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.

PRIVATE BLOG – Why WWIII Comes in 2027

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Iran is now watching its economy unravel in real time. The Statistical Center of Iran reports that GDP collapsed 10.1% during the first quarter of the Iranian calendar year, from March 21 through June 20, compared with the same period last year. Take oil out of the calculation and the economy still contracted 4.6%. This is not some minor technical recession that economists can explain away with seasonal adjustments. Oil and natural gas activity collapsed 26.4%, industry and mining fell 14.7%, services declined 4.8%, and manufacturing contracted 2.5%. Agriculture was practically the only major sector still moving in the opposite direction, growing 2.3%.

Iran has lived under sanctions for decades, but this is different because the country is now being hit simultaneously by war, collapsing oil revenue, disrupted trade, inflation, currency depreciation, and declining domestic production. That combination is lethal to an economy because each problem feeds the next.

The oil numbers are astonishing. Iranian crude and condensate loadings reportedly fell from around 2 million barrels per day in March to roughly 740,000 barrels per day in July and only about 220,000 to 255,000 barrels per day in August. OPEC data showed Iranian crude production itself dropping by 399,000 barrels per day during August to approximately 2.09 million barrels per day. Oil is not merely another Iranian industry. It is one of Tehran’s primary sources of hard currency, which is why restricting those exports strikes directly at the government’s ability to finance imports and support the domestic economy.

The people always pay the price before government does. Iran’s 12-month average inflation reached 69.9%, while the rial recently traded above 2.2 million to the dollar after being around 1 million only a year earlier. Official unemployment reached 9.1% during the spring, with roughly 450,000 fewer people employed than a year earlier. Average monthly wages reportedly cover less than one-third of basic household expenses. Imagine working every month and discovering that your paycheck covers perhaps ten days of what your family actually needs. That is when people stop believing government statistics because they experience the collapse every time they walk into a market.

This is why currency matters far more than politicians understand. People do not wake up one morning and suddenly decide they hate their government because GDP fell 10.1%. They become angry because their money no longer buys food, savings disappear, medicine becomes unaffordable, electricity becomes unreliable, businesses close and their children cannot find employment. The government can manipulate statistics and blame foreigners all it wants, but it cannot manipulate what someone can afford when they walk into a grocery store.

The rial tells the story that politicians cannot hide. When confidence disappears, people move away from government money into whatever they believe will preserve purchasing power. They buy dollars, gold, property, cryptocurrency, commodities, or anything tangible. This is why governments facing economic crises invariably impose more controls rather than admitting their policies have failed. They blame speculators, currency dealers, merchants, foreign governments, and eventually their own citizens because admitting that confidence has collapsed means admitting that government itself is the problem. The Iranian government has responded by expanding its electronic food-coupon program. That alone tells you where this is heading.

Washington should not celebrate this as some clean victory either. Economic warfare always produces consequences well beyond the government being targeted. Ordinary Iranians are absorbing the inflation, unemployment, shortages, collapsing currency, and declining living standards. At the same time, disrupting Iranian energy exports reduces supply in a global oil market already being shaken by instability around Hormuz, Yemen, and Bab el-Mandeb. You can cripple your opponent economically while simultaneously raising energy and shipping costs for everyone else.

There is another lesson here that Washington never seems to understand. Sanctions forced Iran to become increasingly dependent upon China, while the blockade has now gone much further by physically restricting the country’s ability to export crude. China became Iran’s principal remaining oil customer because the West progressively shut Tehran out of its financial and commercial systems. Every round of economic warfare therefore strengthens the incentive for targeted countries to construct trade relationships that bypass the West altogether.

GDP has fallen 10.1%. The oil and gas sector has contracted more than 26%. Industry and mining are down nearly 15%. Inflation is devastating household purchasing power, the rial has lost more than half its value against the dollar in roughly a year, and hundreds of thousands of jobs have disappeared. These are different symptoms of the same collapse in economic confidence.

The Iranian people are being squeezed between their own government’s priorities and an external economic war designed to deprive Tehran of the money required to sustain itself.. The ordinary citizen pays the consequences. Their savings evaporate, their wages buy less, their businesses fail, and their children inherit an economy with fewer opportunities than the generation before them. Governments can survive astonishing economic pain because they control taxation, regulation, money, and ultimately force, but there comes a point when the population simply cannot absorb another decline in its standard of living. Iran is getting dangerously close to discovering where that point lies.

Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz has now said something that should disturb anyone. According to The Jerusalem Post, Katz threatened to destroy what remains of Gaza City and forcibly evacuate around ONE MILLION Palestinians if Hamas takes a single Israeli hostage. Think about what is being said. One person is captured and a million people may be driven from their homes while what remains of their city is destroyed. The Jerusalem Post itself acknowledged that such a statement could make Israel’s defense against genocide and war crimes accusations at The Hague more difficult because international law requires proportionality.

This is precisely why international humanitarian law prohibits COLLECTIVE PUNISHMENT. Article 33 of the Fourth Geneva Convention states that no protected person may be punished for an offense he or she did not personally commit. Collective penalties and measures of intimidation are prohibited. This principle exists because humanity has already traveled down this road. Governments cannot punish an entire village, city, ethnic population, or civilian society because one person or armed organization committed an offense. Otherwise there is no law of war. There is merely vengeance.

There is also a serious distinction between hostage taking and the capture of an enemy combatant during warfare. Israel deems taken soldiers “hostages” rather than “prisoners of war.” The Geneva Conventions contain an entire framework governing prisoners of war and people detained during armed conflict. The ICRC makes clear that POWs and other wartime detainees are protected by international humanitarian law. Hostage taking is prohibited, but so is collective punishment.

If Hamas deliberately seizes a civilian to compel Israel to act, that can constitute hostage taking. If a combatant is captured during hostilities, the legal analysis is different and depends upon the nature of the conflict and the person’s status. Governments cannot simply erase the laws governing wartime detention by changing the vocabulary.

Consider the scale of what Katz has threatened. Gaza today contains roughly two million people. Katz threatened to extinguish roughly HALF of the entire population of Gaza. He did not say he would punish the people responsible. He threatened to destroy what remains of their city and remove approximately one million human beings.

People seem to misunderstand what genocide actually means under international law. You do not have to exterminate every member of an ethnic or national population before the word becomes legally relevant. The Genocide Convention covers acts committed with the specific intent to destroy a protected group “in whole or in part,” and international courts have interpreted that “part” as having to be substantial. Numbers matter, but so does the significance of the population being targeted and the evidence concerning intent.

Look at Srebrenica. More than 7,000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys were murdered while the wider Muslim population was forcibly removed from the enclave. International tribunals concluded that genocide had occurred even though the victims represented only a fraction of Bosnia’s entire Muslim population. The courts looked at the targeted community, the killings, the expulsions and what those actions demonstrated about the intent to destroy that community.

Article 33 of the Fourth Geneva Convention states that people cannot be punished for offenses they did not personally commit and expressly prohibits collective penalties. Article 49 prohibits mass forcible transfers from occupied territory except under narrow circumstances involving civilian security or imperative military necessity, with additional protections and an obligation to return evacuees when hostilities cease.

What offense did the millionth Palestinian commit because Hamas captured one Israeli? What did the infant do? What did the grandmother do? What did the family hiding inside a damaged apartment building do? Nothing. That is the entire reason the prohibition against collective punishment exists.

The Jerusalem Post itself recognized the problem, warning that Katz’s statement could make it harder for Israeli lawyers defending the state against genocide and war-crimes allegations in The Hague. When your own defense minister is publicly threatening the destruction of what remains of a city and displacement on a scale approaching half of Gaza’s population in retaliation for one hostage, those words do not simply disappear when lawyers walk into an international courtroom.

Israel maintains that its operations are directed against Hamas rather than Palestinians as a protected group, and that distinction is central to whether genocide could ultimately be proven. Genocide requires specific intent, which is a demanding legal standard, but governments rarely hand prosecutors a document explicitly announcing such an intention. Courts instead examine statements by officials alongside patterns of conduct, the scale and systematic nature of the acts, treatment of civilians, destruction of civilian life, forced displacement, and the surrounding circumstances to determine whether the required intent can be established.

One million Palestinians cannot collectively kidnap one Israeli, nor can one million people become collectively guilty because of the actions of Hamas. That is the entire point of international humanitarian law. Once any government claims the right to destroy a city or uproot an enormous civilian population in retaliation for the conduct of somebody else, it is no longer talking merely about defeating the people responsible for an attack. It is openly threatening consequences against people who had nothing whatsoever to do with the offense, and international law was written precisely because mankind already knows where that logic can lead.

Beginning in 2027, qualified artificial intelligence researchers will once again be permitted to satisfy their military obligations by working in laboratories at major corporations rather than interrupting their careers for conventional military service. This program has effectively been closed to the large conglomerates since 2013. Now, Seoul is bringing it back specifically for AI. That tells you precisely how important artificial intelligence has become to national security.

Seoul has concluded that taking highly trained AI specialists out of laboratories and putting them into conventional military service can actually weaken the country. The government will allocate 240 positions for master’s-level AI researchers in 2027, with 120 available to large corporate laboratories and another 120 for government-funded and defense-industry research institutions. Samsung Electronics, LG Electronics, Samsung Medison, and HD Hyundai Robotics are among the companies recommended to participate.

This is where governments have to wake up. Warfare has changed. The most valuable soldier of the next war may never carry a rifle. Artificial intelligence is increasingly tied to drones, autonomous systems, intelligence analysis, cyberwarfare, logistics, targeting, surveillance, and the processing of battlefield information at speeds no human command structure can possibly match. Ukraine has already demonstrated how inexpensive drones and software can alter the battlefield. The Financial Times recently examined how AI is already shortening military decision-making and targeting cycles dramatically. The next arms race will not simply be who has the most tanks. It will be who has the best algorithms, semiconductors, engineers, data, and computing capacity.

South Korea understands this because technology is existential to its economy. The government is not merely creating a military exemption and calling it a day. Its Military Manpower Administration says 6,300 people will be allocated to industrial-support service programs in 2027, including 2,300 professional researchers, while AI, defense, semiconductors, and advanced industries receive particular attention. Korea has also built overseas training programs involving institutions such as Carnegie Mellon, the University of Toronto, and Oxford, and has expanded those efforts into AI semiconductors. This is a country treating intellectual capital as strategic capital.

The interesting part is that South Korea is also trying to prevent these people from simply leaving. The entire purpose of restoring the large company program is partly to retain specialists who might otherwise take their skills overseas. Human capital moves just like financial capital. Tax it, regulate it, restrict it, or interrupt people’s careers and they will go somewhere they are treated better. Governments never seem to understand that you cannot imprison talent within a border merely because somebody was born there.

There is even some irony in the initial response. The government reserved 120 positions for large corporate laboratories, yet the nine recommended research institutes requested only 81. The requirements are apparently so restrictive that nearly one-third of the available positions were not requested at the recommendation stage. This is classic government. They finally recognize the strategic importance of retaining AI talent and then immediately construct enough rules around the program to reduce its usefulness.

Nevertheless, the direction is significant. South Korea’s broader economic strategy is increasingly tied to AI and semiconductors. Its proposed 2027 budget places major emphasis on AI and semiconductor infrastructure, while the enormous profits generated by its semiconductor industry are themselves helping finance government revenues. AI is no longer some speculative technology sitting out in Silicon Valley. It is becoming embedded in economic growth, corporate profits, national defense, energy demand, and government policy.

This is why the AI revolution should not be dismissed as another dot-com bubble. Individual companies will certainly rise and collapse. Valuations will become absurd. There will be fraud, speculation, and plenty of companies calling themselves AI that will disappear. That always happens with revolutionary technology. It happened with railroads and then again with automobiles. It happened with the internet. Speculation surrounding a technology does not mean the technology itself is meaningless.

AI is fundamentally about productivity. One skilled individual equipped with artificial intelligence can increasingly perform work that previously required teams of people. That will disrupt employment, government, finance, medicine, manufacturing, and warfare. Governments that attempt to suppress AI because they fear job losses will eventually discover that other nations will embrace it and gain the competitive advantage. You cannot legislate technological evolution out of existence.

Wars have always accelerated technology. Radar, aviation, rockets, nuclear energy, computers, satellites, and eventually the internet all became intertwined with military competition. AI will be no different. The nations that understand this first will possess an enormous strategic advantage over those still measuring military strength by counting how many young men they can put into uniform. The battlefield of the future will be fought by soldiers, but increasingly it will be designed by engineers.

Scott Bessent, the US treasury secretary, announced that the treasury department would triple its buyback of US treasuries, increasing the operation from $2bn to $6bn. I have clients who can triple that in seconds. Bessent was part of the whole group of  what I call “The Club.” They were never traders, they sought only the “guaranteed” trade. They would gang up together to manipulate a market like Russia in 1998. They assumed that the IMF would never allow Russia to default. In 1998, yields on Russian GKOs reached as high as 150% annually due to the country’s severe fiscal issues and the need to attract buyers amid a looming default. By early August 1998, yields were approaching 200% on new GKO issuances, indicating a market pricing in near-certain default.

Scott Bessent left Soros Fund Management in 2015 to start his own hedge fund, Key Square Group, I believe with seed money from Soros. He had previously worked with Soros from 1991 to 2000 and then returned as chief investment officer from 2011 to 2015 before his departure. So when I say he hates my guts because they had the perfect guaranteed manipulation making 150%+ in Russia and lost $2 billion, I’m not joking.

I held a WEC in London in June 1998 and warned our computer projected Russia would collapse in a matter of weeks. The FT put that on te front page of the second section. The “CLUB” wanted me to put in $10 billion into Hermitage Capital Management run by Bill Browder. I was told they had this in the bag when I said Russia would collapse. I was told about they blackmail in 1998. I warned it would not work. They did not listen.

I was even invited to the IMF dinner they put on renting the entire National Gallery to prove to me that they had the IMF in the pocket. Everyone was there. I remember talking to Paul Volcker about the ECM and he agreed that the business cycle was regular and of about 8 years in duration.

It was all a setup. Republic National Bank steered the $7 billion wire through bank of New York and as soon as it took place, they ran to the DOJ to report it in June 1998. Yetsin was then blackmailed to step down or the world would find out he stole $7 billion from the IMF loans. The two employees of Bank of NY received 6 months house arrest after pleading guilty, showing it was all a setup. Bankers never go to jail. I have the transcripts and when they pleaded guilty, they said the money included a ransom for a Russian business man. The judge never even asked WHO. I believe the Judge was instructed to put on a show to hide Yeltsin’s involvement. No jail time for the largest money laundering case in history.

I was a trader – not a manipulator looking for the guaranteed trade by paying bribes. Personally, I would NEVER have picked Bessent for Treasury Secretary. That was a huge mistake. He has shown he is still part of that crowd. I would be concerned about who he even talks to these days,

Bessent’s stated goal was to drive down the 10-year Treasury yield—ideally below 4%. Instead, the benchmark rate briefly climbed above 5.04% in September 2026, its highest level since 2007 . This occurred despite a surprise intervention in August 2026 to “at least double” Treasury buybacks of long-dated bonds. The risk here is that by the 2nd quarter 2027, the main resistance stands at 6.72%-7.04% is this year closes above 5.3%.In case he never looks at charts not being a trader, it was a 39-year decline from 1981 to 2020 and the trend has shifted. A traders knows, the market is NEVER wrong. The trend is your friend, as they say.

By Bessent buying in 10-20-30-year debt, he is shortening the maturity of the national debt making the country far more vulnerable to interest rate swings. The greater the short-term maturity, then this will put the Fed in the crosshairs. The market will then dictate both the long and short-term debt market and the interest expenditure will be propelled higher. If the Democrats gain control, they will NOT fix the problem, they will raise taxes and destroy productivity for a national debt will simply become uncontrollable. The Republicans will not address this issue so we are being propelled into an inevitable sovereign debt crisis.

The Treasury’s $6 billion buyback of 10- to 20-year bonds was widely dismissed as insufficient against a “$32 trillion” Treasury market and $40 trillion national debt. This was not even a “band-aid ” on slitting your wrist or as some would say a “drop in the bucket.”

Bessent thought he could manipulate the market by claiming “I AM THE HOUSE,” only proves his background is NOT as a trader. Rather than falling, yields surged to multi-year highs in the days following the announcement. Thus, his boisterous claim “bet against” him if you dare was laughable and he lost showing the same mentality that I always traded against. They think they can manipulate the world and its always about power and money.

The forces pushing yields higher is war and trillion-dollar deficits, persistent inflation, and heavy corporate borrowing for AI infrastructure. All of these factors are beyond the Treasury’s control. This crowd has always been about trying to fooling the markets or mother nature with their ESG nonsense. You’ve got to fix the fundamentals and they think they can run deficits perpetually and there is NEVER consideration of reform because they are ignorant of even how the world economy functions.

The market interpreted the intervention as weakness. Bessent’s buyback massively flopped in front of the world. Bessent showed his hand. Now the world is paying attention to the fact that long-term rates are going higher and Bessent can’t stop them. Structural forces have overwhelm the Treasury’s firepower. Unlike the Federal Reserve, the Treasury cannot create unlimited reserves. Its buyback program is constrained by a finite cash balance, making it ill-suited to fighting market forces driven by the deepest and most liquid bond market on earth. Bessent is pointing an empty gun and trying to intimidate the world with no bullets.

Bessent thought he could intimidate the market while he had shown he DOES NOT understand the world economy and is purely a linear thinker. All you have to do is look outside the USA and rates are rising everywhere as the war drums are beating louder. Europe is broke and the ONLY way for the EU and Brussels to survive, necessitates war with Russia and they assume they will win and re-capitalize the EU to federalize Europe.

The bond market’s reaction suggests Bessent’s “I AM THE HOUSE” declaration was more bravado than reality and demonstrates his complete incompetence to be Treasury Secretary. I had written to President Reagan back in 1985 and warned that you cannot manipulate the dollar lower to reduce the trade deficit without causing a crash because you are devaluing everything else in the country. I was told that I was the only one with such a model and until someone else agreed with me, thank you, but no thanks.

The masterminds then held the Plaza Accord and announced they wanted the dollar down 40%. The dollar already was in crash mode. They did not understand markets. When the dollar fell and other countries then complained, they held the Louvre Accord in Paris during February 1987 and said that was enough. The dollar kept falling, the market proved the government manipulators wrong again. Then rumors circulated that the dollar would fall another 40% and the central banks could NOT prevent it. That was the 1987 Crash.

This is what Bessent has just done. He showed his hand. He lost. And now the market KNOWS that he is incompetent and his bravado is laughable. This stupid attempt to manipulate long-term rates in the US cannot succeed when war is on the horizon and the sovereign debt markets are in crisis. He is still a manipulator, not a trader, and his folly pretending to control the economy has undermined the CONFIDENCE exactly as the what followed the Louvre Accord.

Bessent is an absolute manipulating fool who cannot be a seasoned trader who would NEVER not act on theory, scare-tactics, or bribes. He cannot beat rising rates by talking a big game when he cannot control world events and is, in fact, accelerating them. He tells Japan to reduce its deficit, but uses the US to manipulate the world. He has threatened sanctions on everything and anyone who trades with Iran – another endless war they cannot win. All he’s doing is further exposing his lack of credibility and ignorance of how the world economy functions. The market, NOT the Treasury Secretary, has set the terms.

He cannot change that and he should be removed from office ASAP. We were adversaries in the markets. So my opinion is colored with that reality. I have traded toe-to-toe with this crowd I call “the club” so I KNOW how they act and supposedly trade.

PRIVATE BLOG – Gold’s Real Risk – Capital Controls

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QUESTION: Is there any chance you can reason with Trump about Iran and Ukraine?

CP

ANSWER: Sorry. That is not going to happen. Some Republicans I have spoken with just say Keep the faith. I have warned this could be the worst Midterm since 2006. The 2006 midterm elections were widely seen as a vote against the Iraq War, with public dissatisfaction over the conflict and President Bush’s handling of it driving Democratic gains. Exit polling showed the war was the top issue, and voters opposing it broke heavily for Democrats.

The 2006 midterm elections were the worst for Republicans in recent decades—a decisive “wave” election that ended 12 years of GOP control of Congress. Democrats didn’t just win; they won decisively across multiple fronts. Democrats gained a net of 30 to 31 seats, flipping control with a 233–202 majority. This was their biggest gain since the Watergate-era election of 1974. They picked up six Senate seats, all from Republican incumbents, securing a narrow 51–49 majority (including two independents who caucused with them).

The Republicans are living in LaLaLand. President George W. Bush’s approval rating hovered around 38% before the election, the lowest for a president in a midterm since 1950. Congressional Disapproval was serious with only 26% of Americans approved of the job Congress was doing. Donald Trump’s current approval rating is 34.6%, with a disapproval rating of 62.2%, resulting in a net approval of -22.4. Nobody wants to talk about it. Netanyahu has wiped out our country.

The Democrats are for WAR. This Sanction Bill on Russia was passed only because the Republican stuffed in the authority for Trump on Tariffs. The Democrats want to wash their hands in Russian blood like CNN, Politico, and MS Now.

We will see an economic decline that will be significant into 2028 as they will embrace Zohran Mamdani’s philosophy and attack business and the rich, who the define as joint houshold income of $250,000.

Trump will lash out and it will become war between the White House and Congress. The Republicans FAILED to inform Trump about this Iran War we cannot win and waged for Netanyahu who does not give a shit about Trump and views he will get more endless money from the Democrats. The ONLY way to save the country and do what he was elected for is to throw Netanyahu under the bus, exit the war NOW, publicly admit he made a mistake listening to him. Anything shy of that will be a disaster.

I will do an update after running the models on civil unrest. God help us. It is going to get ugly into 2028. This is going to be the confrontation that lead to deep division in the USA and the eventual collapse of the Republican form of government as we reach 2032. I published this back in 2023 and it has target 2026 with a Panic Cycle in 2029. Grab your socks, and hold on tight.

The situation in Yemen is deteriorating by the day. The United Nations now says more than 130,000 people have been driven from their homes this month as fighting intensifies following the Houthi advance along the Red Sea coast. Another 100,000 could be displaced over the next three months. More than 3,000 people have already escaped Yemen by boat toward Africa, primarily Djibouti, and the UN is preparing for that number to reach 10,000 as calmer seas make the crossing possible.

Families are abandoning everything and crossing the Red Sea on whatever vessels they can find. Reuters documented families fleeing barefoot after bombardments reached displacement camps where some had already sought refuge from earlier fighting. This is what politicians sitting comfortably thousands of miles away never comprehend. War becomes a statistic to them. To the people trapped inside it, your home, savings, possessions, livelihood, and sometimes your family can disappear overnight.

Yemen was already one of the poorest nations in the Middle East before this latest escalation. Some 22 million people require humanitarian assistance. Now the infrastructure required to provide that assistance is itself being disrupted. Roads have been damaged, telecommunications have been interrupted, movement is restricted, and damage to the port of Mokha has complicated humanitarian logistics. UNHCR says its response plan was less than 20% funded even before this latest wave of fighting exploded.

This is precisely how regional wars expand. Everyone looks at Yemen as though it is some isolated civil war between the Houthis and the Saudi-backed government. It is not. Yemen sits beside one of the most strategically important pieces of geography on Earth. The Houthis’ advance along the Red Sea coast has placed them astride the Bab el-Mandeb, while Iran sits beside the Strait of Hormuz. Saudi Arabia is caught between both chokepoints.

Now even Vladimir Putin and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman are publicly calling for safe passage through BOTH Hormuz and Bab el-Mandeb. That alone tells you the seriousness of the situation. Saudi Arabia has already been forced to redirect oil through Egypt’s Suez Canal because of disruptions affecting its traditional export routes.

The humanitarian crisis cannot be separated from the economic crisis. The same waters desperate Yemenis are crossing to escape the fighting are among the most important commercial shipping lanes in the world. UNHCR warns that further deterioration around Bab el-Mandeb could force humanitarian cargo to travel around the Cape of Good Hope, adding 25 to 30 DAYS to delivery times. That means higher freight rates, more fuel, higher insurance premiums, delayed food and medicine, and eventually higher prices.

Djibouti is now being dragged directly into the consequences. It has fewer than 1.2 million people and already hosts tens of thousands of refugees and asylum seekers. The Markazi refugee facility has room for only around another 5,000 people while authorities are preparing for more than 10,000 arrivals from Yemen. More than 60% of the initial arrivals identified by UNHCR were women, children, and elderly people. The pressure on food, water, shelter, schools, and medical services will rise rapidly if this becomes a genuine mass exodus.

This is how migration crises begin. Nobody wakes up one morning and decides to abandon their country for entertainment. Capital flees political instability first. Businesses disappear. Employment collapses. Infrastructure deteriorates. Then the people begin moving because survival leaves them no alternative. Europe learned absolutely nothing from Syria because politicians never address the cause. They argue about migrants AFTER the war has already destroyed the economic foundation that allowed people to remain home. The same mistake is being repeated throughout the Middle East.

The Houthis do not need a fleet comparable to the United States Navy. Geography has given them leverage that money cannot easily purchase. Control enough coastline, deploy inexpensive missiles and drones, make insurers afraid to cover vessels, and a relatively small military force can disrupt commerce worth hundreds of billions of dollars.

This is asymmetric warfare in the 21st century. The West spent decades constructing a global economy based upon just-in-time delivery and narrow maritime chokepoints because it was efficient during peace. Nobody seriously planned for what happens when those chokepoints become battlefields simultaneously. Hormuz, Bab el-Mandeb, and the Suez route are not merely lines on a map. They are arteries of the world economy.

Yemen is therefore no longer something that can be dismissed as another forgotten Middle Eastern war. People are already fleeing across the Red Sea. Shipping is being disrupted. Saudi oil routes are being rearranged. Humanitarian organizations are running out of money while the number of displaced people accelerates. The politicians will still call each development an isolated event. Markets will eventually understand that they are all part of the same crisis.