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.

COMMENT #1: Marty, I tried to get my brother to read your blog and he said it was depressing. I tried to explain that you always say that there is a light at the end of this tunnel and it will be our opportunity to redesign the system for the better. We cannot accomplish that goal if we do not understand what needs to be fixed. I can see the problem. He will be swept up in the rhetoric of the left and this is how society is dividing. At the core, they do not want to admit that their ideas are wrong and to achieve their perfect Marxist Utopia, we must surrender all personal freedom. I understand you have tried to warn the world in hoping to reduce the amplitude of the event. The self interests of the left and the neocons attack you because you have the track record to support your warnings while others have only opinions.

History will remember you. Not the muckrakers with only opinion. As always, they attack the messenger rather than confront the news.

Paul

COMMENT #2: The biggest criticism I have heard about you is not that cyclical analysis works, but you are the largest advisor that ever was and as such you have too much influence. Would you address that criticism?

Remi

QUESTION #1: I always have hope Marty, if we have no hope, we lose everything. I think people are more aware of what’s happening and who is pulling the strings and forcing us into these wars.  The question is, how do we remove the neocons, how do we stop the madness, does it require an uprising, for those in power will not stop until they succeed. We need people to pull in the same direction, and also to ensure that our freedom of speech is not eroded.  You can already see they are trying to shut down these channels.  How can we, the great unwashed fight back if we dont fight together in an organised and legal manner ?

REPLY: You’ve pinpointed a core tension in economic thought. There has been this animosity that dominates economics stemming from different sources and targets different aspects of “cyclical analysis” and the hatred of those of us who have dared to even use cyclical analysis. The fear is not simply that “humans cannot alter the business cycle,” but rather a deeper philosophical and methodological rejection of the inevitability and predictability implied by some cyclical theories, especially when they challenge the efficacy of policy or the fundamental stability of the current economic system. Without socialism, government cannot promise the moon and when the cycles conflict with their agenda, it is always time to kill the messenger.

I have dealt with heads of state when there was a time when intelligent people held such offices. Both Margaret Thatcher kept Britain out of the Euro for she instinctively understood it was the backdoor way to federalize Europe. It was her own cabinet that staged a coup to try to surrender British sovereignty for a dream that was absurd.

Even my dealings with Mikhail Gorbachev were also impressive insofar as he too understood cycles instinctively. He grasped that the USSR was collapsing and it was precisely on time. He choose to go with the cycle rather then try to fight it.

As far as having too uch influence, that is the typical view from people who utterly fail to understand that cycles exist, and their inability to see the world or to dynamically think rather than the typical linear thinking process. They try to reduce everything to a single cause and effect like global warming is entirely due to CO2. They cannot connect the dots. Here is Larry Summers who thinks that if you simply forecast, you then influence the outcome. Sorry, it does not work that way. Yes, we are probably the biggest ever. But we have clients with even trillion dollar portfolios. That does NOT mean they simply do as I say. They take the forecasts and run it through their own due diligence.

Karl Marx saw the Cycle as a Symptom of Doom. Marx didn’t just describe a business cycle; he described a crisis cycle inherent to capitalism. For Marx, these cyclical crises were not accidental flaws but necessary features of a system built on internal contradictions (e.g., the tendency of the rate of profit to fall). They would grow progressively worse until the system collapsed. Stalin has Kondratieff executed because he saw that the decline in the business cycle was how it rejuvenated the system and it would not die but be reborn each time. Joseph Schumpeter described this as waves of creative destruction. The invention of the automobile put the horse and buggy people out of business. The Internet put a lot of local businesses out of the economy as they could not compete just as AI is starting to also change aspects within the economy.

Mainstream (neoclassical) economics has always been profoundly hostile to this view of cyclical analysis. Why? This threatens the System Legitimacy that government has the power to manage the economy. If crises are inevitable, then the entire system is delegitimized. How can a politician run for office promising change if the business cycle cannot be altered? This is an existential threat, not just a technical disagreement.

Marx’s cycle theory suggests that policy tweaks (like those later proposed by Keynes) are merely band-aids on a mortal wound. The animosity, therefore, comes from a political and ideological fear that accepting a Marxist cyclical analysis means accepting the inevitability of revolution and the futility of reform. The fear is that if people believe the cycle is an inescapable death spiral, they will seek to overthrow the system. This appears to be a desperate assessment and they love to blame the disparity of wealth as the culprit. However, the disparity of wealth is by no means confined to the individual.

A nation can be the richest in natural resources like Russia, but this suppression of individual freedom ensured the economic stagnation of communism for innovation always comes from the individual – not government. That was well illustrated in the famous Kitchen debate of 1959 between Khrushchev and VP Richard Nixon where he demonstrated all of the innovations from the private sector.

John Maynard Keynes: The Cycle as a Failure of Aggregate Demand
Keynes shifted the focus. For him, the business cycle was driven by fluctuations in aggregate demand, primarily investment, influenced by volatile “animal spirits.” The cycle was a persistent malfunction of a market economy, not its inevitable death knell.

Keynes’s Goal was ALTERATION of the cycle and his whole project was to demonstrate that humans could and should alter the business cycle through government intervention (fiscal and monetary policy) to smooth out booms and busts.

The Source of Animosity (toward Keynes): This came later, from two powerful schools:

Monetarists (Milton Friedman):

Friedman argued that the cycle could be managed through steady, rules-based monetary policy, but that Keynesian fine-tuning was dangerous and destabilizing. Their animosity was toward the activist, discretionary aspect of Keynesian alteration, not the idea of some control.

New Classical Rejection of Cyclical Analysis:

The classical academics launched a methodological and ideological attack on the very foundation of cyclical analysis as a policy guide. They argued that what look like cycles are actually optimal responses to exogenous shocks (like technology changes). The economy is always in equilibrium. There is no inherent “cycle” to alter—only efficient adjustments to surprises.

However, the the conflict emerges from the realization that government attempts to “alter the cycle” are not just futile but actively harmful, creating distortions and inflation. The fear is of hubristic policy making based on a flawed model. They argued that if people are rational, they will anticipate government policy, rendering systematic Keynesian stabilization policies ineffective. We see this in market activity when the interest rate is changes and the market moves opposite of expectations and the response is that it was already factored into the market price.

The Modern Dominance goes out of its way to insist that this is all random “Fluctuations,” not regular “Cycles.” The classical academics have gone as far as to discard the term “business cycle” attempting to drive this out of favor in mainstream macroeconomics, replacing it with “economic fluctuations” or “boom and bust” cycles.

Why? “Cycle” implies a predictable, endogenous, wave-like pattern with regularity (like the Kondratieff wave or Juglar cycle). This suggests inevitability and, perhaps, a theory like Marx’s. The Preferred Model is emerging as the dominant framework (Dynamic Stochastic General Equilibrium – DSGE) models the economy as being hit by random shocks. The resulting “fluctuations” are not predestined cycles but the complex outcome of these shocks propagating through the system. They cannot grasp the complexity that the business cycle cannot be reduced to a single isolated cause and effect.

The implication is serious. If there is no predictable cycle, the goal is not to “alter a cycle” but to improve the economy’s resilience to shocks (through flexible markets, credible central banks, and sound institutions) and to use monetary policy to stabilize prices and, to a lesser extent, output. Yet this has proven to be futile. Even Paul Volcker, the renown former Chairman of the Federal Reserve in his Rediscovery of the Business Cycle published in 1978, admitted that Keynesian Economics failed in 1974/1975.

Arthur Burns, who was the Fed Chairman in 1971 when the gold standard collapsed under Bretton Woods, also concluded that the business cycle always wins. The academic economists refuse to even investigate the business cycle because if there is a cycle of regularity, then their theories are worthless.

The Austrian School Exception
It’s worth noting the Austrian School (Hayek, Mises), which embraces a cyclical theory (the boom-bust cycle caused by central bank-induced credit expansion) but is also profoundly hostile to Keynesian alteration. Their argument is that intervention prolongs and deepens the necessary correction. Their animosity is toward the alterer, not the analysis.

COMPLEXITY
The animosity toward cyclical analysis is multifaceted where with linear analysis, the goal is always to reduce the blame to a single cause and effect. The main rejection is that they perceive cyclical analysis predicts systemic collapse and they at least respect is tied to revolution, which is why they are waging economic war against Russia currently attempting to cause its collapse and/or revolution.

Against the idea of a predictable cycle that can be fine-tuned by discretionary policy, we must comprehend that humans cannot successfully alter the business cycle without making things worse,  simply because they lack the understanding of the complexity behind it. The academic economists would be discredited as their preference for rules-based policy or a belief that most fluctuations are efficient responses. This is like looking at a woman in child birth and ignoring that a child is being born trying to deal with the contractions without knowing their cause.

Linguistic Retreat: The mainstream has abandoned the term “cycle” itself to distance itself from theories of endogenous inevitability and to focus on models of stochastic shocks.

In essence, the animosity toward certain types of cyclical analysis reflects a deeper battle between visions of the economy: Is it a system plagued by inherent, predictable crises? Or is it a fundamentally stable system perturbed by unpredictable shocks? The fear of human inability to alter the cycle is a powerful argument they prefer to dismiss.

All I can say is the foundation of EVERYTHING is a cycle. Here is how sound travels known as the Doppler effect. Stand on the corner and close your eyes. If the sound of a bus grows louder, it is coming toward you. If the sound is fading, the bus is moving away.

Sunlight also travels in cyclical waves. Change the frequency and you get a different effect. There is a cycle to absolutely everything around us. Our computer Arrays are composed of a correlation of 72 individual models. Then there is a global correlation to the frequencies of all other markets. So there is not a single cycle that you can reverse-engineer from an array. It just does not work that way. We simply do cycles differently than most people in the cyclical analysis arena.

Here is the array published in 1999 that nearly 10 years in advance forecast a Panic Cycle in 2008, which became the Great Recession. This is NOT my opinion. This is allowing the computer to analyze TIME. The track record of these forecasts are far beyond what anyone can do from a gut feeling, “I think,” or opinion basis.

I stood up at our 2011 World Economic Conference in Philadelphia and warned that the War Cycle would turn up in 2014. In 2013, I warned that the computer was targeting Ukraine for the 2014 turn in geopolitics. This were not correct forecasts simply because they were my opinion.

A key Soviet offensive in the Kharkiv region in May 1942 ended in a catastrophic defeat for the Red Army, with over 200,000 Soviet soldiers captured. 1942 was the peak year of the “Final Solution” in Ukraine. The Nazi regime, aided by local collaborators and auxiliary police, systematically murdered the vast majority of Ukraine’s Jewish population. By the end of 1942, it is estimated that over 1 million Jews had been murdered on Ukrainian territory.

The Three Major “Revolutionary” Events (Post-Soviet Era) in Ukraine were the Revolution on Granite (October 2–17, 1990), when the government conceded to almost all demands. It was a crucial, non-violent precursor to the declaration of independence in 1991. This was followed by the Orange Revolution (2004–2005) was a definitive expression of Ukraine’s desire for a democratic, European future, though its reforms were later undermined. Then there was the Maidan Revolution of 2014, the Ukrainians renamed to the Revolution of Dignity, (November 2013 – February 2014). This was instigated by the American Neocons led by John McCain and Victoria Nuland insisting the overthrow of President Viktor Yanukovych’s sudden refusal to sign the EU–Ukraine Association Agreement.

In 2013, the year before the revolution, Russia was Ukraine’s #1 trading partner in terms of total trade volume. Bilateral trade between Ukraine and Russia in 2013 was estimated to be around $40-45 billion. John McCain introduced the climate change agenda which was part of his economic war against Russia. It had nothing to do with climate. It was a push to use nuclear power in Europe to cut off the purchases of energy from Russia in hopes of causing an economic collapse.

Robert McNamara (1916 – 2009) was a leading Neocon that pushed the country into the Vietnam war. Before he died, he finally admitted that they were wrong. They thought Russia was behind the Vietnam War. McNamara admitted Russia was not involved and it was just a civil war. I believe McCain’s hatred of Russia turned on the fact that he was broken and read scripts for the communists as Tokyo Rose. Because he broke, I believe that was the source of his hatred that led him to instigate war with Russia.

The Pentagon sought to protect McCain refusing to release papers on him.

Pentagon Refuses to Release John McCain Confession

The Second Edition of FIAT will be available in a few weeks. This is part of the problem when people blame FIAT for debt and everything as if there were no debt crises before paper currencies. We have to understand what is the actual problem if we ever hope to advance as a society. Highlighting the mistakes allows us to identify them and correct them. Individually, we learn from our personal mistakes (hopefully), but as a society, governments keep changing personel and thus there is no collective ability to learn from past mistakes and as such history repeats because human nature never changes.

Mikhail Gorbachev understood cycles perhaps instinctively like Margaret Thatcher. He was a key figure in the democratic and reform movements during the perestroika and glasnost period. Gorbachev, like Margret Thatcher, was interested in cycles. While not a theorist himself, Gorbachev was very interested in cycles and he understood that it was time for political change in Russia. He attempted in the 1980s to break the cyclical pattern of Soviet economic stagnation and political repression (“The Period of Stagnation”) through reforms (Perestroika and Glasnost).

The Russian Neocons staged their coup. Gorbachev made the fatal mistake of appointing Vladimir Kryuchkov as the head of the KGB. During the first half of 1991, Kryuchkov held two secret
meetings with Robert Maxwell knowing he was an Israeli agent. He revealed a plot to overthrow Gorbachev yet wanted to buy Israel’s support from the West to make it legitimate.

The Spymaster’s Defense: A Portrait of the Man Who Nearly Saved (or Destroyed) the USSR

Anatoly Zhitnukhin’s 440-page biographical study of Vladimir Kryuchkov arrives at a peculiar moment in Russian historical memory. Published in 2016 by Molodaya Gvardiya, the book presents itself as an objective examination of the longtime head of Soviet intelligence who became the chief architect of the failed August 1991 coup. Yet beneath its scholarly veneer lies something more revealing: a rehabilitation project for one of the most controversial figures of late Soviet history.

Zhitnukhin traces Kryuchkov’s trajectory from his participation in the defense and reconstruction of Stalingrad through his diplomatic posting in Hungary (where he witnessed the 1956 uprising firsthand), to his rise within the KGB’s First Chief Directorate, and ultimately to his tenure as KGB Chairman from 1988 to 1991. The title itself—”Time Will Tell“—carries the unmistakable suggestion that history has judged Kryuchkov too harshly, that a reassessment is overdue.

The biography devotes considerable attention to Kryuchkov’s role in the Hungarian events of 1956 and the Afghan War—experiences that shaped his worldview and convinced him that Soviet power required vigilance and, when necessary, force to maintain. These formative episodes illuminate why Kryuchkov would later see Gorbachev’s reforms not as necessary evolution but as existential threat.

However, this book’s most significant contribution—and its most problematic aspect—is its treatment of the State Committee for the State of Emergency (GKChP) and the August 1991 coup attempt. Zhitnukhin portrays Kryuchkov and his co-conspirators as patriots desperately trying to prevent the collapse of a great power, not as would-be authoritarians attempting to roll back democracy.

Kryuchkov was the initiator of the GKChP and led the coup attempt that placed Gorbachev under house arrest. The coup involved tanks in Moscow streets, the imprisonment of the Soviet president, and a declaration that Gorbachev had resigned due to “ill health”—a transparent lie. Kryuchkov even dispatched the KGB’s Alpha commando unit to surround Yeltsin’s residence, though he ultimately held back from giving the order to detain him.

Zhitnukhin soft-pedals this indecision, which many historians view as fatal to the coup’s success. Was Kryuchkov’s hesitation a moral boundary he wouldn’t cross, or simply the paralysis of a plotter who hadn’t fully thought through the implications of ordering special forces to arrest a democratically elected president?

The book participates in a broader Russian discourse about the Soviet collapse. After his 1994 amnesty, Kryuchkov returned to public life with writings condemning Gorbachev’s rule, and a 2007 Levada Center poll revealed that only 12% of respondents would have actively opposed his coup. This statistic is chilling—and tells us more about Russian public opinion than about the legitimacy of the coup itself. This is the real danger of Marxism. People often do not want to have to deal with life in general and a free road to nowhere seems better than having to make decisions in life that impact your future.

Zhitnukhin presents Kryuchkov as a man caught between eras, unable to accept that the world had fundamentally changed. This is partially accurate. The coup failed in part because the plotters failed to grasp that democratization had made public opinion important and that the population would no longer meekly obey orders from above. But framing this as tragic misunderstanding rather than attempted authoritarianism is a choice that reveals the book’s sympathies.

This is the major dilemma that we will also face in the West. The LEFT constantly paint themselves as the victim and therein remains the ultimate challenge to redesign the system. This is what Margaret Thatcher understood. You cannot oppress one portion of society for the benefit of another and pretend you are a free democratic state.

Zhitnukhin largely elides the most damning assessment of Kryuchkov’s legacy. Former U.S. Ambassador Jack Matlock Jr. argued that Kryuchkov was inadvertently responsible for destroying the very Soviet Union he sought to save. By staging the coup, he destroyed the Communist Party’s remaining authority and accelerated dissolution. As Matlock wrote, the Soviet Union might exist in some modified form today if someone else had been running the KGB in 1990-1991. Kryuchkov’s grab for power to retain Communism exposed the inability of Marxism to correct anything whatsoever for the economy proving that government is incapable of managing a bubblegum machine no less the nation. Stalin’s confiscation of food from Ukraine to pretend that the seizure of farmland by the state was like putting the people in the Division of Motor Vehicles in change of planting food.

The book also glosses over the moral dimension of Kryuchkov’s career. This was a man who headed Soviet foreign intelligence during the Cold War’s final decade, overseeing operations that funded communist movements worldwide, who encouraged the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan (where he served as KGB rezident in Kabul during the government overthrow), and who misinterpreted NATO’s Able Archer 83 exercise as preparation for nuclear first strike—nearly triggering catastrophic miscalculation.

Despite these critical shortcomings, Zhitnukhin’s work has value precisely because of its sympathetic lens. To understand why intelligent, experienced officials believed they needed to launch a coup, we must understand their worldview. Kryuchkov genuinely believed the Soviet Union was worth saving and that Gorbachev’s reforms were leading to national disintegration—a view that subsequent events partially vindicated, even if his chosen remedy was worse than the disease.

The Importance of Time Will Tell

The 440-page length allows Zhitnukhin to explore the full arc of Kryuchkov’s life, from Stalingrad to the bathhouse meeting in mid-August 1991 where he convinced other top officials to join the plot. These details humanize a figure often reduced to caricature as a hardline villain. The importance of this work is a glimpse into human nature. The Neocons in the West, especially NATO, act in the very same manner to retain power.

This work was published in 2016—five years into Putin’s third presidential term and two years after the annexation of Crimea. The book’s rehabilitation of Kryuchkov was in line with described the Soviet collapse as the “greatest political catastrophe of the 20th century” – the empire of the Czars, not the Soviet Union. Zhitnukhin’s sympathetic portrait of a man who tried to prevent that collapse aligns with official Russian narratives about the 1990s as a period of chaos and humiliation that strong leadership needed to overcome. Clearly, the book’s subtext: that Kryuchkov’s diagnosis was correct even if his prescription failed.

In Vremya rassudit, Zhitnukhin marshals evidence to portray Kryuchkov as a patriot who made a desperate gamble to save his country, not as an authoritarian who attempted to reverse democratization at gunpoint. The book’s wealth of detail about Kryuchkov’s career makes it a valuable resource, but readers must approach its central argument with skepticism.

The real tragedy may be that Kryuchkov was neither the monster his harshest critics describe nor the misunderstood patriot Zhitnukhin portrays. He was a capable intelligence professional who rose to leadership during a revolutionary transformation he neither understood nor accepted. This is far too often the case where people become indoctrinated by dogma. His attempt to turn back the clock didn’t just fail—it guaranteed the very outcome he feared most. This is an important point for the Neocons of the West in pushing for their endless wars to conquer the Russia of Stalin, which no longer exists. This egotistic quest of hatred from the past will ultimately lead to their destruction just as Kryuchkov ensured the collapse of Communism would become permanent.

Time has indeed told us much about Vladimir Kryuchkov. Whether it has judged him fairly, as Zhitnukhin’s title suggests, depends entirely on whether you believe attempting to overthrow a government through military force can ever be justified by claims of patriotic necessity. This book makes that case as effectively as anyone could. Whether you find it persuasive says as much about your own politics as about Kryuchkov’s legacy.

Mikhail Gorbachev’s public criticism was directed much more explicitly at Stalin than at Lenin. However, his reforms and historical reassessments during Perestroika and Glasnost ultimately undermined the Leninist system as well. Gorbachev was openly and sharply critical of Joseph Stalin, who he portrayed as the “criminal” that distorted socialism. His view of Lenin was initially he was used as the “inspiration” to fix socialism, but the process of reform unleashed forces that ultimately questioned Lenin’s entire project. Thus, Gorbachev’s public criticism focused on:

• The Great Terror and Repressions: He supported the rehabilitation of Stalin’s victims and allowed extensive media exposure of the crimes of the Stalin era.

• Economic and Political System: He blamed Stalin for creating the rigid, centralized command-administrative system (kommandno-administrativnaya sistema) that Gorbachev was trying to reform. He saw Stalinism as a deviation from socialism.

• Historical Reassessment: Under Gorbachev, there was an official condemnation of the Stalinist period, reversing the muted or positive treatment common since the Brezhnev era.

The contrast with China: The key difference was philosophical. While Chinese leaders cracked down violently at Tiananmen to preserve the Communist Party’s monopoly on power, Gorbachev ultimately chose reform and openness, even though it eventually led to the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991. The hardline Communists  saw  two  threats,  the fall

Yes, I had contact with Mikhail Gorbachev and I can say that it was his understanding of cycles that it was just time for the collapse of communism that allowed him to take the high road in allowing the collapse of the USSR. I was asked about the 72-year Revolutionary Cycle because I had warned in 1985 that Communism would fall in 1989. Mikhail Gorbachev visited Beijing in May 1989, and his visit coincided with the Tiananmen Square protests. He arrived on May 15, 1989, for a historic summit aimed at normalizing Sino-Soviet relations after decades of tension.

The timing was significant because the student protests in Tiananmen Square were already well underway. The protesters actually used Gorbachev’s visit to gain more international attention for their cause, and the Chinese government found the situation embarrassing since they couldn’t clear the square for the official welcome ceremonies. Some events had to be moved or adjusted because of the ongoing demonstrations.

Gorbachev left Beijing on May 18, 1989. The violent crackdown on the protesters occurred later, on June 3-4, 1989, after he had already departed. Gorbachev’s approach was indeed fundamentally different from China’s, but the key examples played out somewhat differently. Gorbachev essentially refused to use Soviet force to prop up communist regimes in Eastern Europe. This was a dramatic break from past Soviet policy. When the Berlin Wall fell in November 1989 (about 5 months after Tiananmen), he didn’t intervene. Throughout 1989, as communist governments collapsed across Eastern Europe—Poland, Hungary, East Germany, Czechoslovakia—Gorbachev rejected the “Brezhnev Doctrine” that had previously justified Soviet military intervention (like in Hungary in 1956 or Czechoslovakia in 1968). He let these countries chart their own course. The American and European Neocons REFUSE to acknowledge the political change in Russia. They grew up hating communists which they merely transferred to hatred of all Russians. I believe they were just pist off that Communism fell all by itself and they did not get to shoot anybody.

It was Gorbachev who lowered the USSR flag and raised the Russian flag over the Kremlin. The Communists staged a coup in 1991 fearing that he would accept joining NATO and I believe they may have understood that he saw the cyclical future of the USSR. That brought Yeltsin to power. To what extent one can attribute my influence on Gorbachev is debatable. Yes I had contact with Gorbachev regarding cycles. All I can confirm is that he understood cycles I believe instinctively like Thatcher, and that cyclically, it was just time. It was also Gorbachev who acknowledge the tragedy of Kondratieff formally. I was invited to a ceremony in Moscow for Kondratieff, but I could not make it at the time. I sent a representative in my place.

It is our  Neocons who refused to understand cycles and that Gorbachev terminated the USSR and Communism for he understood the cycles were turning. Consequently, the Neocons continually refuse to accept that Russia is no longer trying to spread communism to the world as Khrushchev said – We will bury you. They refuse to let their hatred go. It is the Neocons who hate the Russian people for even if Putin stepped down, they would never change their view of Russia all because of Stalin. Yet they do not hate the German people because of Hitler. Interesting paradox.

Even during the 2007-2009 Great Recession, the bankers/Neocons had me thrown in the hole to try to cut off my communications with the House Financial Service Committee. I have been called in to just about every financial and geopolitical crisis since the mid 1970s. My critics are always from those sources. They cannot beat Socrates, so indeed, you kill the messenger.

The answer is to understand the complexity of cycles and stop trying to (1) manipulate society, and (2) live with the cycle that would allow managing the amplitude. Like Joseph and the Pharaoh. If you understood there would be 7 years of plenty followed by 7 years of famine, you stockpile to reduce the famine when the cycle turns.

PM Carney pre-election (2025):
"Our biggest security threat is China"

PM Carney post-election (2026):
"Our partnership with China sets us up well for the New World Order" pic.twitter.com/ZLZfAH9hR3

— End Wokeness (@EndWokeness) January 16, 2026

“The world is still determining what that world is supposed to be…”

What is really stunning in this conversation is how the WOKE LEFT are willing to go in order to pretend that they are never wrong. This doctor refuses to simply admit that “biological men cannot get pregnant.” The conversation had nothing to do with transgender. This is indeed a simple yes/no question can “BIOLOGICAL MEN” get pregnant. Then they have the audacity to pretend that this is polarizing. It was not a question about transgender woman can get pregnant. This is a straight up biological man meaning there is no medical alteration. Indeed, how can we take such people seriously?

Thailand is the sex capital of the world. In Phuket, the most famous and established transgender cabaret shows are the Simon Cabaret. They are a major tourist attraction and have been running for decades. The Transgenders call themselves “lady boys” and do not get all crazy as the Woke Promotors here in the North America or Europe that insist that they are biological women and calling your mother a “mother” offends them.

The conversation about “woke” terminology is not about replacing the word “mother” for everyone. It’s about creating inclusive language for situations where the traditional “mother/father” binary doesn’t fit a specific family or individual. This is where the WOKE agenda went off the rails. They insisted that the entire world must change for them. I even heard the phrase “birthing machine” is widely considered offensive and dehumanizing. It reduces a person’s role solely to a biological function, stripping away their humanity, relationship, and identity as a parent. This term is not advocated for by the WOKE zealots taking this idea of inclusive language to the extreme. We had one gay guy on our staff and even he was confused and said there were some 70 different labels.

I found it offensive because in essence you had to invade the privacy of a person and effectively ask how they like to have sex so you can apply the correct label in addressing them.

PRIVATE BLOG – Is Silver A Warning of a Geopolitical Crisis Ahead?

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Thread: Ukraine’s Troubling Conscription Tactics

1/ Ukraine’s war effort depends on forced conscription, but its methods are alarming. Over 1M men drafted since 2022, now targeting ages 25–60. The government’s coercive tactics are undermining trust and morale. ?? pic.twitter.com/DsgJcsj1ok

— Sarah Luna (@sarah_luna_1111) May 4, 2025

Zelensky is forcing a generation to perish in this endless war with Russia and NATO. Recent reports indicate that 200,000 soldiers have gone AWOL (absent without leave), and for perspective, that is more soldiers than the entire UK military. Ukraine’s new Defense Minister Mykhailo Fedorov warned that the government is hunting down two million Ukrainians who are wanted for evading mobilization.

“Today, we cannot fight with new technologies, with an old organizational structure,” Fedorov said in a televised warning. “Our goal is to change the system, carry out army reforms, improve the infrastructure on the front, to eradicate lies and corruption, to instill leadership, and a new culture of trust.”

The age of conscription was lowered from 27 to 25 back in April 2024. Zelensky has demanded that men from 25 up to 60 years of age join mobilization efforts. Ukraine has a population of 40 million, and 2 million evaders represent a significant portion of men, but only six months ago, reports indicated that 6 million men were wanted for evading the draft.

Everything comes with a price tag in Ukraine. The alleged cost for organized desertion begins in the $7,000 rage, and some reports have stated individuals were able to remove themselves from wanted registry lists for $3,500. Men have attempted to flee to neighboring Belarus, Romania, and Hungary. Romania reportedly detained over 10,000 attempted evaders in 2025 alone. There is little room for escape; everyone must comply with Zelensky’s death orders.

BRUTAL SCENES IN UKRAINE: Watch as a man fights back against forced draft—only to get beaten down by troops in broad daylight!

With massive front-line casualties, draft-dodging and illegal border runs have ballooned into a MULTI-BILLION $ underground empire

Is this freedom? pic.twitter.com/ZFX0dUWs1P

— JP Posts ? (@FelisRevolt) January 5, 2026

The punishment for going AWOL during wartime is five to 12 years imprisonment, but the Defense Ministry needs those men on the battlefield. Europe is eager to step in once Ukraine decimates a generation of men and permanently alters its demographic. The men in Europe have no say on the matter either. Governments can temporarily rely on the economic downturn to attract new recruits, but there simply are not enough men available to play in the neocon war games. Drafts will happen worldwide once World War III breaks out.

Conscripts receive two weeks of training before battle. The government has resorted to “busification” or kidnapping to force men to comply with the draft. Soldiers are expected to fight until they are killed to too badly injured to continue fighting. Reports state that there is little rotation from the frontlines as Zelensky has simply run out of men and plans to use the remaining troops as cannon fodder.

Sentiment is quite different when people believe in cause. The current war has dragged on for four years, no progress has been made on peace deals or treaties, and the scope has widened significantly due to the globalist neocons who have been patiently waiting to join the battle. The elites demand destruction from the safety of their glass castles while millions live in fear, hiding from the death and destruction that awaits them.

Keir Starmer temporarily pivoted on mandatory digital IDs, and although they will be rolled out in the UK by 2029, Starmer claims they will not be mandatory.

Millions signed a petition to dismantle the digital ID system scheme when it was first announced. “Digital ID is an enormous opportunity for the UK. It will make it tougher to work illegally in this country, making our borders more secure,” Starmer declared in late 2025, citing illegal migration as the primary reason to implement the system. “And it will also offer ordinary citizens countless benefits, like being able to prove your identity to access key services swiftly – rather than hunting around for an old utility bill.”

The plan would have required employers to cross-verify their employees’ digital IDs against the government’s centralized database to ensure they had the right to work in the UK. The Office for Budget Responsibility predicts cots will add £1.8 billion to government debt over the next three years. The government disagrees with that figure but has yet to provide a budget for the program.

“Stepping back from mandatory use cases will deflate one of the main points of contention. We do not want to risk there being cases of some 65-year-old in a rural area being barred from ­working because he hasn’t downloaded this app,” a government source told The Times. “That does not impact normal people,” a secondary source said. “It always should have been about the convenience.”

Convenience and safety—the promises provided in exchange for freedom. Heidi Alexander, the transport secretary, confidently declared that this NOT “some sort of massive U-turn,” as the plan is still in motion. “We said that we would have digital checks on people for right to work. That’s what we are continuing to do.”

Governments claimed that the COVID vaccination was not technically mandatory, but citizens could not freely access society without proof of vaccination. The pattern is the same—you technically do not need to create a digital ID, but basic tasks will become increasingly difficult to the point where you either cave or find energy-intensive workarounds.

Starmer is simply retaining voters until the program comes to fruition. If this were about convenience, the government would not be considering assigning every newborn a digital ID at birth. Every first-world nation has turned into a surveillance state. Governments turn increasingly authoritarian when they face economic collapse. It is a historic first to see governments insert their control through technology–the ultimate tool for control.

Nothing causes capital to flee offshore faster than an incoming war. US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent warned that Iranian officials are rapidly moving capital out of Iran ahead of US intervention.

“As Treasury who carries out the sanctions we can see is we are now seeing the rats fleeing the ship because we can see millions, tens of millions of dollars being wired out of the country, snuck out of the country by the Iranian leadership,” Bessent said in an interview with Newsmax. “So they are abandoning ship, and we are seeing it come into banks and financial institutions all over the world,” the Treasury Secretary added.

Bessent said that the US is closely following the money trail. Over $1.5 billion was transferred to Dubai within 48 hours, with the majority of transfers happening through cryptocurrency. Potential successor Mojtaba Khamenei and the current Supreme Leader’s own son are believed to be involved in these money transfers.

It becomes harder to freeze and sanction funds once offshore, but governments will find a way. The UAE has applied UN Security Council resolutions against Iran, allowing it to freeze bank accounts of targeted individuals and groups. Mutual Legal Assistance Treaties (MLATs) require governments to share banking information and permit one another to freeze or transfer assets by leveraging tax treaties (TIEAs).

Cryptocurrency is not off the grid. Using crypto may make the task a bit more difficult for intelligence agencies, but there is a reason that the US immediately knew where the funds were sent. The US tracked the money from Iran to Dubai and will continue to trace the blockchain until they can safely confiscate the funds. Tools like Chainalysis Reactor, TRM Labs, and Elliptic allow track crypto transactions across various blockchains and provide information on transaction dates, price amounts, and wallet addresses. That information is then integrated into systems that cross-check the accounts with sanctions lists to map illegal capital flows.

Back in September 2025, two Iranians were sanctioned by the US for transferring $100 million in crypto through oil sales. Separately, the Revolutionary Guard was caught moving $1 billion through a UK-based crypto exchange. US Treasury Official Miad Maleki commented that “the $1 billion figure over two years demonstrates that digital currencies are becoming a financial channel for Iran’s shadow banking apparatus.”

The largest crypto freeze in history also involved Iranian funds. In July 2025, 42 addresses with exposure to Iranian exchanges were traced and frozen with the help of virtual asset service providers (VASPs).

Governments tolerate cryptocurrencies because they still retain control over them. Neither crypto nor Iranian officials will be able to flee US intelligence authorities. Iranian state TV broadcast an image of Trump’s assassination attempt at his campaign rally in July 2024. “This time it will not miss the target,” the media outlet ominously warned. Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei has lost control. The entire nation turned its back on the regime. It reached the full extent of authoritarianism and then murdered over 12,000 citizens in cold blood; there is absolutely nothing that Khamenei can do to restore the confidence of his people or allies. A US strike is imminent.

@reasonmagazine

On his first day in office, Mamdani appointed Cea Weaver, a tenant activist and one of his campaign advisers, to lead the city’s Office to Protect Tenants. Reason spoke with Weaver in 2021 for our story on the victims of the eviction moratorium. She told us about her vision of “a world in which the housing is owned by a collective” and said “the federal government prints money” so they “can provide money for this.” #NewYork #NYC #housing #socialism #home

♬ original sound – Reason Magazine

Socialist NYC Mayor Zohan Mamdani appointed Cea Weaver to lead the city’s Office to Protect Tenants. Weaver believes that homeownership is inherently racist and must be reformed into “a world in which the housing is owned by a collective.” According to Weaver, the US can simply continually print money to support government spending.

The claim that a government can simply print money to support endless spending is one of the most dangerous myths ever sold to the public. When politicians have exhausted every honest means of funding government, they are left with nothing but deception. This line of thinking is precisely why the government shut down at the end of 2025. Politicians believe they can increase spending indefinitely with no regard for the ticking time bomb that is government debt.

Printing money is another form of taxation, albeit a far more destructive form because it is hidden. Inflation will rise when the money supply expands beyond productive output. Governments print to fund their spending and dilute the currency. Politicians have lost all discipline because government continually votes to raise budgets and prolong the problem. The debt crisis has been rapidly snowballing in magnitude; those in power have zero intention of paying it off, but the time will come when the bill is due.

The irony is that those advocating unlimited money creation claim it helps the poor. In reality, it does the opposite. Inflation destroys savings, raises prices beyond reach, and transfers wealth to the elites controlling the money. It widens inequality while pretending to fight it. Hence why Venezuela went from one of the world’s top economies to poverty-ridden nation in a short period of time. These people are extremely dangerous. Voters propel them into power on the basis of lies, and then they have the ability to begin altering policies. Mamdani may be limited to his city but no economy can be viewed in isolation and voters refuse to see the mirage of easy solutions to complex problems.