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.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen met with Mario Draghi in Brussels to discuss the EU’s competitiveness agenda and the implementation of Draghi’s 2024 report at Draghi’s request. Whenever these two gather behind closed doors to discuss “competitiveness,” the European taxpayer should grab his wallet because Brussels has never encountered a problem it did not believe could be solved with more centralized power, more borrowing, and more government spending.

The Commission claims that it is making “excellent progress” on trade diversification, regulatory simplification, and a new roadmap called “One Europe, One Single Market.” Paula Pinho, von der Leyen’s chief spokesperson, boasted that the Commission, Council, and Parliament are now committed to following a common timetable for implementing many of Draghi’s recommendations.

“One Europe, One Single Market” is another step toward stripping national governments of economic authority and transferring it to Brussels. They call this harmonization because admitting that it is centralization would alarm the public. European nations are expected to surrender more control over taxation, regulation, capital markets, energy, industry, and public spending to unelected officials who helped create the crisis in the first place.

Mario Draghi’s report correctly diagnosed many of Europe’s illnesses. Productivity is stagnant, energy is too expensive, investment is inadequate, markets are fragmented, and innovation is moving to the United States and Asia. Europe is falling behind in artificial intelligence, semiconductors, defense, digital infrastructure, and advanced manufacturing. Yet Draghi will not admit that the European Union’s own policies produced much of this destruction.

Brussels deliberately increased energy costs through Net Zero mandates, carbon taxes, sanctions, and the abandonment of reliable energy. It suffocated industry beneath environmental rules and compliance requirements. It imposed the Digital Services Act, the Digital Markets Act, ESG mandates, supply-chain directives, and endless reporting obligations. It then looked at the wreckage and concluded that Europe suffers from insufficient government management.

Draghi estimates that Europe requires between €750 billion and €800 billion in additional investment every year through 2030. That is approximately 4.4% to 4.7% of the EU’s annual GDP. The proposed spending includes roughly €300 billion for the energy transition, €150 billion for transportation and charging infrastructure, €150 billion for digital technologies, €50 billion for defense and security, and another €100 billion to €150 billion for innovation.

They are not discussing a modest reform program. They are contemplating an economic transformation costing up to €4.8 trillion over six years. Since private capital refuses to invest sufficient amounts under the conditions Brussels created, Draghi wants government to guide, subsidize, guarantee, and de-risk the investment. In other words, the taxpayer absorbs the losses while politically connected corporations collect the profits.

The European Parliament has estimated that public financing would need to provide approximately €150 billion to €160 billion annually if Europe maintained its traditional 80% private and 20% public investment split. The EU budget cannot provide anything close to that amount. Brussels will therefore demand new “own resources,” expanded EU taxes, financial guarantees, redirected national budgets, or another round of common borrowing.

They always invent a crisis and then use it to push debt that the people never approved. COVID produced NextGenerationEU, which allowed the Commission to borrow hundreds of billions collectively for the first time. What was sold as an exceptional emergency became the blueprint for permanent EU fiscal authority. Those debts must still be repaid, with the repayment burden expected to reach around €30 billion annually beginning in 2028. Now Draghi’s competitiveness agenda provides the excuse for the next debt machine.

Draghi is the same man who promised to do “whatever it takes” to preserve the euro when he headed the European Central Bank. That statement is praised as some act of genius, but it meant that the ECB would suppress bond yields, monetize sovereign risk, and protect the political project regardless of the economic cost. His policies preserved the euro’s institutional structure while encouraging governments to avoid the structural reforms that a genuine market would have forced upon them.

Von der Leyen has operated by the same principle. When her policies fail, she never questions the policy. She demands more authority to enforce it. Europe lost cheap energy, so Brussels proposed massive green subsidies. European companies cannot compete, so Brussels demands a centralized industrial policy. National budgets are drowning in debt, so the Commission wants shared debt. Citizens reject deeper integration, so they rename it “simplification” and “competitiveness.”

The Commission points to trade agreements with Mercosur, India, and Switzerland as proof of progress. Trade diversification is sensible, but no collection of agreements will compensate for making production prohibitively expensive inside Europe. A German chemical company cannot compete because von der Leyen signs another document in Brussels while its energy bill remains multiples of what a competitor pays abroad.

The EU’s competitiveness problem is not a shortage of reports. Draghi produced around 380 recommendations, yet a 2025 European Parliament study found that only 11% had been adopted by September of that year. Brussels now celebrates “steady progress” while European businesses continue to close plants, cut employment, and move investment abroad. These people measure success by the number of directives issued and committees formed, not by whether anyone can still afford to manufacture a product.

Europe does not need €800 billion annually in politically directed investment to repair damage caused by politically directed economics. It needs affordable energy, lower taxes, fewer regulations, protection of property rights, and governments willing to allow capital to allocate itself. Innovation cannot be ordered into existence by Ursula von der Leyen. Entrepreneurs do not need another EU fund administered by bureaucrats who have never created a business or met a payroll.

Their “One Europe, One Single Market” roadmap moves Europe closer to fiscal union without democratic consent. Monetary union was created without debt union or political union, producing the structural crisis embedded in the euro from the beginning. Brussels now intends to use every emergency to construct those missing components through the back door.

The productive citizens of Europe will be ordered to finance it all. They will pay through direct taxation, carbon costs, inflation, reduced pensions, financial repression, and the liabilities attached to common EU debt. German workers are already discovering that the state consumes nearly half the economic value of labor. High earners are looking toward Switzerland, Britain, the United States, and the UAE because the reward for productivity inside the EU continues to shrink.

Von der Leyen and Draghi are not rescuing European competitiveness. They are trying to preserve the centralized political structure that destroyed it. Europe was built by its people and its diverse nations. It is being dismantled by bureaucrats who genuinely believe prosperity can be produced through a timetable agreed upon by three EU institutions over lunch in Brussels. These are not economic architects. They are undertakers discussing how to finance the funeral.

Washington keeps insisting the economy is healthy because unemployment has not collapsed and inflation has moderated. Then you look at housing, and the entire narrative falls apart. A nation cannot call itself prosperous when ordinary working families can no longer afford the most basic measure of financial stability—a home.

The National Association of Home Builders reported that builder confidence fell to 34 in July, marking the fifteenth consecutive month below 40. That is the longest stretch of depressed sentiment since 2012, when the country was still climbing out of the housing crash. Builders are not pessimistic because they suddenly forgot how to build houses. They are pessimistic because the customer has disappeared.

To attract buyers, 37% of builders are now cutting prices, up from 35% just one month ago. The average discount remains around 6%, while nearly two-thirds are offering additional incentives just to get contracts signed. When builders begin sacrificing margins like this, it tells you demand has weakened far more than politicians are willing to admit.

Mortgage rates remain near their highest levels in years, and monthly payments have exploded. A modest decline in the purchase price does very little when financing costs have doubled. Someone who could comfortably qualify for a mortgage five years ago may find themselves completely priced out today, even if their salary has increased. Inflation did not simply raise prices. It destroyed purchasing power.

The problem extends far beyond housing. Americans now carry more than $1.25 trillion in credit card debt while total household debt has climbed above $18 trillion. Credit card interest rates remain above 20% for many borrowers, auto insurance continues setting new records, utility bills have climbed, groceries remain dramatically more expensive than they were just a few years ago, and student loan collections have resumed. Housing is not competing against one expense. It is competing against every expense. A mortgage payment has become just another bill in a long line of bills that many households can barely keep up with.

Meanwhile, builders continue battling higher material costs, expensive land, labor shortages, regulatory burdens, and financing costs of their own. The National Association of Home Builders estimates that government regulations, fees, permits, and compliance costs account for more than one-quarter of the final price of a new single-family home. Politicians continue promising affordable housing while making it increasingly expensive to build one.

Congress recently passed housing legislation intended to increase supply and reduce investor ownership of single-family homes. Those reforms may help around the edges, but they do not solve the central problem. You cannot restore affordability simply by building more houses if borrowing costs remain elevated and the purchasing power of the middle class continues deteriorating. Builders themselves acknowledged the legislation is a positive step, but they also admitted meaningful relief will take time and additional reforms at the state and local levels.

Housing has always reflected confidence. During periods of optimism, people willingly take on thirty-year mortgages because they believe tomorrow will be better than today. That confidence is fading. Prospective buyers are sitting on the sidelines because they no longer trust where the economy is headed. They see geopolitical conflict expanding, government debt exploding, inflation permanently embedded into everyday living costs, and interest rates that refuse to return to the emergency levels people had come to expect.

The American Dream is not vanishing because people no longer want to own a home. It is slipping away because the financial system has made ownership increasingly unattainable for the very people who built the middle class in the first place.

QUESTION: You have mentioned that the neocons never look behind the end of the nose. Do they ever assess the risks correctly? Is it because they are just biased by what you have pointed out in Wolfowitz’s policy?

D

ANSWER: I have studied military tactics.  As I have said, my father was a colonel with General Patton from North Africa to Berlin. In any military action, you must begin every operation with a detailed look at the enemy. Before a commander approves a mission, the staff MUST explain the opposing force’s capabilities, intentions, and likely courses of action. Get the threat wrong, and everything that follows rests on a false assumption. This is what happened in this Iran debacle.

Netanyahu is a sick, biased Neocon. He always operates with the goal of trying to assassinate the leadership and assumes he will be victorious. That strategy has NEVER worked even once. But as they say, the definition of insanity is repeating the same mistake and assuming a different outcome.

I know for a fact that war game simulation with Iran conduct a decade ago all showed that Iran would take the Strait of Hormuz. There was no strategic planning. This is Netanyahu’s mess and the Neocons escorted him into the Situation Room to see this same stupid idea of instant victory with ZERO plan B contemplation. They did that with Iraq and there was ZERO planning for what would happen by taking out Saddam. They also completely ignored that taking out Saddam, they removed the #1 enemy of Iran.

My discussions even back in early 1990s with these Neocons was all about taking out Iraq, Iran, Syria, Libya, and Lebanon and it was to protect Israel. What Wesley Clark says here after 911, fits with what I was told in the early ’90s. As I have said, they created Homeland Security claiming that various agencies had information but did not share it. The first crew of terrorists were in Metropolitan Correctional Center, New York (MCC) and even drew the Twin Towers on the wall with planes going into them. The Bureau of Prisons (BOP) employee Mr. Kumb provided the recreation materials they used. The BOP came down to 10 South and filmed everything. Their lawyer, Lynne Stewart (1939-2017), was imprisoned for passing them notes for 4 years.

The Neocons assume that the US has the largest and most powerful military so they need only wage war with no strategy to win. This is why we get into these endless wars for they is ZERO planning. There is never an exit strategy. And they always have zero strategy for any aftermath.

These people are traitors to our country. They always seek to abuse the military power for personal agendas. That is no different from insider trading for monetary profit, but they have no regard for the lives lost for their military campaigns as if this is still some child’s game of RISK.

Neoconservative foreign policy is dangerously ideological and willing to accept significant human costs to achieve its goals. The question are they just “psychopaths” since the care nothing about the people they send to war perhaps can’t be proven or disproven since that is a clinical diagnosis.

Nevertheless, their personal motivation clearly colors or foreign policy outcomes, driven by their ideology, and decision-making processes. They clearly have no empathy for individuals whatsoever. Their ideological zeal comes at extremely high costs that extend beyond just the people who they send to their death. More than 50% of the national debt is all because of their reckless spending on endless wars and then perpetual servicing of that debt undermines the economy and erodes the living standards of the average American subjecting society to ever increasing proportion of GDP consumed by government.

The book America Alone, details the neoconservative influence on the George W. Bush administration. It illustrates that this group pushed a foreign policy emphasizing military confrontation, leading to the Iraq War, with consequences yielded no benefit to the USA or Israel. This neoconservatism has been a movement focused on achieving and maintaining unchallenged U.S. military dominance as set forth in the Wolfowitz Doctrine. This quest for world domination has led to a series of perpetual wars of choice and confrontations with powers like Russia, pushing the world closer to major conflict.

This entire movement has been so misplaced and it washes its hands in blood while stuffing their pockets with money. Their entire premise has been built on a disdain of historical evidence entirely based on a false premise that U.S. military superiority can dictate terms worldwide. Because of this delusional idea of military power, this had led to a reckless series of endless wars that have undermined the economy and cast a shadow over the entire image of the United States as being the beacon of liberty and justice for all. They maneuver dominating every administration regardless of party affiliation.

They convince themselves that they wear the white hats and are seeking to dominate the world to bring DEMOCRACY when in fact the very proof that they are unelected and infiltrate each and every administration to usurp American foreign policy proves that we do not live in a Democracy at all. This is NEVER in the interest of the people no less the nation. I know of no politician who would dare to cross swords with these people proving that they in fact control American foreign policy. No president nor Congress call the shots any more.

One of the greatest lies in politics is that anyone who opposes excessive government regulation must therefore oppose government enforcement. Those are two entirely different issues. I have always argued that government has expanded into areas where it has no constitutional business while simultaneously abandoning the few responsibilities that actually justify its existence. Protecting the integrity of the nation’s food supply is one of those responsibilities. If Washington cannot ensure that Americans can buy a head of lettuce without wondering if it will send them to the hospital, then what exactly are taxpayers funding?

CNBC reported that the FDA has now withdrawn its earlier statement claiming that Taylor Farms iceberg lettuce tested positive for Cyclospora, calling the result a false positive after additional testing. Yet the outbreak itself remains very real. Dozens of people have been hospitalized across multiple states, and the FDA still cannot identify with certainty where the contamination originated. The government now admits the laboratory result was wrong while simultaneously telling the public that the investigation continues because people unquestionably became sick.

That explanation should not reassure anyone. The only reason Americans even know there was a problem is because Taco Bell voluntarily disclosed that it had removed onions and lettuce supplied through one of its vendors after cooperating with investigators. Had the restaurant remained silent, would the public have ever known there was a nationwide outbreak? That is becoming the far more important question because the FDA still refuses to identify the supplier at the center of the investigation while insisting there is no confirmed contaminated product.

Immediately, the political blame game began. The usual crowd declared this was the fault of DOGE, spending cuts, or President Trump. That argument collapses the moment anyone bothers looking at history instead of cable television.

Food safety failures have become routine for decades under both political parties. In 2024, onions traced to Taylor Farms were linked to the McDonald’s E. coli outbreak that killed one person and sickened well over one hundred others. Years before that, Taylor Farms products were associated with another Cyclospora outbreak involving packaged salad mixes. Boar’s Head became the center of a deadly Listeria outbreak after federal inspectors documented repeated sanitation failures. None of those disasters occurred because of DOGE. None occurred because Donald Trump supposedly weakened food inspections. They happened while the federal bureaucracy was larger than ever and while agencies continued asking Congress for more money.

Washington never seems to run out of money to regulate automobiles, light bulbs, washing machines, cryptocurrency, carbon emissions, or what people say online. Yet somehow, after spending trillions of dollars across the federal government, it cannot consistently perform one of the few legitimate functions assigned to it—ensuring the nation’s food is safe.

America’s food supply has become extraordinarily concentrated. A remarkably small number of agricultural conglomerates now produce, process, package, and distribute much of the nation’s fresh produce. Taylor Farms has grown into one of the largest fresh-cut produce companies in North America, processing millions of pounds of vegetables every week for restaurant chains, schools, hospitals, supermarkets, and institutional buyers. Fresh Express, Dole, Fresh Del Monte, Church Brothers Farms, and a handful of other corporations dominate much of the remaining packaged produce market.

On the distribution side sits Sysco, the largest food-service distributor in North America, supplying hundreds of thousands of restaurants, hospitals, schools, hotels, and institutional kitchens every single day. When so much of the food chain flows through so few corporate pipelines, one failure can spread contaminated products across dozens of states before anyone even realizes something has gone wrong.

That concentration has quietly created a system where a handful of corporations effectively control enormous portions of what Americans eat. We are constantly told that monopolies are dangerous when discussing technology companies, yet almost nobody in Washington wants to discuss the consolidation of agriculture and food distribution. It has reached the point where millions of people may unknowingly consume products originating from the same processors, packed in the same facilities, and distributed through the same supply networks. One mistake becomes national almost overnight.

This is where the corruption begins to reveal itself. Whenever one of these giants finds itself connected to another outbreak, regulators suddenly become cautious with names, cautious with announcements, and cautious with assigning responsibility. They speak in vague language about “suppliers” and “traceback investigations” while refusing to tell consumers exactly who produced the food sitting in their refrigerators. If a small family farm repeatedly poisoned customers, it would likely be shut down permanently. When multinational food conglomerates become associated with repeated investigations, everyone suddenly worries about protecting brands, protecting markets, and protecting investor confidence instead of protecting the public. That is corporate protectionism hiding behind government bureaucracy.

People often misunderstand my criticism of regulation. I do not believe Washington needs another hundred thousand pages of rules written by bureaucrats who have never planted a crop or worked inside a processing facility. The laws already exist. Sanitation standards already exist. Inspection authority already exists. The problem is that enforcement has become selective while bureaucracies increasingly serve the industries they regulate instead of the public they are supposed to protect. Government grows larger every year, but accountability somehow grows smaller.

The FDA now tells Americans that the original laboratory finding was incorrect while simultaneously admitting that the outbreak remains unresolved. Somebody knows far more than the public has been told. Yet instead of complete transparency, Americans receive carefully worded press releases. That should concern everyone regardless of political affiliation.

Washington has built an empire regulating every corner of American life while repeatedly failing at the few responsibilities that actually matter. Until regulators stop protecting politically connected corporations and start holding the largest players to exactly the same standards as everyone else, these outbreaks will continue, public confidence will continue to collapse, and Americans will continue paying the price every time they sit down for what should have been an ordinary meal.

New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani has decided to enter the realm of international diplomacy by threatening to arrest Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu should he attend the United Nations General Assembly this September.

Speaking to the New York Times, Mamdani called Netanyahu “a war criminal” and declared, “Netanyahu belongs in The Hague.” He said there is an “active conversation” between his administration, the NYPD, and city lawyers over whether they could detain the Israeli leader if he comes to New York. Mamdani added, “Whatever the law allows me to do in New York, we will do.”

The International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Netanyahu in 2024, alleging war crimes and crimes against humanity during the Gaza conflict. Israel rejects those allegations, and more importantly, the United States has never accepted the jurisdiction of the ICC over American territory. Washington has consistently opposed allowing the ICC to exercise authority over U.S. citizens or close allies, and both Republican and Democratic administrations have challenged the court when it attempted to extend its reach.

Foreign policy is conducted by the federal government, not by the mayor of New York City. A mayor oversees sanitation, policing, transportation, zoning, and municipal services. He does not decide whether the United States will recognize international arrest warrants or rewrite diplomatic protocol every time a foreign leader lands at JFK Airport.

Even if someone wanted to test this theory, there are enormous legal barriers. Visiting heads of government attending the United Nations operate under federal authority, diplomatic agreements, and longstanding principles of head-of-state immunity. The United Nations Headquarters Agreement and federal control over foreign relations leave virtually no room for a municipal government to conduct its own independent foreign policy. That is precisely why U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Mike Waltz dismissed the proposal as “pure political theater.”

Israeli Ambassador Danny Danon likewise condemned the remarks, arguing that instead of trying to conduct foreign policy through City Hall, New York’s mayor should focus on governing the city. Even Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu brushed the threat aside, saying he intends to come to New York regardless and accusing Mamdani of siding with Hamas.

The powers that be would absolutely never allow this to happen. Politicians increasingly campaign by promising actions they know are impossible because the promise itself becomes the campaign advertisement. Whether the promise is ever fulfilled becomes almost irrelevant because the headline has already served its purpose.

If Mamdani truly believed he possessed the authority to arrest the sitting prime minister of one of America’s closest allies while that leader was attending the United Nations, the constitutional crisis would be unprecedented. The federal government would almost certainly intervene immediately. The Secret Service, State Department, Department of Justice, and federal courts (not City Hall) would determine how such a situation would be handled. No administration in Washington, regardless of party, is likely to permit a municipal official to dictate American foreign policy through the NYPD.

Local politicians increasingly seek international relevance because it generates more attention than fixing the problems they were actually elected to solve. New York continues to struggle with violent crime, housing affordability, infrastructure failures, illegal immigration, fleeing businesses, and the cost of living crisis. Those are matters that fall squarely within a mayor’s responsibilities. Arresting foreign heads of government does not.

The public should always distinguish between political messaging and political power. They are rarely the same thing. Campaign rhetoric often gives the impression that elected officials possess unlimited authority. In reality, power is fragmented across constitutions, federal law, diplomatic agreements, courts, and institutional checks. That is exactly why so many dramatic promises never materialize after Election Day.

Vladimir Putin met with North Korean Foreign Minister Choe Son Hui at the Kremlin after she delivered a personal message from Kim Jong Un reaffirming North Korea’s unconditional support for Russia. Moscow thanked Pyongyang for sending troops to assist Russian forces in Kursk and both governments pledged to deepen the strategic partnership signed last year.

People continue to ask why Russia, North Korea, China, and Iran appear to be drawing closer together. They answer their own question without realizing it. Every sanction, every asset seizure, every attempt to isolate one country simply encourages it to build relationships with another.

The neocons believed Russia could be economically strangled into submission. Instead, they accelerated the creation of an alternative network of military, financial, and industrial cooperation outside the Western system. They have spent years celebrating sanctions while simultaneously wondering why BRICS continues expanding and why countries are reducing their dependence on the West.

North Korea is no longer merely issuing statements of support. According to South Korean and Western intelligence estimates, Pyongyang has deployed roughly 14,000 troops to assist Russia, including an initial force of about 11,000 soldiers followed by approximately 3,000 reinforcements after suffering significant casualties. Beyond manpower, North Korea has shipped millions of artillery shells, rockets, and ballistic missiles that have become an increasingly important part of Russia’s battlefield logistics. Moscow has not simply accepted that assistance out of gratitude.

In return, Russia is believed to have provided North Korea with advanced satellite technology, missile expertise, air-defense systems, economic aid, fuel, food supplies, and diplomatic backing. What began as a transactional wartime relationship has steadily evolved into a strategic military partnership with benefits flowing in both directions.

This is also why I have repeatedly stated that the world is breaking into competing economic and military blocs. The post-Cold War era is over. Nations are no longer trying to join one global system. They are choosing sides because confidence in international institutions has collapsed. Once trust disappears, countries stop relying on treaties and begin relying on each other.

Washington still behaves as though every nation will eventually return to the negotiating table because sanctions are supposed to force compliance. The opposite has occurred: Russia has found new markets, China has found new customers, and North Korea has found a powerful patron. Every attempt to isolate one country has encouraged the formation of another alliance.

The politicians who designed the sanctions strategy assumed Russia would become weaker, isolated, and eventually negotiate from a position of desperation. Instead, Moscow found new trading partners, new financial channels, new military suppliers, and governments that now have every incentive to cooperate with one another. Once countries begin building supply chains, weapons production, intelligence sharing, and military planning together, those relationships do not disappear because diplomats issue another communiqué. Washington and Brussels keep measuring success by the number of sanctions imposed while ignoring whether those sanctions are producing the intended result. The geopolitical map is being redrawn before everyone’s eyes, and much of it has been accelerated by Western policy itself.

QUESTION: Martin,

How does the richest man in the world not understand basic economics?

Blog post?

BT

ANSWER: For the life of me, I believe this sort of thinking all stems from Karl Marx and this distorted idea that the object is to be taken care of by government and just lay around and watch TV that is intended to indoctrinate people. This sort of reasoning is against every basic foundation of civilization. AI and robots are incapable of original discovery for they cannot possess that human characteristic of curiosity.

Elon Musk’s reasoning that AI and robots will make work optional is based on a core economic absurd argument: AI and robotics will create such an abundance of goods and services that the very concepts of work and money become largely obsolete. However, this vision also faces significant challenges and raises complex questions about the human desire for purpose. I was doing research in the Firestone Library at Princeton University. I became friends with one professor who had known Einstein.

He asked me what I was so intensely researching. I explained that I was trying to ascertain why all governments rise and then crash and burn throughout the centuries. He then  said to me that I reminded him of Einstein. I was taken back. I said I was no Einstein.  He then explained to me to me that the subject matter did not matter. It was curiosity that was the mother of all discovery. Without someone being curious, human society would stagnate.

During the late 1970s, I went through Check-Point-Charlie into East Germany. I wanted to see what Communism was all about and why they needed a wall to prevent people from fleeing. Those words from that professor suddenly rang true. The government feared individualism and curiosity. Because of that, the Russian economy could never compete with Capitalism because it suppressed the very essence of how human society advances. It requires that curiosity to make innovations that expands the economy and raises the standard of living.

Musk’s argument is rooted in what he sees as the logic of productivity and deflation. His reasoning can be broken down as follows.

1. The core idea is that AI and robots will be capable of performing nearly all physical and cognitive labor at near-zero marginal cost . This would lead to a massive surge in the production of goods and services. However, it would be like Communism lacking that curiosity and this would suppress any advancement.
2. The resulting supply would vastly outpace the available money supply, causing the prices of everything from food and housing to healthcare and education to plummet towards zero . For example, current productivity might see one worker produce 100 units per day, while one AI could produce 10,000, fundamentally breaking the link between work and survival.

In this state of “post-scarcity,” money, which Musk describes as an “information system for labor allocation,” would lose its purpose. If you can have anything you want without needing to direct someone else’s labor, he assumes that the currency system collapses. He has stated, “I think money will stop being relevant at some point in the future.”

To manage this transition, Musk proposes a “universal high income” (UHI), which goes beyond a basic safety net to ensure a comfortable life for everyone, funded by the massive surplus generated by AI and robots.

In this future, work would transition from a necessity for survival to an optional pursuit for personal satisfaction—a hobby, much like gardening for pleasure rather than out of necessity .

While Musk sees a future of shared prosperity, the classic communist goal, this vision is childish and lacks any reference historically. There is one historical precedent that needs to be addressed. There is a well-known historical paradox. Spain did import vast amounts of silver and gold from its New World colonies, but this wealth did NOT lead to broad economic expansion and instead contributed to a long-term decline.

The “Resource Curse” and Economic Distortion:
The massive influx of precious metals, especially silver, created a “resource curse” effect on the Spanish economy. The primary impact was severe inflation, which made Spanish goods expensive and uncompetitive internationally.

The “Dutch Disease” Effect:
Economists have identified this as an early case of “Dutch disease,” where a boom in one sector (in this case, raw materials from the colonies) harms other sectors like manufacturing. The inflow of silver inflated prices and led to a rise in the relative price of non-tradable goods (like services and housing) compared to tradable goods (like manufactured products).

This meant Spain’s domestic industries could NOT compete with cheaper goods from other European nations. As a result, the bullion largely “passed through” Spain to pay for imports, fueling the economies of countries like England and the Netherlands rather than fostering domestic economic expansion. A close analysis reveals that by 1750, Spain’s GDP per capita was over 40% lower than it would have been without the silver influx.

The massive mining and agricultural work in the Americas was not performed by a disgruntled Spanish populace. It was carried out through the brutal exploitation of Indigenous peoples under systems like the encomienda and later through the forced labor of enslaved Africans.

While there is evidence of French migration to parts of Spain, such as the Bishopric of Girona in the 16th and 17th centuries, this was a regional phenomenon. These French immigrants were noted to be heavily represented in the treballador (worker) category. Under Musk’s fictional economic system, migrants from poor regions will be attracted to fill jobs with actual human labor that Mush assumes can be eliminated with AI and robots.

Musk is making the same mistake as the Marxists and does not comprehend that “lack of economic expansion” in this economic utopia as we saw in Spain that was caused by the distorting effect of vast, sudden wealth on the national economy, which discouraged domestic industry. AI and Robots lack that human element of curiosity and that is the cornerstone of civilization. Those nation states that embraced capitalism and free financial markets, encouraged investment and that does not take place without the CONCENTRATION of wealth the socialists hate so much. But there is a disparity of wealth also among nations, which they seem to ignore.

In January 2014, IBM committed $1 billion to create a new Watson business division. This was a significant move to commercialize Watson’s cognitive computing abilities and make them available via the cloud. This investment included a $100 million venture fund to support startups developing apps powered by Watson.

A large portion of IBM’s investment went into Watson Health, which aimed to revolutionize medical treatment. The company spent more than $4 billion to acquire health-related data and analytics companies. This endeavor, however, faced major challenges and is widely considered a failure, with IBM eventually selling off parts of Watson Health for over $1 billion in 2022. The told the world that Watson would discover the cure for cancer. That requires curiosity, which Watson lacked.

Musk’s reasoning presents a logical endpoint of technological progress—a world of immense abundance. However, the economic “math” of this future is only half the equation. The “human nature” part, how society navigates the transition and how people find meaning beyond work, remains the central, unresolved challenge of his vision. Without that human trait of curiosity, the economy will stagnate and eventually collapse. Just compare the economic growth of even Germany at 0.8% compared to the United States at 2.16%. The distinguishing factor is the highly socialistic policy of Germany and the EU seeking to control every aspect of society.

Musk’s world would be another version of communism for even without money, then the state would own everything and you will NOT be happy. Investment would NOT exist and that individual who comes up with an idea would have no means to develop that into a successful industry. In Communism, children were taught that the state was their real parent. There was no God, that was just the controlling mechanism of Capitalism. Ambition was evil as was curiosity. All progress would come to a halt, which was why communism failed.

There is a vast difference between making an error and deliberately concealing intelligence from the American people. The newly declassified White House documents do not describe mere bureaucratic incompetence. They allege a coordinated effort to downplay and suppress intelligence regarding Chinese election meddling while protecting the reputation of the agencies involved. Democracy has been obliterated.

According to the documents released by the White House, intelligence officials obtained information indicating that Chinese actors had acquired approximately 220 million American voter records. The administration also alleges that reports connecting China to election-related intelligence were softened or omitted from senior intelligence briefings and that documents later surfaced from burn bags designated for classified destruction. These are allegations contained in the released material and remain subject to ongoing investigation rather than established judicial findings. Trump stated that those tasked with discarding of the documents failed to perform their tasks, leaving a trail of evidence for his administration to uncover.

What infuriates me is the double standard that has infected Washington. Imagine for one moment that the political parties were reversed. Suppose documents emerged alleging that a Republican administration had concealed intelligence pointing to foreign interference by one of America’s chief geopolitical adversaries. Suppose classified records were reportedly found in burn bags after years of being withheld. Cities would burn. Trump would be publicly executed in the streets like Mussolini.

Instead, we are told to remain patient and trust the very institutions accused of suppressing the information in the first place.

Government employees do not swear an oath to protect an agency. They swear an oath to the Constitution. When bureaucrats begin deciding what elected officials should or should not know because they dislike the political consequences, they cross a line that no free society should tolerate. Intelligence belongs to the nation—not to unelected officials who believe they know better than the people they are supposed to serve.

China spent decades acquiring American technology, purchasing farmland, infiltrating universities, stealing intellectual property, conducting cyber espionage, and expanding influence across every major strategic sector. To pretend that election-related data would somehow be off limits demonstrates either astonishing naivety or deliberate blindness. Neither explanation inspires confidence.

A foreign government may have decided the results of the 2020 US Presidential Election. The American public should be absolutely outraged and insisting on answers from past administrations. On the hook for billions in tariffs, China has numerous motives for wanting Trump out of office. America appeared weak on the international stage under Biden.

If officials truly possessed intelligence suggesting that China had compromised massive amounts of voter information and failed to pursue every available avenue to expose and confront it, that level of complacency would be nothing short of treasonous against the public trust. Whether those actions ultimately meet any criminal standard is for investigators and the courts to determine. But if public servants knowingly placed institutional or political interests above the security of the nation, the American people deserve complete accountability.

What has always astonished me is how Washington treats transparency as the enemy instead of the cure. Every scandal follows the same script. Deny. Delay. Classify. Seal the records. Attack anyone asking questions. Years later, documents quietly emerge showing that far more was known than anyone admitted at the time. By then, the damage has already been done.

This is exactly why public confidence continues to collapse. It is not because people have suddenly become cynical. It is because governments repeatedly ask citizens to ignore contradictions that become impossible to ignore. Every concealed report, every sanitized briefing, and every document hidden from public scrutiny chips away at the legitimacy of the institutions themselves.

If these newly released records withstand scrutiny, then the outrage should not be confined to one political party. Every American, regardless of ideology, should demand answers. A government that cannot be trusted to honestly confront foreign threats cannot expect the public to simply accept assurances that everything is under control.