest four-month employment decline since early 2021. Nearly all of those losses came from full-time positions, which fell by roughly 46,700 in April, while part-time employment partially masked the deterioration statistically.

The political establishment in Canada spent years insisting mass immigration, soaring housing prices, and debt-driven consumption represented economic strength. In reality, much of the apparent growth was built on artificial liquidity, real estate inflation, government spending, and population expansion rather than genuine productivity growth. Now the pressure is beginning to show directly inside the labor market.

The details underneath the employment report are even worse than the headline itself. Canada’s goods-producing sector lost roughly 26,800 jobs while manufacturing, construction, and industrial sectors continue weakening under trade uncertainty, rising costs, and slowing demand. Youth unemployment climbed toward 14.3%, which is becoming a major political problem because younger Canadians are already struggling with impossible housing costs, weak wage growth relative to living expenses, and record household debt burdens.

This is why so many Canadians increasingly feel trapped financially despite constant government claims about economic resilience. The labor force itself continues expanding because immigration levels remained extraordinarily high for years, but job creation is no longer keeping pace. That creates the exact conditions for rising unemployment, weakening wages, and growing social frustration. Canada’s labor participation rate actually rose slightly to 65% because more people were searching for work even as full-time employment deteriorated.

The broader structural problem is that Canada tied enormous portions of its economy to housing, banking, immigration growth, and consumer debt rather than industrial competitiveness or productivity expansion. Mortgage renewals are now occurring at materially higher rates while housing activity weakens underneath the surface. Consumers are increasingly squeezed by food costs, taxes, utility bills, insurance premiums, and debt servicing simultaneously.

At the same time, Mark Carney and the political class continue pushing Canada further toward the European economic model just as Europe itself enters a depressionary phase into 2028 according to our ECM projections. Europe is already struggling with industrial decline, rising debt, weak productivity growth, migration pressure, and collapsing middle-class purchasing power. Canada increasingly mirrors many of the same policies involving aggressive climate regulation, expanding bureaucracy, centralized governance, and growing dependence on state intervention. The result is predictable, slowing growth underneath the surface while ordinary citizens feel poorer despite rising headline GDP figures inflated largely through immigration expansion.

The ECM has projected for years that confidence would erode gradually across Canada as the gap widened between official economic narratives and the lived experience of ordinary people. Canadians increasingly understand that despite government rhetoric about growth and stability, their quality of life is deteriorating underneath the surface.

PRIVATE BLOG – Trump – Xi – May Highs?

Private blog posts are exclusively available to Socrates subscribers. To sign-up for Socrates or to learn more, please visit Ask-Socrates.com.

https://ask-socrates.com/

Vietnam is undergoing one of the fastest economic transformations in the world right now, and unlike much of the West, ordinary people can actually feel the improvement in daily life. Wages are rising, factories are expanding, infrastructure is being built at enormous speed, and millions of Vietnamese citizens are moving into the middle class for the first time.

The country’s economy recently grew roughly 7.1%, placing Vietnam among the fastest-growing economies globally. Exports surged beyond $405 billion while foreign investment commitments climbed above $38 billion as multinational corporations continued relocating production into the country. Entire industrial corridors are expanding as manufacturers shift operations out of China and deeper into Southeast Asia. This is not growth driven purely by financial speculation or government stimulus. Vietnam is benefiting from a real industrial expansion cycle.

Samsung alone has invested more than $22 billion into Vietnam and now manufactures a massive share of its global smartphone production there. Apple suppliers continue moving assembly and component production into Vietnamese facilities while companies tied to electronics, apparel, semiconductors, and logistics rapidly expand operations. Industrial parks throughout northern Vietnam have become magnets for foreign capital because corporations increasingly want alternatives to concentrating manufacturing entirely inside China.

That shift is changing daily life for ordinary workers. Factory wages have more than doubled over the past decade while poverty rates collapsed from roughly 70% in the early 1990s to below 5% today. Retail sales continue growing strongly as rising incomes translate into greater consumer spending on transportation, education, technology, travel, restaurants, and housing.

The key difference between Vietnam and many Western economies is CONFIDENCE. In much of Europe, Canada, and Britain, younger generations increasingly feel financially trapped. Housing costs exploded, taxes rose, inflation damaged purchasing power, and debt burdens became overwhelming. In Vietnam, many younger workers still believe their lives will materially improve over time because for millions of families, conditions actually are improving year after year.

Urban expansion throughout Ho Chi Minh City, Hanoi, and surrounding industrial regions is visible everywhere. New highways, ports, airports, rail projects, apartment towers, logistics hubs, and technology centers continue reshaping the country at remarkable speed. Vietnam has aggressively positioned itself as one of the primary beneficiaries of global supply chain fragmentation.

The country also benefits from demographics at a time when many developed economies face aging population crises. Vietnam’s median age remains around 33 years old compared to roughly 49 in Japan and more than 45 across much of Europe. That younger workforce provides long-term labor capacity while maintaining relatively competitive wage structures for global manufacturers.

Inflation has also remained far more manageable than in many Western nations. While food and energy costs still create pressure periodically, Vietnam avoided the type of energy self-destruction policies that severely damaged industrial competitiveness across Europe. The government largely prioritized manufacturing expansion and export growth rather than aggressive deindustrialization.

Tourism is booming as well. International visitor arrivals recently exceeded 17 million while domestic travel spending surged alongside rising household incomes. Banking penetration, digital payments, automobile ownership, and middle-class consumption continue expanding rapidly as economic development spreads further beyond the largest cities.

None of this means Vietnam is without risks. Rapid urban growth is creating affordability pressures in some regions while export dependence leaves the economy vulnerable to global slowdowns. Wealth inequality is beginning to widen between urban industrial zones and rural areas. But the overall direction of the country remains clearly upward rather than defensive.

The world economy is fragmenting into regions experiencing very different realities. Much of the developed world is dealing with debt saturation, aging populations, declining middle classes, and stagnant growth. Vietnam is still moving through a stage where industrialization, capital inflows, and rising productivity are lifting large portions of the population simultaneously. That is why global capital continues pouring into the country.

Germany was once considered the industrial engine of Europe. Today, ordinary Germans are increasingly feeling their economic model breaking down in real time as living costs rise, industry weakens, and confidence in the future deteriorates rapidly. The political establishment still talks about “green transitions” and economic resilience, but households across Germany are experiencing something entirely different underneath the surface.

Recent polling from INSA found that nearly 70% of Germans believe the country is heading in the wrong economic direction, while consumer confidence remains near recessionary territory despite years of government stimulus and intervention. Another survey found that over 40% of Germans now say they cannot maintain their previous standard of living because of rising costs tied to food, housing, electricity, transportation, and heating. The middle class is being steadily eroded.

This is precisely what I warned would happen once Europe embraced energy self-destruction under the climate agenda. Germany built its industrial dominance around cheap and reliable energy combined with export manufacturing. Once Berlin shut nuclear plants, restricted domestic energy production, and sanctioned Russian energy flows simultaneously, the entire economic structure became vulnerable. Energy-intensive industries like chemicals, steel, manufacturing, and automotive production immediately faced soaring costs that competitors in Asia and the United States simply do not carry to the same degree.

German manufacturing activity has contracted repeatedly over the past two years while industrial production remains well below pre-crisis levels. Major firms including BASF have openly reduced European operations because operating costs inside Germany no longer make economic sense long term. Volkswagen, Siemens, and countless mid-sized industrial firms are all confronting weakening competitiveness as energy prices remain structurally elevated.

Meanwhile ordinary Germans are absorbing the impact through declining purchasing power. Food prices surged dramatically following the Ukraine war and broader inflation crisis. Housing costs continue rising in major cities. Electricity prices became some of the highest in the industrialized world. Insurance costs, transportation expenses, and debt servicing all moved sharply higher after interest rates normalized from the artificial zero-rate era.

The political class still pretends these are temporary disruptions. They are not temporary. Germany is facing structural decline because policymakers dismantled the foundations supporting industrial prosperity itself. You cannot run a major export economy while intentionally making energy scarce and expensive. The mathematics simply do not work.

This is why the ECM projected Europe entering a depressionary phase into 2028. The sovereign debt crisis was never truly solved after the euro crisis years. Europe merely delayed the reckoning through ECB intervention, money printing, and artificial liquidity. Now the continent faces a second wave of pressure simultaneously involving war spending, migration costs, demographic decline, energy instability, and collapsing competitiveness.

Germany sits at the center of that crisis.

The irony is extraordinary because Germans were repeatedly told their sacrifices would create a stronger, greener, and more stable Europe. Instead, many now feel poorer despite working harder. The younger generation increasingly doubts they will achieve the same living standards as previous generations. Industrial workers fear layoffs while farmers protest rising costs and regulations. Consumers cut spending because household budgets are being consumed by necessities.

The media still points to headline employment numbers while ignoring the deeper deterioration underneath. People feel economic decline long before official statistics fully reflect it. Germans understand instinctively that the country is moving in the wrong direction because they see the pressure every single month through bills, taxes, shrinking savings, and weakening financial security. Germans are feeling the collapse of the European model in real-time.

The April employment report came in stronger than expected, at least on the surface. The US economy added 115,000 jobs while the unemployment rate held steady at 4.3%. Economists had been expecting closer to 55,000–67,000 jobs depending on the survey. Washington immediately celebrated the report as proof that the economy remains “resilient,” but the details tell a very different story.

The jobs that continue to grow are concentrated in healthcare, transportation, warehousing, retail, and social assistance. Healthcare added 37,000 jobs while transportation and warehousing rose by 30,000. Retail added another 22,000 positions. Meanwhile, federal government employment declined by another 9,000 jobs and the information sector lost 13,000 positions. Technology and information employment are now down 342,000 jobs from their peak in late 2022.

This is not the type of employment growth that creates a powerful long-term economic expansion. We are increasingly shifting toward a service and support economy while high-paying productive sectors weaken. Manufacturing showed virtually no growth while professional services remain sluggish. The information sector, which includes many technology and media-related positions, continues bleeding jobs as AI and automation begin replacing large sections of white-collar labor.

The government also quietly admitted that the number of people working part-time because they cannot find full-time work jumped by 445,000 in a single month to 4.9 million Americans. That is one of the most important numbers in the entire report because it reveals the true weakness underneath the headline payroll figure. People are increasingly piecing together income however they can.

The labor force participation rate remains stuck at just 61.8%, which means a massive percentage of working-age Americans are simply no longer participating in the labor market at all. During the late 1990s, participation rates were above 67%. That difference represents millions of people who have disappeared from productive economic activity.

Average hourly earnings rose 3.6% year-over-year to $37.41, but real inflation in food, insurance, housing, healthcare, and energy continues consuming those wage gains. Americans know perfectly well that their actual cost of living is rising much faster than the government statistics admit. Insurance premiums alone have exploded nationwide while energy costs continue climbing due to geopolitical tensions in the Middle East.

What is becoming increasingly apparent is that the labor market is splitting into two Americas. One side consists of government-supported sectors, healthcare, logistics, and lower-paying service work. The other side, which once drove productivity growth, manufacturing, technology, engineering, and high-skilled private employment, is slowing dramatically.

This is precisely what emerges during the later stages of a sovereign debt cycle. Governments expand endlessly while productive sectors stagnate under taxation, regulation, and rising costs. Eventually, the economy survives on redistribution instead of production.

The revisions in the report were also revealing. February payrolls were revised lower from -133,000 to -156,000 jobs while March was revised slightly higher to 185,000. The three-month average remains weak compared to previous expansion cycles.

The Federal Reserve now finds itself trapped once again. Stronger-than-expected payroll numbers and rising wages reduce the likelihood of immediate rate cuts. Yet the economy itself remains fragile underneath the surface. Rising oil prices tied to the Iran conflict are beginning to spread through transportation, manufacturing, shipping, and consumer prices. Every geopolitical shock now feeds directly into inflation because modern economies are dependent on complex global supply chains.

What we are really witnessing is a transition period. The old economic model built on endless globalization, cheap energy, and cheap labor is breaking apart. AI is beginning to replace entire categories of employment while governments simultaneously attempt to maintain growth through debt expansion and public spending. That creates the illusion of stability for a time, but eventually productivity becomes too weak to support the debt structure itself.

The average American already feels the difference. Multiple jobs are becoming common again. Younger generations cannot afford homes. Families are carrying record debt balances while relying increasingly on part-time or gig-based work. The headlines may celebrate 115,000 jobs, but people experience the economy through purchasing power, not government press releases.

COMMENT: Mr. Armstrong, we never met. I was introduced to Socrates at the insistence of a friend at another one of our divisions. There was no 80% Crash on April 29. The whole de-dollarization seems to be another hype, as we have witnessed ourselves. Your system allows you to plot anything in any currency. I just have to comment that you are obviously a highly experienced trader, for it takes someone who has thrown their hat in the ring to actually come up with something useful rather than theory. Plotting the S&P across various currencies confirms the bull market, as you have consistently said. A bull market requires advancement in all currencies.

I understand you will be doing a Next Generation conference to teach the next generation how the world really works. I know our company has used you for many years. I am a recent addition. I just wanted to say that you have opened my eyes and transformed my career into something exciting.

God bless you, Mr. Armstrong, and thank you.

Robert

REPLY: Thank you very much. I know what you mean. When things are always evolving, it keeps you on your toes. Lillian Smith put it this way:

“When you stop learning, stop listening, stop looking and asking questions, always new questions, then it is time to die.”

My father took the family to Europe for the summer back in 1964. That taught me currency, for we traveled all over Europe, and back then, you had to change currencies at every border. That trip taught me more than anything in school, for not only did they never talk about currency because everything was at a fixed rate, but economics was not even a science. It was all really Marxism and Keynes projecting that government was wonderful, our savior, who would eliminate recessions and depressions, creating the path to economic utopia.

It was currency that dragged me around the world and had companies and governments knocking on my door. It has been my clients who have taught me, not academia. I learned early on that a bull market is something that rises in all currencies – not just your local currency.  If your currency declines by 50%, your private assets will rise in proportion because everything has an international value.

Not only does classical economics completely fail to keep up with the times, still entrenched in theories from the fixed exchange rate period, where they NEVER considered currency, but everything is based entirely on domestic analysis, void of international capital flows. Here is a chart of the famous 1989 Crash in Japan. Everyone will act out of their own self-interest, and that is measured through the eyes of their domestic currency. Note that the high took place in yen and dollars simultaneously.

I quickly realized that what I was being taught in school was all lies and propaganda. I had to read Galbraith in school and came across Hoover’s Memoirs. It quickly surfaced that Galbraith was just a socialist who portrayed corporations as evil and the government as walking on water. He omitted everything about the Sovereign defaults of Europe, South America, and Asia. The LEFT rewrote history to support Marx. Nothing has changed. Formal education is a detriment. The Shah of Iran paid for the education of Iranians, sent them to the best universities in the US and UK, and they returned with a Marxist agenda mixed with Islam and staged the Revolution in 1979. It was that same LEFTIST hatred I saw in school that has led to the death of hundreds of millions and counting.

A real bull market is something rising in a broad basket of currencies. Then and only then do you see how markets truly respond. This 80% crash is nonsense. To achieve that, which is a repeat of 1929, so many things would have to be different. The US had a balanced budget in 1929. There was a cash shortage because the Fed feared inflation. Over 200 cities issued their own money due to the cash shortage, Milton Friedman pointed out.

The market went down because the dollar rose to record highs and other countries defaulted on their debt. The Fed was terrified that the dollar would be next on the list of currencies to default, and it tried to keep the supply tight, causing deflation.

I had a discussion about the business cycle with Paul Volcker back in 1999. He, too, saw Keynesian Economics fail during the 1970s. He also agreed with my Economic Confidence Model and said he believed that the business cycle was about 8 years.

It was Milton Friedman who came to listen to me speak, I believe it was a COMPUTRAC conference in Chicago. I was speaking about currency and capital flows, and when I was done, Milton came up, shook my hand, said that was the best speech he had ever heard, and that I was doing what he had just dreamed about. To say I was shocked is putting that mildly. I saw myself as just a trader.

What Milton meant was that I was doing what he had just dreamed about, as he had seen in his mind a floating exchange in 1953, almost 20 years before it materialized. In 1953, Milton Friedman published a seminal essay titled “The Case for Flexible Exchange Rates,” where he strongly advocated for a system of floating exchange rates. At the time, the global monetary system was dominated by the Bretton Woods framework of fixed exchange rates. Milton argued that such a “pegged but adjustable” system was inherently unstable. He proposed flexible exchange rates as a superior solution, mainly because they could automatically adjust to economic shocks, helping to maintain both internal (e.g., full employment) and external (e.g., balance of trade) balances for a country.

Milton’s case for flexible rates was so influential that it presaged nearly all the major arguments that later scholars would make in favor of floating exchange rates. It was Milton who encouraged me and said what I was doing was important not just for trading, but for economics and the political world.

I am trying to finish these four books as my final gift. That with the next couple of movies (1), documentary (1), Hollywood film, I can say mission accomplished. I have always believed we are sent here for a purpose, and if we do not stare that destiny square in the eyes, then what is the purpose of being here?