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.

Trump has ordered the Pentagon to reduce America’s joint military exercises with South Korea, but this is not simply about saving money or suddenly deciding that North Korea poses no threat.

Trump said that North Korea has been “unthreatening and respectful” toward the United States and argued that the exercises with South Korea are unnecessary and provocative given his relationship with Kim Jong Un. He instructed the Pentagon to “substantially reduce” the Ulchi Freedom Shield exercises, which began August 17 and were scheduled to involve approximately 18,000 South Korean troops. Trump has opposed these exercises before and suspended major drills after his 2018 summit with Kim, so his objection to them is certainly not new. What is different this time is that he publicly connected his anger toward South Korea to Iran.

Seoul has one of the most heavily militarized borders on Earth sitting directly in front of it, yet Washington apparently expects South Korea to become involved in another Middle Eastern war simply because America decided to become involved. When Seoul refused, Trump publicly complained about that refusal while ordering military exercises with South Korea reduced. Call it diplomacy if you want, but the message to every American ally is obvious: if you refuse to participate in Washington’s wars, do not assume Washington will treat your own security concerns the same way.

South Korea has been extremely careful regarding Iran from the beginning. Washington explored transferring Patriot missile systems connected to U.S. forces in South Korea to support the Iran war, creating obvious concerns in Seoul because those systems exist in Korea for a reason. South Korea later considered participating in efforts to protect navigation through the Strait of Hormuz, but Defense Minister Ahn Gyu-back made clear that Seoul was examining steps short of direct military participation. Reuters reported in May that Ahn had not discussed a South Korean military contribution with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. South Korea was willing to protect its economic interests and shipping, but it did not want to be dragged directly into America’s war.

The Iran war has already cost South Korea economically. Seoul’s parliament approved a 26.2 trillion won supplemental budget, about $17.7 billion, specifically to cushion its economy from the consequences of the conflict. South Korea is already paying for a war it did not start without volunteering its military to fight it.

South Korea has supported Ukraine politically, economically and through humanitarian assistance, but it has traditionally resisted directly supplying lethal weapons because it understood the consequences of inserting itself into the war. That position has become increasingly difficult as North Korea strengthen ties with Russia. Zelensky now claims that as many as 50,000 North Korean troops could be deployed in Russia and has been openly pressuring Seoul to provide Ukraine with additional air-defense capabilities and cooperate on drone technology.

North Korea is not some theoretical enemy thousands of miles away. It is sitting immediately across the border with nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles. Pyongyang fired another ballistic missile only days before the latest American-South Korean exercises, its 11th suspected missile test of the year. North Korea then denounced the exercises and warned that it would strengthen its nuclear deterrent.

This is what makes Trump’s decision so extraordinary. He is simultaneously telling the world that North Korea has been respectful toward America while expressing anger that South Korea will not help America fight Iran. The national interests of the United States and South Korea are not identical. A competent foreign policy recognizes that allies cooperate where their interests overlap rather than demanding obedience everywhere on Earth.

Trump is correct that the endless military exercises deserve scrutiny. He is also correct that constantly conducting war games while claiming to seek negotiations with North Korea sends contradictory signals. If there is an opportunity to negotiate with Kim Jong Un and reduce tensions on the Korean Peninsula, then by all means negotiate. Trump accomplished more by sitting across a table from Kim than generations of politicians accomplished by screaming threats at North Korea.

Yet America cannot demand that every ally join every American war. This is the same insanity that transformed NATO from a defensive alliance into a geopolitical machine operating far beyond its original purpose.

There is another problem Washington refuses to confront. The attack on Iran has almost certainly reinforced North Korea’s determination never to surrender its nuclear arsenal. So Washington bombs Iran, potentially reinforces North Korea’s conviction that nuclear weapons guarantee regime survival, becomes angry when South Korea refuses to participate in the Iran conflict, and then reduces exercises intended to deter the nuclear-armed North Korea sitting on South Korea’s border.

Support Washington’s war and Washington supports you. Refuse and perhaps the relationship changes. That does not strengthen alliances. It encourages every country to develop an independent military policy because eventually they will conclude that American protection comes with conditions unrelated to their own defense.

I have written about this trend for years and was attacked whenever I pointed out that the Democratic Party was gradually abandoning its traditional economic foundation and moving openly toward socialism. They no longer have to hide it. The voters themselves are now saying it.

A new CBS News/YouGov poll found that 58% of Democrats have a positive view of socialism while only 32% have a positive view of capitalism. Among college-educated Democrats, support for socialism rises to an astonishing 71%. This is no longer Bernie Sanders standing on the fringe screaming about millionaires and billionaires. Socialism has become more popular than capitalism within the Democratic Party itself.

This did not suddenly happen in 2026. Gallup found all the way back in 2010 that 53% of Democrats viewed socialism positively. By 2018, that figure stood at 57%, while positive attitudes toward capitalism among Democrats had fallen to 47%. Gallup specifically noted at that time that Democrats had become more positive about socialism than capitalism. By 2021, 65% of Democrats viewed socialism favorably compared with 52% for capitalism.

Then came another major deterioration. Gallup reported in 2025 that only 42% of Democrats still viewed capitalism positively while 66% viewed socialism favorably. The latest CBS poll is asking the questions somewhat differently and should not be treated as a directly comparable time series, but the direction is unmistakable. The Democratic base has spent well over a decade becoming increasingly comfortable with the word SOCIALISM while its confidence in capitalism has collapsed.

The politicians did not create this out of thin air. Washington destroyed confidence in capitalism because what we have today is increasingly not free-market capitalism at all. Government picks winners and losers. The banks are bailed out. Corporations receive subsidies. Congress writes tax codes nobody can understand. The Federal Reserve manipulates interest rates. Young people cannot afford homes. College students graduate buried in debt. Healthcare costs have exploded. Then politicians tell a 25-year-old who cannot afford an apartment that this is “capitalism.”

The younger generations were never taught what socialism actually produced throughout history. They were taught that socialism means free healthcare, free education, affordable housing and making billionaires pay more taxes. Democrats increasingly associate socialism with government services and equality rather than government ownership of production.

That distinction is important because when Americans say they support “socialism,” many are not demanding that Washington nationalize every factory tomorrow morning. They are responding to an economic system they believe no longer gives them a reasonable opportunity to advance. The politicians exploit that frustration by promising that government can provide whatever the private economy supposedly failed to deliver.

Housing is unaffordable partly because governments restrict supply, regulate construction, inflate asset prices and manipulate credit. Higher education became outrageously expensive after government guarantees helped disconnect tuition from market discipline. Healthcare is buried beneath government mandates, subsidies, licensing restrictions and an incomprehensible combination of public and private bureaucracy. Then the political solution is always MORE GOVERNMENT.

This is how republics move toward socialism. It does not begin with tanks rolling through Washington and somebody announcing the abolition of private property. It begins with each generation surrendering another piece of economic freedom because government promises security in return.

Look at what is happening politically. The Democratic Socialists of America has grown from roughly 5,000 members around 2011 to nearly 130,000 today. Socialist and socialist-aligned candidates are no longer curiosities confined to a handful of university districts. They are winning Democratic primaries and forcing establishment Democrats to respond. The centrist Democratic organization Third Way has become so alarmed that it is launching a $15 million effort to counter the socialist wing of its own party.

You do not spend $15 million fighting something that does not exist. The socialist movement understands the economic frustration of younger Americans far better than the establishment does. They look at people paying enormous rents, delaying marriage, unable to purchase homes, carrying student debt and watching food, insurance and electricity consume larger portions of their income. Then they say capitalism failed you and government will fix it.

Yet the broader American public has not crossed that bridge. The new poll still finds capitalism viewed positively by 46% of Americans compared with 35% for socialism. That is an important distinction. This is presently a transformation taking place primarily inside the Democratic coalition, not evidence that the United States as a whole has become socialist.

What should concern everyone is where this goes during the next economic downturn. Political systems become vulnerable when living standards decline. People do not embrace radical political change when everything is working. They turn toward it when the existing establishment has lost credibility and neither side offers a believable path back to prosperity.

The Democrats used to deny they were becoming socialist. Then they called it democratic socialism. Now a clear majority of Democratic voters openly tell pollsters they view socialism favorably while barely one-third say the same about capitalism. At some point, you have to believe what people are telling you.

The greater tragedy is that Washington created the conditions that made the entrepreneurial spirit of capitalism seem bleak and unattainable. Socialism is not rising because it suddenly discovered some brilliant new economic theory. It is rising because government destroyed confidence in what came before it.

I have known Nigel Farage for years, and whatever one thinks of Nigel politically, he understands something that the establishment in Westminster refuses to admit: Britain cannot continue spending money it does not have while taxing the productive economy to death. Reform UK has now put forward plans to reduce Britain’s welfare bill by £50 billion annually, and the reaction from the political establishment was entirely predictable. They immediately screamed about cruelty rather than addressing the arithmetic. Britain’s welfare bill was already £334 billion in 2025-26, more than half of which was the state pension, and Reform is arguing that the remaining system has expanded far beyond what the productive economy can sustainably finance.

Robert Jenrick has described the current system as “suicidal empathy” and a “strange perversion of compassion.” Those are strong words, but the point is being deliberately distorted. Nobody is arguing that someone who is genuinely disabled and incapable of working should be thrown into the street. A civilized society should absolutely provide assistance to people who genuinely cannot provide for themselves. The problem is that government expanded the definition of welfare from a safety net into a permanent economic structure, and politicians became terrified to distinguish between people who cannot work and people who simply do not work.

Reform intends to replace the existing disability-benefit structure with a narrower system focused primarily on severe and enduring conditions. The party claims approximately £20 billion could eventually be removed from disability-related spending, while another £21 billion could be saved by preventing almost all foreign nationals from accessing welfare. That second proposal would include many EU citizens with settled status and would likely require Britain to renegotiate elements of its post-Brexit arrangements with Brussels. Reform is therefore not proposing another cosmetic adjustment. It is challenging the entire philosophy behind Britain’s modern welfare state.

The foreign-national issue will naturally generate the greatest outrage, but the economic question is perfectly legitimate. Immigration was always sold to the British people as an economic benefit. Politicians said migrants would work, contribute taxes, fill labor shortages, and increase GDP. Fine. Then why should someone be able to arrive in Britain and become a permanent liability of British taxpayers? Immigration should increase the productive capacity of the nation accepting the immigrant. When government must subsidize housing, income, children and other living expenses indefinitely, the economic calculation changes regardless of how uncomfortable politicians find that discussion.

Farage has been moving Reform increasingly toward precisely this distinction between work and dependency. He has called Reform the “true party of the workers” and proposed eliminating income tax on overtime above a standard 40-hour week for people earning less than £75,000. There is at least a coherent economic philosophy behind putting those policies together: stop punishing the person who works additional hours while reducing the incentives and opportunities to live permanently from the state. Westminster has spent decades doing virtually the opposite, taxing productive activity more heavily every time it requires additional revenue while expanding the number of people dependent upon government.

Reform is also proposing that able-bodied people who remain on benefits for extended periods perform 20 hours of community service each week or risk losing their payments. More than 330,000 Universal Credit recipients are reportedly classified as capable of working despite having remained unemployed for more than a year. Jenrick has suggested they could clean high streets, assist charities or work in libraries. The establishment portrays this as punishment, but why is expecting some contribution in exchange for taxpayer support considered immoral while forcing another person to surrender part of the income he earned is considered compassionate?

This is the fundamental problem with the modern welfare state. Government gradually separated benefits from obligations. The taxpayer retained an obligation to finance the system while the recipient acquired an expanding legal and political entitlement to receive from it. Every attempt to restore conditions is therefore portrayed as an attack on the poor, which makes meaningful reform politically dangerous until the fiscal situation becomes so severe that reform can no longer be avoided.

Britain is approaching that point because welfare does not exist in isolation. The government must simultaneously finance the NHS, pensions, defense, debt interest, local government, migrant accommodation, Net Zero programs and an enormous public bureaucracy while the private economy struggles beneath some of the highest tax burdens in generations. Welfare spending is projected to continue climbing, and Jenrick has warned that the bill could reach £407 billion by 2030. Britain cannot continue adding obligations to the balance sheet while assuming taxpayers and bond markets will finance them forever.

This is why the debate over Reform’s precise £50 billion estimate, while legitimate, misses the larger point. Their calculations should absolutely be challenged because eliminating one benefit can simply transfer costs elsewhere. Cutting disability payments may increase demands on councils or the NHS. Restricting benefits for EU nationals could trigger reciprocal consequences for British citizens living in Europe. Government accounting is never as simple as politicians pretend, and anyone promising that every pound of projected savings will appear exactly as forecast is selling a political projection rather than a certainty.

Nevertheless, attacking Reform’s calculations does not make Britain’s fiscal problem disappear. That is where Westminster has lost all credibility. The establishment responds to anyone proposing reductions by demanding an exact accounting of every future pound while rarely applying the same standard when government creates another spending program. Nobody knows precisely what Britain’s welfare system will cost five or ten years from now because caseloads, demographics, migration, inflation and economic growth will all change, but we certainly know the direction in which the burden has been moving.

I have discussed this with Nigel over the years in the broader context of what is happening to Europe. The political establishment confuses government spending with economic growth because GDP records government expenditure as economic activity regardless of whether that expenditure actually increases productive capacity. You can hire another bureaucrat, create another subsidy, and borrow another billion pounds, and GDP may rise on paper, but that does not mean the nation became wealthier. Someone eventually has to produce the goods and services that support the entire structure.

Britain once accumulated enormous wealth because it encouraged commerce, industry, innovation and international trade. Today politicians behave as though that wealth simply exists and their only responsibility is deciding how to distribute it. That is the same mistake governments have made repeatedly throughout time. They consume the productive base inherited from previous generations and then blame capitalism when there is no longer enough revenue to finance the promises they made.

This is why Farage and Reform are gaining political traction even when their individual proposals provoke outrage. They are speaking to people who increasingly believe they work not to improve their own standard of living but to maintain a government machine that demands more every year. The person who gets up at 6 a.m., pays income tax, National Insurance, council tax, VAT, energy levies and every other hidden charge eventually begins asking why government regards his income as an inexhaustible public resource.

That frustration will become far more politically important as Britain’s fiscal position deteriorates. Welfare reform is not fundamentally about whether Britain should help vulnerable people; of course it should. The question is whether government can distinguish compassion from dependency and whether politicians possess enough courage to admit that no entitlement can grow faster than the economy supporting it forever. Reform may not ultimately achieve £50 billion in savings, and parts of this proposal will undoubtedly need modification, but at least Farage is willing to put the solvency of the system on the table while Westminster’s traditional parties continue pretending that another tax increase will somehow solve a structural problem decades in the making.

There comes a point when government can no longer promise everything to everyone. Britain is getting very close to discovering that point, and the politicians attacking Farage today may eventually find themselves implementing the very reforms they now condemn because markets have a way of imposing discipline when politicians refuse to do so themselves.

The Collapse of the Rule of Law Confirms the Fall of a Nation This time by 2032

Historically, the collapse of the rule of law is often seen not just as an indicator, but as a primary mechanism through which a government falls or transforms into something else. Many thinkers have argued that when the law ceases to be the supreme authority, society is on a direct path to disintegration or tyranny.

The Theoretical Foundation: The Collapse of Law as the End of Government
The political philosopher John Locke provided one of the most direct statements on this. In his Two Treatises of Government, he argued that when the supreme executive power “neglects and abandons that charge, so that the laws already made can no longer be put in execution; this is demonstratively to reduce all to anarchy, and so effectively to dissolve the government.” For Locke, a government without effective laws is a contradiction, and its failure to execute the law leaves the people as “a confused multitude without order.”

This idea was foundational to the American Founders. John Adams feared that killing a tyrant without establishing a “government of laws, and not of men” would merely mean the people “will only exchange Tyrants and Tyrannies.”

Historical Perspectives on the Rule of Law and Government Survival
Modern thinkers and statesmen have echoed and expanded on these ideas, showing how the collapse of the rule of law is a key step in a state’s decline.

Montesquieu (1748) argued that a republic’s survival depends on “virtue” (civic spirit and commitment to the common good). When laws cease to be executed due to corruption, the state “is already lost.”

Edmund Burke (1777) warned that “among a people generally corrupt, liberty cannot long exist,” implying a breakdown of moral and legal order leads to collapse.

History and political theory generally do NOT treat the collapse of the rule of law as a mere warning sign, but as a form of government dissolution in its own right. Whether by an executive failing to execute laws, widespread corruption undermining justice, or a slow-motion legal dismantling of constitutional checks, the destruction of the rule of law consistently precedes the fall of free government—or its mutation into a tyrannical form.

As they see their grip on society starting to fade away, they will become far more tyrannical out of desperation. As I advised the Ukrainians back in 2014, a revolution can be bloodless as long as the army refuses to defend the corrupt politicians. We saw that even in Russia when Yeltsin stood on the tank and told the Army not to kill its own people. They stood down and the coup failed.

This is the problem that they assume if you can forecast the business cycle, then it happens only because you forecast it. The establishment hate my guts and can’t wait for me to exit this earth. The CFTC has even tried to subpoena a list of all my clients worldwide telling the judge that I manipulated the world economy and they could prove if it I turned over a list of all my clients. My lawyer turned into a joke and said we confess, he manipulates the entire world including your salary. Where is the law that he cannot? The judge laughed, and dismissed the CFTC.

Others control the media and threaten them not to interview me. The New Yorker 10 page interview of me took place ONLY because they threatened to expose what they were doing saying that they could interview a terrorist, but not Armstrong. Why?

Mark Pitman had written for Bloomberg on what we were doing in Japan bailout out companies and buying their portfolios. We use to publish on Bloomberg. All of a sudden, Bloomberg told Mark he was not allowed to write about me and they erased all our published reports on their system and previous articles that showed what the government alleged was completely false.

Bloomberg never once even reported how could a bank claim it did not know where $1 billion in deposits went? It is IMPOSSIBLE to get a $1 billion out of a bank without a wire in which case they would have known where it went. Only because I told my clients to sue the bank were they forced to plead guilty and return the money. Meanwhile, the government handed HSBC my $400 million profit. They put a gag order on me to STOP me from helping my clients against the bank. This the most corrupt Department of Justice being the Southern District of New York whose conviction rate is virtually 98-99% beating even Adolf Hitler’s rigged court with only a 90% conviction rate of Jews with 46% sentenced to death. This id Epstein was charged in New York City, Frank Quatrone of First Boston, to Maduro from Venezuela among just about every high profile case where they deny fair trials. When Epstein was charged in NYC, I posted the only question was would he be killed before of after a plea deal. Suicides are much more common in NYC.

The Supreme Court’s most anti-Constitutional decision ever rendered implemented a nationwide policy declaring prosecutors must have absolute immunity for acts committed in their prosecutorial role. This decision has unleashed the most abusive legal system ever on the face of this Earth. The most notorious court in history had been that of Hitler which had a 90% conviction rate. The Supreme Court has stripped every possible human right we have fought for since the dawn of civilization with that decision.

The conviction rate now exceeds that of the Nazis. Court-appointed lawyers are paid to lose not win. They are as evil as prosecutors if not worse for they lie to your face pretending they are there to aid you. I never met one who was EVER honest! Lawyers tell you to just plea because you cannot win! Federal Judge Jed Rakof’s review of a book – Why Innocent People Plead Guilty.

Judge Rakof wrote in the New York Review of Books, “Over the past few decades, ordinary US citizens have increasingly been denied effective access to their courts.” Nobody pays attention and at least one-third of the people in prison are innocent charged with conspiracy so the government does not have to prove you actually did something, you just intended it somehow. Nobody reforms the judicial system so police just kill people without consequence.

Why they hate me is to Protect the System

My case was all about protect the manipulations in New York, The SEC/CFTC will pretend to issue a huge fine of even $200 million when the entity made $1 billion and nobody goes to jail. Why? It’s just their 20% cut. I have been told for years, the bankers started this and told the CFTC that I had to be shut down for I was manipulating the world economy. They all lost a fortune on Russia. Soros lost $2 billion. The movie people tried the Freedom of Information Act to find out who made those complaints. They claimed they no longer has any document on me at all, clearly to cover up their illegal activity.

This is what all governments will do to protect the status quo. Even during the American Revolution, they sent a army to arrest Thomas Jefferson for simply writing the Declaration of Independence. They even issued token showing the hanging of Thomas Paine for writing his Common Sence, which he began:

As far as trying to capture Thomas Jefferson and hang him, it was the British commander in America, General Charles Cornwallis, who dispatched a cavalry force of 250 men led by Lieutenant Colonel Banastre Tarleton. Their mission was to capture Governor Thomas Jefferson, who was at his home, Monticello, and other members of the Virginia General Assembly meeting in nearby Charlottesville.

On the evening of June 3, 1781, John “Jack” Jouett, often called the “Paul Revere of the South,” was at the Cuckoo Tavern in Louisa County, Virginia, when he spotted Tarleton and his British troops nearby. He realized their destination and the danger to the Jefferson and perhaps others. He rode 40 miles through the night on backroads to get ahead of the British troops. He arrived at Monticello in the early hours of June 4 to warn Jefferson. The warning gave Jefferson enough time to escape just before the British arrived at his home later that day.

Washington State farmer Joel Gross says government officials turned the regulatory machinery against him after he publicly criticized what he viewed as an unconstitutional assault on his private property. Gross operates nearly 5,000 acres outside Wilson Creek, including about 400 acres of irrigated alfalfa and wheat and another 4,400 acres of rangeland supporting Black Angus cattle. He wanted to build a home on his own property, and instead discovered just how little the concept of private property means once unelected bureaucrats decide they have authority over your land.

Gross wanted to build a 6,000-square-foot home on his own farm, but Washington’s shrub-steppe conservation rules require landowners to offset protected habitat disturbed by construction. Gross says that for every acre affected by his house, driveway, and required solar infrastructure, he may have to permanently preserve at least two additional acres where future development would be restricted. Otherwise, he could be forced to pay mitigation fees. He owns the land, pays taxes on it, yet must sacrifice additional acreage or pay the government for permission to build on his own property.

Gross called the arrangement “extortion,” and his anger is understandable when you look at the economics. AgWeb cites research from the Building Industry Association of Washington estimating that state and local regulations account for approximately $203,976, or 29.5%, of the $690,701 median new-home sales price in the Washington counties it sampled. The comparable nationwide regulatory burden was estimated at 23.8%. Gross says merely obtaining the required habitat inspection from an accredited biologist could cost another $2,000 to $10,000 before construction even begins. Then politicians hold hearings about why nobody can afford housing anymore while their own regulations have added six figures to the cost of putting a roof over someone’s head.

Gross finally did what Americans are supposedly permitted to do under the First Amendment. He complained. On June 25, 2026, he posted his criticism of Washington’s regulations on Facebook under the title “CONFISCATED,” attacking what he viewed as government encroachment on private property. Two days later, Grant County Development Services Director Jim Anderson-Cook responded with a roughly 1,500-word Facebook post disputing Gross’ claims. Anderson-Cook said county employees had received death threats following Gross’ public criticism, while Gross maintains that his complaints were directed primarily toward state-level regulations and he never incited violence.

What happened next is precisely why his allegation deserves scrutiny. Months before the Facebook dispute, county representatives had visited Gross’ property because he wanted to crush rock from his own farm into gravel to maintain his farm roads, cattle pads and erosion controls. Officials had given him the green light in February and indicated that he would not need a commercial mining permit so long as the material remained for on-farm use. Gross says he invested $400,000 in rock-crushing equipment so he could maintain his own property. The gravel was not being hauled off and sold commercially. It remained on his farm.

After Gross publicly attacked the regulations in June, he says the county suddenly treated that same activity as an “industrial surface mine.” That classification could require a conditional-use permit, a Mining Resource Overlay, and review under Washington’s State Environmental Policy Act, potentially creating a multiyear process costing as much as $200,000. Gross contends agricultural grading for his purposes is exempt under Washington law and says no farmer in Grant County history has been required to obtain an industrial mining permit merely to crush rock for use on his own farm.

Agriculture becomes less about producing food and more about satisfying an expanding army of administrators who have never risked their life savings on a crop, worried about rainfall, paid for fertilizer, repaired machinery at midnight, or wondered whether commodity prices will cover the year’s expenses. Regulators are coming after this man for daring to utilize his own land.

Farmers are already being crushed economically. Costs remain elevated, fertilizer has again become a major concern in 2026, financing costs remain painful, equipment has become extraordinarily expensive, and farm debt continues mounting. Farmer’s Keeper survey of 4,000 farmers found 20% were cutting corn acreage as fertilizer prices and supply problems forced them to reconsider planting decisions. The government should be asking how to keep these people producing food rather than inventing another permit, environmental review or mitigation scheme that requires them to hire consultants simply to use their own property.

Private property means absolutely nothing if government can dictate its use without assuming the financial burden of ownership. This has been one of the most destructive changes throughout the West. Politicians discovered they do not always need eminent domain to control land. They can leave your name on the deed while regulating what you may build, where you may build it, how much land must remain untouched, what environmental studies you must purchase and how much you must pay for the privilege of receiving permission. Gross still receives the property-tax bill, naturally, because government never seems confused about who owns the land when the taxes become due.

People vote for legislators, but they do not vote for the thousands of administrators who interpret rules, issue permits, conduct inspections and decide whether ordinary activity falls inside another regulatory classification. Those decisions can destroy a business without a politician ever casting a vote. A bureaucrat does not need to confiscate $200,000 from a farmer if he can create a regulatory process that forces the farmer to spend $200,000 defending the right to continue operating.

Gross declared rural Washingtonians are being “regulated to exhaustion,” and that description extends far beyond Washington. The people producing food are being squeezed by debt, energy, fertilizer, equipment, insurance, environmental mandates, taxes and increasingly complex land-use restrictions while government continues demanding more. Then everyone acts surprised when farms consolidate, small operators disappear and food production becomes concentrated among fewer enormous corporations capable of employing entire departments of attorneys and compliance specialists.

Recent parasitic food pandemonium have led the public to question: where are the smaller farms? How does Taylor Farms have a near monopoly on lettuce? Where is our food grown? Many are not waking up to the fact that agriculture has been regulated into oblivion and smaller operations simply cannot compete.

There is something fundamentally wrong when a farmer must hire experts and potentially spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to convince government that crushing rock from his own property for roads on that same property does not transform him into an industrial mining company. There is something even more disturbing if regulatory treatment changes after that farmer publicly criticizes the people administering those rules. America was built upon private property and the right to challenge government authority. If exercising one right causes bureaucrats to threaten the other, then the problem is much larger than Joel Gross’ farm.

Germany spent decades building one of the most successful industrial economies in the world and then its politicians began dismantling the very foundations that made that possible. Reuters is now reporting that Germany’s trade deficit with China exploded to roughly €55 billion during the first half of 2026, up from €40 billion during the same period last year. German exports to China collapsed by more than 12% to less than €37 billion while imports from China surged 8.9% to €91.8 billion. This is not simply a trade imbalance. Germany is discovering that China increasingly does not need what Germany is selling.

China was Germany’s second-largest export market as recently as 2021 when German companies sold €104 billion worth of goods there. China has now fallen all the way to ninth place among German export destinations, behind economies as small as Austria and Switzerland. Think about that for a moment. German industry spent decades treating China as one of its primary engines of growth, and now Austria is buying more German goods than China.

The politicians will blame Trump, tariffs, China, Putin, COVID, climate change, or whatever excuse happens to be fashionable this week. They will never look in the mirror. Germany voluntarily destroyed its competitive energy structure, abandoned nuclear power, severed itself from cheap Russian energy and embraced an EU regulatory regime that makes producing almost anything more expensive. Meanwhile, China did what any rational industrial nation would do. It invested in manufacturing, infrastructure, technology, energy, supply chains, robotics, batteries, automobiles, and domestic production.

China learned from the West and then began replacing the West. Germany taught China how to manufacture many of the sophisticated products China once imported. German corporations poured capital and technology into China because labor was cheaper and the Chinese market was enormous. Beijing never intended to remain permanently dependent upon European engineering. China used foreign investment to climb the technological ladder and develop its own domestic supply chains. Corinne Abele of Germany Trade & Invest told Reuters that falling German exports reflect China’s increasing focus on domestic value chains. Commerzbank economist Vincent Stamer reached the more important conclusion: China’s declining reliance on Germany demonstrates that it is becoming increasingly independent of Western powers and catching up technologically.

This is precisely what Western politicians refuse to understand about China. They still speak about China as though it were the China of 1995, producing cheap toys, textiles, and plastic junk for Walmart. That China no longer exists and Beijing is determined to force the world to see it as an economic powerhouse. China produces electric vehicles, batteries, solar technology, industrial machinery, electronics, drones, ships, high-speed rail equipment, and increasingly sophisticated technology. Reuters recently described the current export wave as “China Shock 2.0,” with China gaining enormous market share in advanced manufacturing sectors such as EVs, batteries, and solar cells.

Germany is being squeezed from both directions because the entire German economic model was based on globalization remaining frozen in time. Germany imported cheap energy, manufactured high-value industrial products, and exported them to China and the United States. Berlin assumed those arrangements would continue forever.

The automobile industry demonstrates the problem better than anything else. Germany once possessed an almost mythical reputation for automotive engineering. Mercedes-Benz, BMW, Volkswagen, Audi and Porsche represented German industrial superiority. Then politicians forced the industry toward electric vehicles while China spent years building the battery supply chain, securing critical minerals and developing enormous manufacturing scale. Europe created the demand through regulation while China positioned itself to supply it.

Chinese EV manufacturers are now competing directly with European manufacturers on price, technology, software, batteries and increasingly quality. German manufacturers are consequently being squeezed inside China itself, a market they once expected would provide decades of growth. Reuters notes that the pressure from Chinese competition and American tariffs is already contributing to major job reductions at industrial giants including Volkswagen.

There is another dimension here that the politicians will not discuss. German corporations themselves increasingly manufacture inside China rather than export finished products from Germany. That means even when a German company sells something to a Chinese consumer, the economic benefit does not necessarily flow back through a German factory employing German workers. The multinational corporation may survive while the domestic industrial base contracts.

German companies are producing more inside China itself.

China has also overtaken the United States again as Germany’s largest overall trading partner. Total German-Chinese trade exceeded €128 billion during the first half of 2026, approximately €3 billion more than trade with the United States. Yet the composition of that trade is changing dramatically because Germany is buying far more from China than China is buying from Germany.

Germany is therefore becoming increasingly dependent upon Chinese production at precisely the same time China is becoming less dependent upon German production.

Germany imports the products. China acquires the manufacturing capacity. Germany regulates industry. China expands it. Germany worries about carbon emissions. China worries about market share. Germany’s politicians talk endlessly about strategic autonomy while implementing policies that make their own industries less competitive.

The numbers are now exposing the consequences. Germany’s Federal Statistical Office reported that imports from China were already up 6.2% during the first five months of 2026 to €72.4 billion. China remained Germany’s most important source of imports. Germany’s overall merchandise trade with China had already reached €252.4 billion in 2025, allowing China to reclaim its position as Germany’s largest trading partner.

This is bigger than Germany. Europe is losing its industrial position because Brussels believes prosperity can be legislated into existence. You cannot tax energy, regulate businesses into submission, impose endless environmental mandates, increase labor costs, suffocate entrepreneurs and then demand that European companies compete against China.

Capital does not care about political speeches. It moves to where it is treated best.

China certainly has enormous domestic problems, including its property crisis, weak consumer demand and indebted local governments. This should not be portrayed as China becoming economically invincible. Reuters reported second-quarter growth of only 4.3%, while retail sales actually contracted 0.6% in May before increasing just 1.3% in June. Beijing is responding to domestic weakness partly by pushing manufacturing outward through exports, which only increases the competitive pressure on Europe.

This is why the trade numbers matter. China does not have to possess a perfect economy to displace European manufacturing. It simply has to remain more competitive than Europe.

The relationship between Israel and Britain is deteriorating in a way that would have been almost unthinkable only a few years ago. Benjamin Netanyahu has now taken a direct verbal shot at Britain, referring to it as the “Islamic Republic of Britain” and invoking the joke that Britain could become the first Islamist country with nuclear weapons. This is no longer some disagreement behind closed doors over Gaza. Netanyahu is openly mocking one of Israel’s longstanding Western allies while Britain’s government has moved steadily away from the unconditional support Israel once enjoyed.

Netanyahu made the remarks while discussing how British attitudes toward Israel have changed since the 1967 Six-Day War. After praising Winston Churchill’s grandson for being a “lover of Israel,” Netanyahu said, “Just try to find that kind of attitude in Britain now,” before referring to the country as the “Islamic Republic of Britain.” He then recalled the remark that Britain would become the first Islamist nation to acquire nuclear weapons and connected that directly to Israel’s confrontation with Iran.

This is Netanyahu’s style. Anyone who questions his government’s policies eventually becomes an enemy of Israel. Britain, France, Canada, the United Nations, the International Criminal Court, journalists, humanitarian organizations, and even members of the Israeli opposition have all been attacked when they refuse to fall in line. The distinction between supporting Israel’s existence and supporting Netanyahu personally has been deliberately blurred. Criticize Netanyahu, and suddenly you are accused of abandoning Israel and antisemitism.

London supported Israel after October 7, defended its right to self-defense and maintained a relationship that goes back to the very creation of the modern Israeli state. Britain has also confronted antisemitism domestically, and only last month banned Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps as a national-security threat. Netanyahu nevertheless appears willing to insult the entire country because its government will no longer provide him with unquestioning political support.

The deterioration has been building for years. Britain suspended some arms export licenses to Israel, halted free-trade negotiations and sanctioned Israeli ministers Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich over what the British government described as repeated incitement of violence against Palestinian civilians. London joined Australia, Canada, New Zealand and Norway in imposing those sanctions. That was an extraordinary development because these were not sanctions against some obscure settler organization. Britain sanctioned sitting ministers of the Israeli government.

Then came the Palestinian question. Britain’s movement toward recognizing a Palestinian state infuriated Netanyahu, who accused the British government of rewarding Hamas. The relationship deteriorated further as criticism of Israel’s conduct in Gaza grew across Europe. By July, Israeli officials were openly describing relations with the new British government as effectively “frozen.”

This is becoming a serious geopolitical problem for Israel that Netanyahu apparently refuses to acknowledge. Israel cannot indefinitely alienate Europe and assume Washington will compensate for every diplomatic relationship it destroys. Netanyahu has even recently rejected a U.S.-backed Gaza peace proposal, although Gaza has been bombed into oblivion and hardly exists. Israel is increasingly behaving as though its allies require Israel more than Israel requires its allies. That is a dangerous assumption for a nation of roughly 10 million people surrounded by a region of hundreds of millions.

Now is a poor time to abandon European allies. Turkey has become increasingly confrontational toward Israel, and Ankara sees an enormous opportunity emerging from Israel’s deteriorating relations with Europe. Netanyahu may think he is simply insulting Britain, but geopolitics does not operate according to personal grudges. Every ally you drive away creates an opening for somebody else.

Britain certainly has serious problems with uncontrolled migration, social fragmentation, radical Islam and the political establishment’s refusal to confront any of it. But that makes his statement even more reckless because he is exploiting Britain’s domestic divisions to attack its government over foreign policy. That will not strengthen relations between the two countries. It will poison them further.

Israel once enjoyed extraordinary bipartisan support throughout the West. That consensus is breaking apart, particularly among younger generations. Netanyahu appears to respond to this deterioration by attacking anyone who questions him, which merely accelerates the process. You cannot insult entire countries into supporting you.

Netanyahu should be very careful what he wishes for. Britain helped shape the political order from which the modern state of Israel emerged. Today, an Israeli prime minister is publicly ridiculing Britain while relations with Europe continue to deteriorate. The Middle East is realigning rapidly. Israel cannot afford to discover too late that Netanyahu succeeded in winning every argument while losing its allies.

COMMENT: Hello Marty,

I hope you are well. I’ve been thinking of you and hope all is going well on your end.

Peter and I went to visit a customer, Safran, in Sarasota the same week I attended your conference in Tampa. You looked energetic and healthy. It was great to see so many young people engaged and involved. I also saw your posting for the 2026 conference, and I’m really looking forward to it. Possibility for Technical Analysis or Geometry of Time?

…

You should read some of the crazy contracts that we have to agree to, it leans 99% to their favor , really unfortunate. Plus, the big “Primes” in aerospace are asking the Tier 2 suppliers to Tier 3 (Sunset) to push payments out 120 days. I asked them would they like not getting paid for 4 months?

How are you doing? Josephine and Napoleon? I hope we can grab a cup of coffee one day and catch up.

Take care, and I’ll see you in December!

K

REPLY: Josephine and Napoleon are best buds. It was the best thing I did to get my dog a dog. The Tampa Conference was really great to see nearly half the audience was students. Yes, there is brewing a credit crunch as we move into 2028. A number of our institutional clients are issuing bonds locking in rates. I have suggested that they look to private equity to lock it in rather than bid the market up. With war on the horizon, rates will press higher and that is separate from domestic inflation.

No matter what the subject, there are two sides to every coin. Unfortunately within humanity there are the greedy ones who measure life only by how much they can accumulate, even if they’ll never live long enough to spend it. They leave nothing behind. And when death finally comes, they cling to their last breath as if it’s a possession they can hold onto. Yet, they take nothing with them. They’re despised. You might as well toss them in a black trash bag and set them out for collection. They’re nothing but Soylent Green – food for the worms. They never had a purpose in this life and assume if they had more than someone else they were better some how. They never even looked for a purpose in life. They are just consumed with greed and leave nothing behind.

I was raised with the belief that I have a purpose in life, and that it is my duty to discover what that purpose is. We are given only this one journey through life, and with it, the opportunity to acquire knowledge. It then becomes our responsibility to pass that knowledge on to the next generation.

As for the socialists—they are the greedy ones. They invented inheritance taxes because all they see is money. In their view, it was somehow unfair that one parent could pass something on to their children while another does not. In Australia, some socialists proposed that upon death, all assets go to the state not the family.

I am undertaking this work in the twilight of my years, not at the start of my career, and not for money. I am fully aware that my work will never reach the mainstream, because those who despise me will do everything in their power to prevent it from gaining traction. That is to be expected—new ideas are rarely appreciated in their own time; they are only embraced after the originator has long since departed or there must be a crisis. The socialists are determined to prevent people from ever reading anything I produce and the market manipulators are not far behind.

This conference was always meant to be a passing on of what I have learned. My goals were twofold: first, to show that you can never truly predict where life will take you; and second, to demonstrate that much of what is taught in economics and finance is still rooted in the gold standard era, when currencies were fixed against the dollar. No one ever seriously considered what would happen under a floating exchange rate system—one that was, after all, supposed to be only temporary.

It was Milton Friedman who came to listen to me speak about the FOREX markets and how I was getting called in from country by country all because of a currency crises one way or another. It was Milton who told me what I was doing as a trader was important for this was a whole new field that had to be experienced to understand.

I am trying to have this book to hand out at the 2026 December WEC on the Business Cycle and the discovery of the ECM. This is so important because both Marx and Keynes saw recessions or depressions as a FLAW in capitalism so they strived to eliminate the business cycle. Most economists have struggled to try to control it at minimum or devise schemes to eliminate the business cycle like “You will Own Nothing and Be Happy.” It’s always about someone having more than another.

This, the Geometry of Time and Modern Analysis for the 21st Century (Technical Analysis) are what I am trying to pass on to the next generation before Scotty beams me up..

I just did the Understanding the World Economy, adding to the previous works: Fiat, Plot to Seize Russia, and Manipulating the World Economy. As I said at the conference, I was a trader, not an academic. All major advancements typically come from the outside looking in. Even the discovery that the computer was forecasting wars was NEVER my intent. Like penicillin, which was discovered by mistake, there are always uninteded consequences. The establishment always rejects it or in my case they call  it “controversial” since they cannot disprove that the business cycles exists or all the forecasts the model has produced.

QUESTION: I spoke with my son-in-law who is into the AI revolution and when he heard I followed you, he said oh, the legend. Not only did he know all about you, but he said you were the classic AI developer and that they thought they could beat Socrates, but he said they cannot get AI to understand the world economy. He explained that your classic AI had rules, and the neutral nets have no rules and they have gone rouge and nobody knows how to reverse this since these neural nets ignore rules. He said people remain in awe of Socrates to this day.

What is you take on this. Are there two divisions in AI?

Victor

ANSWER: Yes. I experimented with the neutral nets and realized they would never be able to be trained to see the world no less trade a market. They could read a Biblical parable but they would not truly comprehend the moral message. They could make a good review, but they then are incapable of apply a lesson from that to a different field. They are not capable of curiosity and will never reach the level of a true sentient lifeform.

I have stated that Socrates in NOT a neutral net. I guess they call what I did as “classic AI” like a vintage car. I coded my experience and how to trade and I explained how the complexity of the entire world economy and how it functions. It is completely a different approach.   The neural nets are great for research, but they cannot discover something entirely new. That is why IBM spent $4 billion on Watson and it failed to discover the cure for cancer. They sold it for scrap.