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.

Everyone looks at the headline manufacturing number and moves on, but buried inside the September ISM report is something far more important. The Prices Index surged 6.8 points to 77.9 while the Backlog of Orders Index jumped 4.6 points to 56.4. When backlogs move above 50, unfilled orders expand, meaning manufacturers are receiving work faster than they can efficiently complete it. When that happens at the same time prices are surging, the supply chain is telling us there is still pressure in the pipeline.

ISM reported that 43.5% of respondents were paying higher prices while only 2.7% reported lower prices, so this is not merely a story about stronger orders. Costs are rising sharply while unfinished work accumulates.

That combination can become inflationary because shortages change behavior. Companies begin ordering earlier because they fear they will not receive what they need later. Buyers become less concerned about negotiating the lowest price and more concerned about securing supply. Suppliers gain pricing power because customers cannot simply walk away when everybody else is waiting for the same materials. We saw precisely this during COVID when shortages encouraged businesses to order more inventory as protection against future shortages, making the bottlenecks even worse.

This is why the backlog matters more than most people realize. These are orders already sitting in the pipeline waiting to be completed, meaning they represent future production even if new demand begins to weaken. Consumer confidence can decline and the labor market can soften while manufacturers simultaneously face rising costs and unfinished orders. That is how you end up with economic weakness and inflation at the same time.

The Federal Reserve cannot fix this with another 25-basis-point move. Higher interest rates do not produce another barrel of oil, manufacture copper, eliminate tariffs, reopen shipping lanes, produce semiconductors, or build another factory. The Fed can suppress demand, but it cannot manufacture supply, and higher borrowing costs can actually make expanding productive capacity more expensive.

This is precisely why inflation can come in waves. CPI tells us what consumers have already paid, while manufacturing data can reveal pressure moving through the system before those costs reach the final customer. Manufacturers can absorb higher costs for a while by sacrificing margins, but eventually somebody pays. If the Prices Index remains elevated and backlogs continue expanding, businesses will increasingly attempt to pass those costs down the chain.

The September numbers should therefore be watched carefully. One month does not establish a trend, and backlogs could fall again, but a Prices Index of 77.9 alongside a Backlog of Orders Index at 56.4 is not a signal that inflationary pressure has simply disappeared. While Wall Street obsesses over every sentence from the Federal Reserve, the people actually producing goods are telling us something much more useful: their costs are rising while the work waiting to be completed is piling up.

Imagine running a private company where most of your office buildings failed to meet even a 60% utilization target, yet you continued paying the rent, utilities, maintenance, security, repairs, and operating costs year after year. How long would that company survive? Welcome to the federal government.

The Government Accountability Office examined the Department of Transportation’s real estate portfolio and found that 89% of its 189 federally owned and leased office buildings failed to meet the government’s own 60% utilization benchmark. That means only about ONE IN TEN met the standard. Taxpayers are spending hundreds of millions of dollars every year maintaining office space that in many cases is dramatically underused. The waste is blatant enough to be a non-partisan issue. Obama even broached the topic but here we are in 2026 with the same mess.

Remote work merely exposed a much larger problem that had been accumulating for decades. Government expands but almost never contracts. An agency acquires another building, signs another lease, hires another department, and increases its budget. Once that expense becomes embedded in the bureaucracy, nobody wants to surrender it because bureaucracies measure success by how much money and authority they control.

The private sector cannot operate this way. If a corporation discovers that half its office space is unnecessary, somebody begins calculating how quickly the leases can be terminated. Every empty floor represents money that could have gone toward employees, investment, technology, shareholders, or customers.

The scale becomes staggering when you look beyond one department. The federal government controls roughly 277,000 buildings and structures worldwide and spends billions annually operating and maintaining federal property. GAO has classified federal real-property management as a “high-risk” area since 2003, 23 years ago, because agencies have struggled for decades with excess and underutilized property.

If the government has known since 2003 that this is a high-risk problem and taxpayers are still maintaining enormous quantities of underused space, then this is not an oversight. This is how bureaucracy functions. The GAO has previously examined federal headquarters buildings in Washington and found extraordinary underutilization. In one study of 24 agencies during early 2023, average building utilization was approximately 25%. Seventeen agencies were using an estimated 25% or less of their headquarters capacity.

The Forrestal Building is a perfect example of why this federal real-estate mess needs to end. The Department of Energy is supposed to leave the massive 1969 1.8 million square feet complex and consolidate into the much smaller Lyndon B. Johnson Building. GSA originally said getting DOE out of Forrestal would avoid more than $350 million in deferred maintenance, yet the latest GAO report says the disposal timeline and costs are now “in flux,” with disposal itself previously estimated at more than $300 million. Even more absurd, while Washington prepares to unload the building, DOE is spending an estimated $22 million to add 20,000 square feet of classified space inside it. The Forrestal Building has been discussed for disposal for well over a decade, yet taxpayers continue paying to maintain and improve an obsolete property the government already knows it needs to leave. This is precisely how Washington burns money: everyone agrees the building needs to go, but bureaucracy makes getting rid of it almost as expensive and complicated as keeping it.

Twenty-five percent. Imagine owning a 100-room hotel, regularly using 25 rooms, heating and maintaining all 100, employing people to secure the entire building, and then complaining that you need more revenue because expenses are too high. Nobody in the private sector would tolerate it. Yet taxpayers have been paying for exactly this mentality. This becomes even more absurd when you consider what has happened to the federal workforce. Since Trump returned to office, hundreds of thousands of federal positions have disappeared. The government therefore has fewer employees while still carrying an enormous real estate footprint accumulated during decades when Washington continuously expanded.

Of course, government will explain that selling property is complicated. There are regulations, security requirements, historic preservation rules, environmental reviews, relocation costs, union considerations, lease obligations, agency-specific requirements, and countless other bureaucratic obstacles. That explanation actually proves the point. Government created so many layers of rules governing itself that it cannot efficiently dispose of buildings it already knows it does not need. The federal government occupies an enormous amount of premium property in and around the nation’s capital. Some of these buildings sit on land worth tremendous amounts of money. A rational owner would constantly ask whether holding that property still makes financial sense.

This is why simply forcing federal employees back into offices does not necessarily solve the underlying problem either. If a building is unnecessary, forcing people to commute into it merely to justify its existence reverses the logic. You do not invent a reason to use an unnecessary asset. You dispose of the unnecessary asset.

The objective should be productivity. What service does the agency provide? How many people are required to provide it? How much physical space do those employees actually need? What does that space cost taxpayers? Could technology allow the same service to be delivered with fewer people, fewer buildings, or both? Those are normal questions in the private sector. In government, they become political warfare.

This is the same mentality we just saw with federal fraud. GAO estimates the government loses somewhere between $233 billion and $521 billion annually to fraud. Now GAO is simultaneously telling us that government agencies maintain enormous quantities of underused real estate.

The GAO has been warning about federal real estate for more than two decades. The government knows it has excess property. It knows many buildings are underused. It knows taxpayers spend billions maintaining this enormous portfolio. Before Washington builds another bureaucracy, perhaps it should figure out what to do with the buildings from the last one.

For decades, economists looked down on emerging markets whenever they ran chronic deficits, accumulated too much debt, and watched interest expense consume an increasing portion of government revenue. The developed world supposedly knew better. Now the Institute of International Finance is warning that the United States, France, Britain, and Japan face “persistently large deficits and rising interest expenses — challenges long associated with debt-distressed emerging market sovereigns.”

Welcome to the sovereign debt crisis. Global debt has now surpassed $365 TRILLION after increasing by more than $10 trillion during the first half of 2026. The problem is no longer merely the amount of debt. Governments accumulated enormous liabilities during an era when interest rates were artificially suppressed, and they became accustomed to refinancing those obligations at virtually no cost. That era is ending, and the bond market is beginning to demand a real return for financing governments that have absolutely no intention of balancing their budgets.

This is the part politicians never understand. Government debt does not disappear when the bond matures. They issue another bond to repay the old one. That works beautifully while rates are falling because governments continuously refinance yesterday’s debt at cheaper rates. But the entire mechanism reverses when rates rise. A bond issued years ago at 1% eventually matures and must be replaced with debt costing 4%, 5%, or perhaps more. The principal did not increase, but suddenly the cost of carrying it explodes.

That is precisely what is happening now. The IIF estimates that advanced economies paid more than $3.3 trillion in interest on internationally traded government bonds last year. The organization says mature-market governments are now spending more on interest than the world invests in AI, defense, or energy. Government is increasingly borrowing money not to build something productive but simply to finance obligations created by previous borrowing.

The United States has already crossed $40 trillion in national debt. The 10-year Treasury yield has now pushed above 5% and reached its highest level since 2002. France’s 10-year borrowing costs are approaching 5%, their highest since 2002, while Britain’s 30-year yield has crossed 6% for the first time since 1998. Japan, which spent decades suppressing interest rates near or below zero, is watching its own bond yields climb to levels not seen in decades. This is not one isolated country making a policy mistake. The bond market is repricing sovereign risk across the developed world.

The real problem is refinancing. OECD governments are expected to use roughly 78% of their borrowing this year merely to refinance existing debt rather than finance new spending. Think about that. Governments are going into the bond market primarily to roll over yesterday’s promises. As those bonds mature, the old low rates disappear and are replaced by today’s higher rates, causing interest expense to rise even if politicians never create another new program.

That creates a vicious cycle. Higher interest expense increases the deficit. The larger deficit requires additional borrowing. Additional borrowing increases the supply of government bonds that private investors must absorb. Investors then demand higher yields to compensate for inflation, fiscal risk, and the enormous supply of paper coming onto the market. Those higher yields increase interest expense again.

Central banks can attempt to suppress rates, but eventually they face the currency and inflation consequences of doing so. Japan demonstrated that for decades. The Bank of Japan could buy government bonds and manipulate the yield curve while inflation remained dormant. Once inflation returned and the yen weakened, that policy became increasingly difficult to maintain. The BOJ is now raising rates while Japan carries one of the largest government debt burdens relative to GDP in the developed world.

The United States faces a different version of the same problem. Washington needs enormous amounts of capital every year merely to finance deficits and refinance existing Treasury securities. Foreign governments once absorbed enormous quantities of American debt as part of their reserve systems, but the market has increasingly shifted toward private investors who care about PRICE. They will buy the debt, but only at a yield they consider worth the risk.

Governments then face choices politicians hate. Raise taxes, cut spending, allow interest expense to consume more of the budget, inflate away part of the obligation, or attempt to force domestic institutions to absorb government debt. None of those choices creates prosperity. They merely determine who ultimately absorbs the loss.

The developed world spent decades lecturing everyone else about fiscal discipline while constructing entitlement systems it could not finance, expanding governments it could not afford, fighting wars with borrowed money, rescuing financial systems with borrowed money, locking economies down with borrowed money, and pretending that zero interest rates had somehow eliminated the consequences.

Now the debt is being refinanced at higher rates, interest expenses are rising, and bond investors are beginning to demand compensation for the fiscal behavior governments once mocked emerging markets for displaying. The sovereign debt crisis does not require governments to announce default. It begins when the cost of maintaining the debt starts consuming the government itself, and that process is already underway across the developed world.

QUESTION: Marty, you had a Panic Cycle for the Democrats in the Senate for the midterms. You said that there was a window for them to take the House and Senate thanks to this Iran War. Do you hav e aby update on that projection?

WL

ANSWER: The Democrats close exactly on the Yearly Bullish Reversal atin the last election. We see resistance up to 58, We have a Double Directional Change in 2027 and a Panic Cycle with a Panic Cycle following the 2028 election. I have warned that Trump MUST throw Netanyahu under the bus. He refusal to do that will be devating in this election. Bush Jr, lost thanks to the Iraq War when his approval rating was at 48%. Trump is down to 34%. These Neocons, used Netanyahu was their Trojan Horse. I believe was brought in by Kushner, do not care about the country, the people, or the politician the manipulate. They just want their wars. This increases the national debt, the interest rates are rising because the war drums are beating everywhere, and the Democrats will push through more spending for Ukraine and then will hunt down citizens claiming we do not pay our fair share proving this is no democracy when they refuse to ask the people shall we go to war.

The Democrats are incapable of ever comprehending the economy. No matter how many time they try their Marxist agenda, it always fails. They simply are incapable of every rational economic though. The Republicans also do not fully comprehend the economy. This election will NOT be about ideology and the Democrats never see to comprehend that – th’s the economy stupid.

Perhaps you will remember 3  years ago, Democrats thought that being against January 6th was a thing that united everybody and be a winner. They convinced themselves about that and watched that fail before their eyes. They painted Trump as anti-women and filed countless lawsuits and Trump was saying the 2020 election was stolen. Trump is unpopular because of gas prices and this endless war with Iran that was not for America, but for Israel.

I believe his son-in-law Kushner got Netanyahu in and he is going to regret that decision. I warned that the computer had picked up that the defense stock all began to rally the week before the Hammas attack on October 7th. Egypt’s Intel Chief Called Netanyahu Personally to Warn of Hamas Attack Days Before Oct. 7. Netanyahu,

I believe, Netanyahu allowed the attack to take place to give himself justification to destroy Gaza that same as FDR allowed Japan to attack Pearl Harbor that forced the Senate to investigate. Even Project Northwoods showed the CIA wanted to kill American to justify invading Cuba. An opinion poll by Maariv newspaper found that 80% of Israelis want to hold Netanyahu responsible for failing to secure the border and allowing Hamas to enter Israel. Only 8% believe he should not be held responsible.

It was the CIA that killed JFK because he wanted peace. These people who start wars convince them selves that there is an enemy and if they are not destroyed, eventually they will attack. They do this all the time and NEVER do they EVER tell the truth.

The Democrats are a one-zebra party. They talk the rich into giving them money making them think have money is evil. Like in ancient times, they would donate money to the temples trying to buy their way to the afterlife. The Democrats are still preaching Socialism that got FDR in office so they think, but in truth, it was the economy. They can browbeat the billionaires to give them money to buy their stairway to heaven. They simply will ALWAYS vote for the opposite side and where they go wrong is assuming the people are buying their ideology when they are not.

The Democrats guilt the billionaires into hand them money as if this will make up for their wealth. King Croesus of Lydia, who established the bimetal monetary system, did donate a massive amount of gold and other treasures to Delphi before his war with Cyrus to win the god’s favor and a favorable prophecy. His Massive Donations according to Herodotus, were legendary in their scale. He melted down a vast amount of gold to create 117 ingots (bricks). Four of these were pure gold, weighing two and a half talents each (about a kilo 32 ounces), while the rest were a lighter gold alloy – electrum.

He also donated a Golden Lion that he also commissioned ten talents weighing 600+ troy ounces. That was not the end. He sent immense bowls, a golden statue of a woman (said to be his baker), and his wife’s necklaces and girdles. Before sending the gold, he sacrificed 3,000 cattle and burned couches, cups, and purple garments on a huge pyre. All of this was to buy favor of the gods which is the same guilt trip the Democrats use to manipulat the billionares.

They country has become so polarized that this not about what is good for the country or the people. Their centerpiece is Trump and without him at the center of all of this, they offer nothing new but higher taxes and a deeper division in American culture since the people who voted for Trump, still was the endless wars and get back to basics. As I said, the Democrats are incapable of understand what the country needs and Trump will not admit a mistake with Iran. It is clear that the values or principles Republicans believe in are still present even though Trump is increasingly too focused on Iran.

The Democrats don’t have anything but oppose whatever a Republican presents. This is why the next two years into 2028 will merely confirm out Economic Confidence Model that projects a sharp global recession into 2028.

By 2032, there’s going to be a new census, and things are going to get worse for Democrats. The press is not looking at anything objectively. People are not grasping this monumental shift is unfolding in politics. People are leaving California for Texas, people are leaving New York for Florida, and it’s just going to get harder for Democrats to win as our computer projects into 2028. Mandami is destroying NYC and even Wall Street is moving to Texas.

The Republican Party has also been hollowed out as Donald Trump and his refusal to admit a mistake on Iran will get worse as Europe is determined to have was with Russia and will be screaming at Trump to send American to defend yet another socialist failing state. While we see that the Progressives will destroy the Democratic Party, we may also see the demise of the Republicans and a complete new party emerge that finally is responsive to the people when both parties pursue their own agendas. With one model project 78.3% for a Republican victory, there is a major possibility that this is reflecting a new party altogether as both sides comit political suicide into 2028.

This is NOT my opinion. I do not have the luxury to be partisan. Besides, we all have opinions, but opinions and $4.65 will get you a Venti Skinny Vanilla Latte at Starbucks. I cannot beat my own computer. It calls the shot based on the data – not who I want to see win or lose.

The Government Accountability Office estimates that the federal government loses between $233 BILLION and $521 BILLION every year to fraud. We are not talking about total government waste, unnecessary programs, bloated agencies, or interest on the national debt. This estimate is specifically FRAUD affecting federal programs and spending. At the upper end, that works out to more than $1.4 billion every single day.

This is the same government that tells you it desperately needs more revenue. Politicians argue over raising taxes, closing loopholes, increasing enforcement, and extracting another dollar from the productive economy while their own watchdog estimates that hundreds of billions could disappear annually through fraud. If a private corporation told its shareholders that somewhere between $233 billion and $521 billion was being lost every year and management could not narrow it down any further, the board would be thrown out.

In Washington, they simply raise the debt ceiling. The GAO’s estimate covers fiscal years 2018 through 2022 and represents an average annual loss. It includes fraud involving programs such as unemployment insurance, pandemic relief, Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, and other federal spending. The range is enormous precisely because the government does not even know the complete extent of the problem. Fraud is deliberately concealed, and agencies frequently lack the data and systems necessary to identify all of it.

Think about the scale. The federal government collected roughly $5 trillion in revenue during fiscal 2025. If fraud is occurring anywhere near the upper end of the GAO’s estimate, the equivalent of roughly 10% of an entire year’s federal revenue could be disappearing through fraudulent activity. Yet Washington behaves as though the problem is that Americans simply are not paying enough taxes. This is what happens when government becomes too large to manage.

Washington now spends trillions of dollars every year through an incomprehensible maze of agencies, grants, contractors, benefits, subsidies, emergency programs, healthcare payments, state transfers, and countless other channels. Nobody sitting in Congress can possibly understand where all of that money ultimately goes. Congress passes thousand-page spending packages that members barely have time to read, much less audit, and then acts surprised when criminals discover that government money is the easiest money in the world to steal.

The pandemic exposed the entire system. Washington panicked and threw money everywhere. The Small Business Administration’s inspector general estimated that more than $200 billion in potentially fraudulent COVID Economic Injury Disaster Loan and Paycheck Protection Program funds were disbursed. Other government estimates have differed depending upon methodology, but nobody disputes that pandemic programs became an extraordinary target for fraud.

Government was distributing enormous amounts of money at extraordinary speed while verification systems were overwhelmed. Criminals understood immediately what politicians never seem to understand: when you create trillions of dollars and distribute it through bureaucratic programs, somebody will figure out how to steal it. Then taxpayers are expected to replenish the account.

This is why government spending is never free. Every dollar Washington loses has to come from somewhere. It was taxed from somebody, borrowed from somebody, or ultimately financed through a monetary system that has repeatedly expanded to accommodate government debt. People create wealth. Government redistributes it.

And when government spends beyond the productive capacity of the economy, particularly when fiscal stimulus increases demand without creating equivalent supply, it can contribute to inflation. We saw precisely that dynamic during the pandemic. Washington injected enormous fiscal support into an economy where production and supply chains were simultaneously constrained. Too much demand chased too few goods, and consumers ultimately paid for it through higher prices.

Yet politicians continue to behave as though the only question is how much government should spend rather than whether the spending accomplishes anything. The fraud numbers should infuriate every taxpayer because Washington constantly argues over relatively tiny amounts compared with the scale of the losses identified by its own watchdog.

This ties directly into what we are seeing with the federal workforce. Hundreds of thousands of positions have disappeared, yet most Americans outside Washington would struggle to identify precisely what changed in their everyday lives. Now we discover that despite employing millions of people and spending trillions annually, the federal government may still be losing hundreds of billions to fraud. So what exactly are we paying for?

Washington has surpassed $40 trillion in national debt. Interest expense is becoming one of the largest items in the federal budget. The government continues borrowing simply to maintain existing obligations while politicians promise still more programs because promising somebody else’s money remains the easiest way to purchase political support.

The GAO is not some anti-government organization. It is Congress’s own watchdog and it is telling Congress that federal fraud losses are likely somewhere between $233 billion and $521 billion EVERY YEAR. Before Washington demands another tax increase, perhaps somebody should first explain where the half-trillion dollars went.

Imagine the people needed to fill a football stadium, multiple times over. Since Trump returned to office, the federal payroll has been cut by an amount roughly equivalent to the entire global workforce of Apple — TWICE. Depending on which government employment series you use, the reduction is between roughly 271,000 and 336,000 workers. Apple employs about 166,000 people worldwide. Think about that for a moment. You could eliminate the equivalent of two companies the size of Apple from the federal payroll, and for most Americans, daily life simply continued.

So I have a very simple question: what were all these people doing? The federal government still employs more than TWO MILLION civilian workers. OPM’s latest data show about 2.02 million federal civilian employees remaining as of July. Government did not disappear. Social Security checks did not suddenly stop because Washington had fewer diversity coordinators, administrators, consultants, managers, analysts, and layers of bureaucracy.

This is how bureaucracy grows. Government creates a program. The program requires employees. The employees require managers. The managers require administrators. Then somebody needs to evaluate the administrators, somebody needs to write the regulations, somebody needs to ensure compliance with the regulations, and somebody else needs to prepare reports explaining why the department needs a larger budget next year. There is virtually no natural mechanism forcing government to become more productive because government does not operate under the same discipline as the private sector.

Apple has to produce something people voluntarily purchase. If it wastes enough money and produces products nobody wants, eventually shareholders revolt and competitors take its customers. Government has no such discipline. It simply sends the taxpayer another bill.

There is also an important distinction that Washington does not want people to understand. Cutting the federal workforce is NOT the same thing as cutting federal spending. Personnel costs are only one portion of an enormous federal budget. The Federal Reserve reports that the federal deficit has remained around 6% of GDP in fiscal 2025 and so far in fiscal 2026. Federal spending overall has continued to rise, while debt has now surpassed $40 trillion. So anyone claiming that eliminating a few hundred thousand government jobs has somehow solved America’s fiscal crisis is dreaming.

That is precisely the point. If you can remove hundreds of thousands of positions and government spending STILL increases, then the bureaucracy was never the entire problem. The problem is the entire fiscal structure of government: entitlement obligations, defense spending, subsidies, transfers, interest on the debt, grants, contracts, and programs that politicians from BOTH parties refuse to touch.

Government spending matters for inflation because government is another source of demand competing for the same labor, materials, energy, housing, equipment, and services as the private sector. When government dramatically increases spending without a corresponding increase in productive capacity, it can add inflationary pressure. Researchers at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York estimated that pandemic-era fiscal stimulus contributed substantially to the surge in aggregate demand that helped produce the inflation of 2020-2022. This does not mean every dollar Washington spends automatically creates inflation. It means there is no magical exemption from supply and demand simply because the buyer happens to be the federal government.

This is where politicians deliberately confuse spending with prosperity. Government can hire 100,000 people and announce that it “created jobs.” Fine. But where did the money come from? Taxes remove capital from the private economy. Borrowing competes for capital in the debt markets and leaves taxpayers with the obligation to service it. Monetary expansion can ultimately undermine purchasing power. There is no secret government treasure chest beneath Washington filled with free money.

The DOGE reductions themselves were not free either. The Government Accountability Office found that the deferred resignation program resulted in nearly 140,000 workers leaving while the government spent about $6.7 billion paying employees associated with that program while they were on administrative leave. OPM argues that was a one-time expense that will generate roughly $20 billion in annual savings, while critics point out that some agencies subsequently had to hire people back into similar occupations. That is exactly why government efficiency should be measured by actual services delivered per taxpayer dollar, not by politicians holding up a headcount and declaring victory.

But the scale of the reduction should still make Americans think. If a private corporation eliminated the equivalent of TWO APPLES from its workforce, everyone would expect something dramatic to happen to its output. Factories would close. Products would disappear. Customers would wait months for service. Yet the federal government has eliminated hundreds of thousands of positions and most Americans would struggle to identify what materially changed in their everyday lives because of those specific personnel reductions.

The real test should be brutally simple: what service does this position provide to the public, what does it cost, and what happens if it disappears? If nobody can provide a coherent answer, perhaps the taxpayer should not be forced to finance it merely because somebody created the position twenty years ago.

Washington has accumulated $40 trillion in debt, and the interest bill itself is becoming one of the largest expenses of the federal government. We are reaching the stage where taxpayers increasingly work not to finance tomorrow’s infrastructure or productive investment but to service yesterday’s political promises. That is how sovereign debt crises develop. Governments do not wake up one morning bankrupt. They accumulate obligations year after year because every expenditure has a constituency and every reduction is portrayed as catastrophe.

The federal workforce reduction has therefore produced an extraordinarily useful experiment. Remove hundreds of thousands of positions and observe what actually breaks. Where essential services deteriorate, correct the mistake. Where nothing meaningful happens, do not automatically refill the chair.

Government should exist to perform necessary functions for the people. The people do not exist to provide permanent employment for the government.

The deeper problem remains spending itself. America cannot solve a $40 trillion debt problem by trimming payroll while continuing to expand total expenditures. But if Washington has just demonstrated that hundreds of thousands of positions can disappear while ordinary Americans largely continue their lives, then perhaps it is time to ask the question politicians and bureaucrats never want asked: how much of this government did we ever actually need?

Many people have asked how bad it will get. Will there be civil war and blood in the streets? I do not see a revolution in the United States in the sense that one side is all-powerful and seeks to eradicate its opponent. The risk that the United States will break up, as in Canada and Europe, does not imply outright civil war. The break will likely come first, and it will form along the lines of the LEFT vs. the RIGHT.

The good news is that the fall of the West is inevitable since no political state lasts forever. However, this time it is different, for it is not people rising up against tyranny that produces the blood in the streets as in the American and French Revolutions. Here we are dealing with the facade of Republican forms of government worldwide that have become unresponsive to the people, but are economically crumbling from within at their very foundations.

This is the Sovereign Debt Crisis. The fall of the West can be largely silent, much like the fall of the Soviet Union. As I have said many times, Russia collapsed all by itself because COMMUNISM was not economically sustainable. Here in the West, rising “progressive” movements are also undermining the economy; like the USSR, they are economically inefficient.

A USSR-style collapse of the United States, a sudden, negotiated dissolution of the entire federal union into separate successor states, without a civil war, is highly unlikely without a Sovereign Default. The key is the government’s ability to muster forces against the people. That requires the fiscal capability that becomes nonexistent in the middle of a Sovereign Debt Default. Therefore, a non-violent collapse is not theoretically impossible. The historical conditions that allowed the Soviet Union to dissolve peacefully are largely absent in the American context, and most scholarly assessments point toward either continued institutional decay or a violent rupture rather than a clean “velvet divorce.”

What is not considered is the CONTAGION effect. As I have said many times, the prevailing view is that Greek political ideas, including democratic theory, influenced Rome, not the other way around. Roman political theory and practice developed later and in dialogue with Greek thought. Cicero, Rome’s great political theorist, drew heavily on Greek philosophy and political models.

Plato and Aristotle’s ideal cities drew on a mix of Athenian democracy and the Roman constitution, showing that Greek thinkers were aware of and analyzing Rome, but the foundational democratic ideas were Greek.

The events were nearly simultaneous, a CONTAGION effect, but the Roman Republic was an aristocratic republic, not a democracy in the Athenian sense. Patrician families and the Senate dominated it, with only limited popular participation through assemblies. Unfortunately, the Founding Fathers adopted the Roman model, limiting the people’s role.

Many other Greek city-states adopted democracy after Athens, though it is important to understand that Athenian democracy was not the sole origin of the idea, and the “CONTAGION” was more of a political wave than a simple export. Scholarship has identified numerous city-states (poleis) that experienced democratic government during the Classical period (roughly 480–323BC).

We see this same wave of political change sweep Europe with the French Revolution following the American Revolution. Fast forward to Tiananmen Square and the Berlin Wall falls within weeks. Our computer has identified these waves of political change that sweep the world. It doesn’t even have to start in the United States. You are witnessing a rising separatist movement in Canada and even the UK. The same will happen in Europe.

This idea of always attacking the rich has been humanity’s dark side for thousands of years. Ancient Sparta was a communist state that never issued coins, denying wealth to its citizens. Even societies that have advanced required (1) a disparity of wealth that becomes the excess pool to invest in startups, and (2) a financial market to provide liquidity. Every society that provided that since ancient times rose to the top. Those that did not remained as third-world city-states.

The entire Marxist Agenda tried desperately to eliminate the business cycle by altering human nature. This created economic unsustainability, a fundamental cause of the Soviet Union’s collapse from within. The system suffered from deep, long-term structural flaws that made it unable to adapt, and specific policy failures in the 1980s accelerated its decline. Even Trump, in his attempt to make America Great Again, fails to understand a very basic cause for the loss of manufacturing.

President Grover Cleveland was the only one who understood the direction the growing progressive movement in the late 1890s was setting in motion. Unsound finance can force capital to flee. As a result, who is left to pay the taxes: the working class, who cannot put their labor offshore without migrating?

I have dealt with governments around the world in my 50 years. They are all the same, no matter what they call themselves; there are no mirrors ever in government. We are always the problem. If we all just paid the taxes, they think we are not paying; somehow, their system would work. They never see that they are the instrument of their own decline. It is not IF but WHEN. No government has ever lasted forever.

India was the source of luxury products and spices, along with dyes and silks, that they obtained from China and sold to the Greeks and then the Romans. That’s why Alexander the Great attempted to invade and conquer India, and his troops mutinied, forcing him to abandon the adventure. India produced gold imitations of Roman coins, demonstrating that the value was greater than the gold content. This is why Christopher Columbus set sail, assuming he could find a shorter route to India. When he bumped into a continent in the way, he called the people “Indians.”

Spain became the financial capital of the world after exploiting gold and silver in the New World. They spent more than they had on endless wars, as we have, and Spain defaulted on its national debt many times. 1557, 1575, 1596, 1607, 1627, 1647. Even in modern times: 1809, 1820, 1831, 1834, 1851, 1867, 1872, 1882, 1936-1939. Even England and France defaulted (see 13th and 14th century Panics).  Financial capital migrated from Spain to the Netherlands, then to Britain. After World War I, it moved to the United States. Governments NEVER remain on top indefinitely.

The Long-Term Structural Decline

The Soviet command economy was designed for rapid industrialization and military production, but it was fundamentally ill-suited for a modern, consumer-oriented economy. The whole idea of equality eliminated the most critical factor that increased productivity and living standards – human curiosity. By suppressing wealth and stripping it from private ownership, they destroyed the very incentives and innovation that not even AI can replace, for they lack curiosity.

Without market competition or profit motives, enterprises had no incentive to improve efficiency, cut costs, or innovate. The system was rigid, inelastic, and unable to respond to the changing demands of its population or the technological revolution happening in the West. This was because a bureaucrat made the decisions.

Then there was the misallocation of resources. The state directed all investment. This led to a massive, inefficient military-industrial complex that consumed vast resources, while the civilian sector, producing food, clothing, and consumer goods, was neglected and technologically backward.

The famous 1959 display of the modern American kitchen showed that when you followed Marx and saw wealth disparity as evil, the result was not just economic stagnation, but worsening standards of living. Despite being a superpower, the Soviet Union saw its per capita GDP ranking drop from 35th to 47th in the world over the last 30 years of its existence. By the 1980s, it had become a net importer of food, a stark failure for a country with vast agricultural potential.

By the 1980s, everything went from bad to worse. The underlying weaknesses turned into an acute crisis in the 1980s because of several factors that began with the oil price shock of the ’70s. The Soviet economy became dangerously dependent on revenue from oil and gas exports. When global oil prices crashed in the mid-1980s, this vital source of hard currency and budget revenue dried up, exposing the underlying economic foundation that was constructed on Marxist dreams of equality to defeat the business cycle, which proved to be an economic implosion. Europe faces that crisis today, with Germany’s economic growth collapsing to 0.8%.

Gorbachev’s attempts to reform the economy were half-measures that made things worse – Perestroika. The 1987 Law on State Enterprises gave factories more autonomy over wages and investment but did not introduce market pricing or hard budget constraints. This led to a spiral of wage increases without corresponding increases in goods, creating massive shortages and runaway inflation.

The government’s budget deficit exploded to roughly 10-11% of GDP by 1988-1989. The fiscal and monetary systems were collapsing. Because there were no independent central banks or bond markets, the government financed this deficit by printing money. This created a “ruble overhang,” which became a huge amount of cash chasing very few goods. This led to hoarding, especially of food, empty shelves, and the eventual breakdown of the consumer market. The Soviet Union’s collapse was set in motion economically. Nationalism also rose, as in Ukraine, the first to proclaim independence. The central government no longer cared about the people; it focused on retaining power. This eroded its political legitimacy. The West’s attempt, with Maxwell funding the failed August 1991 coup, was also a crucial factor.

However, the economy was the primary structural strain, and we are now suffering in the West for the same reasons, especially in Europe. A system that ignored the people and could not feed its own people, innovate, or manage its finances was not sustainable in the long run. The specific missteps of the Gorbachev era turned a slow, decades-long decline into a terminal crisis, making the collapse from within all but inevitable by 1991.

The migration that has taken place in Europe, USA, and Canada, presents a serious risk. Sovereign State Debt Crisis of the 1839-1844 period was a serious economic event that destroyed the credit standing of ALL states and the Federal Government. The Philadelphia Nativist Riots were a series of riots that took place between May 6th and 8th followed again by riots on July 6th and 7th, 1844. These riots took place in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and the adjacent districts of Kensington and Southwark. They were a result of the economic depression that turned into riots against the new wave of immigrants manifesting in anti-Catholic sentiment at the growing population of Irish Catholics. The migrant were seen as taking local jobs creating rising unemployment during the state defaults, not the federal. This became gun battles on the streets of Philadelphia.This become the risk for Europe into 2027/2028.

I have warned that immigration was the final straw that broke the back of the Roman Empire. Roman Emperor Valens (364-378AD) let the Goths enter the Roman Empire, assuming they would defend Rome against the advancing Huns. He trained the Goths in Roman military tactics, and because they were of a completely different culture, as European migrants, they did NOT assimilate into Roman society.  The Goths then turned on the Romans in retaliation, as they were a separate class. Valens met his death on August 9th, 378AD, in one of the greatest military catastrophes ever suffered by the Roman legions, where they were defeated by the very migrants they allowed in at the Battle of Adrianople. Valens body was never found, and the disappearance of an emperor’s body was a profound shock to the empire, leaving his ultimate fate a mystery. This is the risk that Europe faces. They may assume that they can conscript these Muslim imports, but they have no loyalty to Europe, as was the case with the Goths. Europe is in danger of violent internal conflict between cultures.

The traditional date is 476AD for the end of the Roman Empire, when the Germanic chieftain Odoacer deposed Romulus Augustulus, the last Western Roman emperor. But that’s misleading—it wasn’t sudden. It was the endpoint of a long unraveling. Between 235 and 285AD, Rome had over 20 emperors in 50 years, most assassinated or killed in civil war. I assembled Rome’s coinage to determine how empires actually die. We all knew Rome fell, but no historian ever looked at this from an economic viewpoint. Was it like a 747 coming in for a landing gradually, or a violent, sudden shock? The latter was the answer. The final fall of the West will be rapid, and 8 years is quite enough.

Czechoslovakia’s peaceful split in 1993, often cited as a model for non-violent state breakup, required two distinct, regionally concentrated nations (Czechs and Slovaks) with clear internal borders and a mutual willingness to separate. The political elites on both sides negotiated the terms of separation.

We show a CONTAGION will sweep the world. This will not be a single isolated event. That is the GOOD NEWS. Because this is a CONTAGION, violence should be more at a minimum domestically. The Sovereign Default will undermine the CONFIDENCE in the political state making it more difficult for the government to deploy its armies against the people as we saw with Yeltsin standing on the tanks. The troops were not ready to return to Communism themselves and the coup failed.

The American Civil War was over a religious dispute involving slavery. It was NOT an economic crisis that caused the government to collapse. That is more like we see with Iran vs Israel. The downside will be for those holding government debt. Even in the USA post 1931, since most of Europe and even Canada defaulted on their sovereign debt, foreign debt crisis resulted in the U.S. government creating the Foreign Bondholders Protective Council (FBPC) in 1933 to protect American holders of defaulted foreign bonds and to try to negotiate repayment with foreign governments.

This time, we are looking at a worldwide Sovereign Debt Crisis because everyone borrows with no intention of paying anything off and they assume that this will last forever. That is the risk. Not private assets.

As Edward Gibbon wrote the epitaph of the Roman Empire:

“Her primeval state, such as she -might–appear in a remote age, when Evander entertained the stranger of Troy, has been delineated by the fancy of Virgil. This Tarpeian rock was then a savage and solitary thicket; in the time of the poet, it was crowned with the golden roofs of a temple, the temple is overthrown, the gold has been pillaged, the wheel of Fortune has accomplished her revolution, and the sacred ground is again disfigured with thorns and brambles. The hill of the Capitol, on which we sit, was formerly the head of the Roman Empire, the citadel of the earth, the terror of kings; illustrated by the footsteps of so many triumphs, enriched with the spoils and tributes of so many nations. This spectacle of the world, how is it fallen! how changed! how defaced! The path of victory is obliterated by vines, and the benches of the senators are concealed by a dunghill. Cast your eyes on the Palatine hill, and seek among the shapeless and enormous fragments the marble theatre, the obelisks, the colossal statues, the porticos of Nero’s palace: survey the other hills of the city, the vacant space is interrupted only by ruins and gardens. The forum of the Roman people where they assembled to enact their laws and elect their magistrates, is now enclosed for the cultivation of pot-herbs, or thrown open for the reception of swine and buffaloes. The public and private edifices that were founded for eternity lie prostrate, naked, and broken, like the limbs of a mighty giant, and the ruin is the more visible from the stupendous relics that have survived the injuries of time and fortune.”

Zelensky now says Ukraine needs to mobilize 50,000 to 60,000 people EVERY MONTH simply to keep pace with Russia. Stop for a moment and think about what that number actually means. At 50,000 per month, that is 600,000 people per year. At 60,000, it becomes 720,000. Zelensky is talking about finding a population roughly equivalent to a substantial European city every single year to feed into a war that has already been grinding on since 2022. Where are these people supposed to come from?

That is the question nobody wants to confront because Ukraine does not possess an unlimited reservoir of military-age men. Its population was already declining before the war. Millions of Ukrainians subsequently fled abroad, millions more live in Russian-occupied territory, and the remaining population has endured years of casualties, disability, displacement, emigration, and demographic collapse. Ukraine does not publish a complete current population count because there has been no census since 2001 and wartime migration makes estimates difficult.

Ukraine has already been forced to expand the recruitment pool. The minimum mobilization age was lowered from 27 to 25 in 2024. Men between 18 and 60 generally remain subject to wartime restrictions on leaving the country, although there are exemptions, and Kyiv has repeatedly revised mobilization procedures as the military searches for additional manpower. Rumor has it that they will start going after the young women next. Ukraine has resisted lowering compulsory mobilization to 18, instead creating voluntary contracts with enhanced financial incentives for people aged 18 to 24. I’d expect that to change as well.

A 20-year-old is not merely another soldier on a spreadsheet. He is potentially forty or fifty years of future productive labor. He is a future engineer, farmer, mechanic, entrepreneur, taxpayer, husband, and father. Kill or permanently disable enough young men and the economic consequences continue for generations after the politicians finally sign whatever peace agreement they could have negotiated years earlier.

Human capital is much harder to measure. How do you calculate the children who will never be born because their prospective fathers died at 23? How do you calculate the businesses never created, the taxes never paid, the families never formed, or the skilled workers who fled the country rather than risk being mobilized?

Ukraine already entered this war with one of Europe’s worst demographic problems. Its fertility rate had been well below replacement for years, and the war drove births still lower. That means the generation Kyiv is drawing upon today was already smaller than the generations that preceded it. You cannot manufacture another generation of 25-year-olds because the Defense Ministry needs another 50,000 recruits next month.

Then there is the issue everyone conveniently ignores when quoting mobilization figures: recruitment is not the same thing as increasing the size of the army. If Ukraine mobilizes 50,000 people while thousands of existing soldiers are killed, wounded, medically discharged, missing, deserting, or otherwise leaving service, the net increase is far smaller. They are replacing men the war has already consumed rather than expanding the military.

Russia faces the same brutal arithmetic, but Russia began with a population several times larger than Ukraine’s. Ukraine cannot simply compete with Russia soldier-for-soldier indefinitely and pretend demographics do not exist. If Moscow can recruit or mobilize from a vastly larger population, matching Russia’s monthly manpower numbers becomes increasingly expensive for Ukraine in demographic terms.

The people cheering for endless war from Washington, Brussels, London, Paris, and Berlin do not have to supply 60,000 Ukrainians every month. They supply money. They supply artillery shells. They supply missiles. They supply loans and weapons contracts. Ukraine supplies the human beings.

That is why Zelensky’s 50,000 to 60,000 figure should horrify anyone actually concerned about Ukraine’s future rather than merely its battlefield position next month. Annualize the upper end and Kyiv is talking about mobilizing 720,000 people every year merely to match what it says Russia is recruiting. That does not mean 720,000 will necessarily be mobilized or sent into combat, nor does it tell us Ukraine’s casualty total. But the scale of the stated requirement exposes the fundamental problem.

Ukraine cannot continue burning through its human capital indefinitely. Neither can Russia. There is no victory worth celebrating if, by the time politicians finally decide to negotiate, an entire generation has been buried, crippled, displaced, or driven overseas and the country supposedly being saved no longer has enough young people left to rebuild it. The weapons can eventually be replaced. The buildings can eventually be reconstructed. The debt can be rolled over and politicians will pretend somebody else will pay it later. The young men disappearing into this war cannot be printed, borrowed, or replaced.