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.

January’s U.S. jobs data released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics clearly illustrates the cyclical stagnation and weakness beneath the surface of the headline figures. Nonfarm payrolls rose by 130,000 jobs in January 2026 — nearly double the 70,000 economists had forecast — and significantly stronger than the 50,000 jobs added in December 2025. The unemployment rate ticked down to 4.3% from December’s 4.4% as measured in the household survey.

The sector composition of the gains highlights uneven strength. Health care added 82,000 jobs, social assistance contributed 42,000, and construction 33,000, while federal government employment declined by 34,000 and financial activities shed 22,000 jobs. Average hourly earnings moved modestly higher, leaving YoY wage growth contained and not indicative of broad inflationary pressure.

A critical component of this report is the extensive benchmark revision to prior data. Job creation for the full year of 2025 was revised sharply downward from an initially reported 584,000 jobs to just 181,000, marking a reduction of more than 400,000 jobs and the weakest annual performance since the pandemic period. Separate analysis indicates employment growth through March 2025 had previously been overstated by roughly 862,000 jobs before the revision.

Roughly 25% of the unemployed have been out of work for 27 weeks or longer, and labor force participation improved only slightly. Hiring remains muted as companies are simply not expanding.

One monthly headline does not establish a new trend. Compared to December’s report, which showed just 50,000 jobs added and an unemployment rate of 4.4%, January’s 130,000 gain appears strong at first glance. However, December already reflected a clear deceleration from prior months, and the massive downward revisions to 2025 data confirm that the labor market had been weaker than originally reported.

Touted as cutting-edge AI technology, Waymo’s autonomous self-driving technology is actually based on a group of human operators based in the Philippines. A top executive at Waymo acknowledged before the US Senate that its robotaxis sometimes call upon remote workers to assist when the vehicle encounters a situation its algorithms cannot handle. These workers are described as “fleet response agents,” but the reality is that these cars are not autonomous.

The AI revolution walks a tight line between human labor and autonomous computing. Training AI models requires data that is often supported by cheap overseas labor. Capital is once again propelled by labor wherever it is cheapest, but now, to create the appearance of automation.

When AI was first touted as the next industrial revolution, even institutions like the International Monetary Fund warned that as many as 40% of jobs worldwide could be affected by its spread. That warning now appears less like a speculative fear and more like a description of the cycle of transformation we are entering. It is no accident that today’s labor market shows signs of weakening job growth even as corporations and AI developers report rising profits and productivity.

I worked with Dragon System back in the eighties when it was hardware you put into a slot in an IBM XT. It would allow the computer to talk. My daughter was fascinated by it. I wrote a program just to be able to hold a conversation with her and taught it how to be a politician. If it ventured into an area it did not know, it would just change the subject. I still remember she came home from school one day, and I had the computer apart, and she began crying that I had killed it. I used my kids to teach me how to write natural language so it would understand the words in a conversation. The good old days.

Big Tech claims AI will enhance the workforce rather than replace it. Yet, one of the easiest ways to eliminate or reduce labor costs is to outsource it to algorithms. But it takes humans to create those algorithms, and any job position can only produce at the worker’s capacity. It seems that most AI still requires human intervention at this point in time.

Waymo is not passing along once human-driven positions to AI, but rather, it is sending jobs overseas to Manila where labor costs are cheaper. Nothing about this structure preserves domestic employment. We are entering a period where AI will further compress the demand for human labor because capital seeks to displace labor wherever possible to preserve profits and valuations.

Government data published recently from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York shows that adoption of AI to date has not yet caused widespread layoffs. “Businesses reported a notable increase in AI use over the past year, yet very few firms reported AI-induced layoffs,” New York Fed economists wrote in the blog in September 2025. “Indeed, for those already employed, our results indicate AI is more likely to result in retraining than job loss, similar to our findings from last year,” and so far the technology does not point to “significant reductions in employment.”

We are witnessing a transition that will redefine how economies work and how societies survive. The “retraining” noted by the New York Fed is part of adaptation, and adaptation will be crucial during this wave of creative destruction.

The Environmental Protection Agency under the Trump administration is on the verge of repealing the 2009 “endangerment finding” that formed the legal and scientific basis for regulating greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act. That finding, first issued early in the Obama administration, concluded that carbon dioxide and five other greenhouse gases “may reasonably be anticipated to endanger the public health and welfare of current and future generations,” and it became the linchpin for federal climate regulations ranging from motor vehicle emissions standards to power plant and industrial restrictions.

Carbon dioxide is not toxic, and the attempt to regulate it under the Clean Air Act was always a legal and scientific stretch designed to bypass Congress. This single regulatory maneuver became the foundation for vehicle mandates, power plant restrictions, fuel standards, and a never-ending assault on fossil fuels. The economic consequences were predictable. Higher energy costs ripple through everything from transportation, food, manufacturing, and housing. It has been reducing real living standards while politicians congratulate themselves for “saving the planet.”

Climate policy has become a secular religion rather than a scientific discipline. Dissent is not tolerated, data is selectively presented, and every weather event is blamed on carbon emissions regardless of historical precedent. Governments have used this narrative to justify de-industrialization, energy insecurity, and the transfer of wealth and control to centralized authorities. Europe is the clearest example. Net Zero policies have devastated industrial competitiveness, forced reliance on foreign energy sources, and driven capital out of the continent. The United States has been heading down the same path, and this regulatory rollback is one of the few rational course corrections we have seen.

The legal challenges that will follow this repeal are inevitable, but the broader trend is already clear. The climate narrative is unraveling under the weight of its own contradictions. If carbon were truly the existential threat portrayed, there would be consistent global action rather than selective enforcement aimed at Western economies while China and others expand emissions without restraint. The reality is that climate policy was never about climate. It was about control, taxation, and restructuring society from the top down.

From a cyclical perspective, climate regulation accelerated the loss of confidence in government. People see rising utility bills, higher food prices, and declining real wages while being told it is all necessary for their own good. That is precisely how confidence collapses. When government policy openly works against the interests of the population, capital flees, productivity falls, and social unrest rises. This move signals a recognition that economic survival ultimately overrides fashionable doctrine, and that markets, not mandates, are the foundation of progress.

PRIVATE BLOG – Ukraine a Wildcard?

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Voter ID laws have finally passed, but in Somalia. Somalia has taken a step this year toward a “one person, one vote” electoral system with mandatory voter identification to ensure that each individual can cast only one ballot. Federal authorities took it a step further and have now moved toward biometric voter IDs and registration that tie citizenship documentation to the right to vote. It is ironic, bordering on the absurd, that a nation once synonymous with conflict and corruption would implement a measure to strengthen the legitimacy of elections, while in the United States, voter ID is considered suppression.

In April 2025, Rep. Ilhan Omar criticized the Republican-backed Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act, calling it a “voter suppression bill” that “will disenfranchise millions of voters, especially married women.” Yet, her home country, whose interests she represents while acting as a US Congresswoman, has these very laws in place.

Critics of Mogadishu are not decrying voter ID as racist or exclusionary. There is only recognition that ,without identification, votes cannot be tied to citizens in a trustworthy way.

Meanwhile, in Minnesota (the very district Omar represents), debates rage over whether a system that allows voters to “vouch” for others without standard ID verification undermines ballot security.

The hypocrisy emerges when public figures decry voter ID in the United States as suppression, while their country of origin demands identification as essential to participation. If voter ID is suppression in the US, what label should we give to nations that refuse identification and invite chaos?

In Mogadishu, citizens and officials alike seem to understand that without identification, elections are hollow and easily manipulated. That understanding is missing in the United States’ current discourse. Whether because of ideological reflexes or political calculus, there is a failure to reconcile the principles that are celebrated in the abstract “everybody should vote” with the practical mechanics that make every vote credible.

To build trust, you require verification; to maintain legitimacy, you enforce verification; to protect rights, you protect the process. Somalia’s move toward biometric voter IDs and universally recognized citizen ballots should be a wake-up call to American policymakers. If a nation emerging from decades of instability can adopt measures to secure its elections, then there is no principled reason why the US cannot do the same.

Discord will begin enforcing mandatory global age verification by requiring users to submit a face scan or government ID to access adult content and full platform features. Starting in March, every user account will be barred from age-restricted servers or live chat features until they comply with the system. The company will also deploy AI-driven “age inference” models to pre-screen users, reducing the need for direct ID checks in some cases. Once again, internet surveillance is being masked as protection.

Online safety for children is the new go-to line for increasing security measures. These measures are never limited to protecting children. Over the last year, governments around the world have enacted a wave of legal mandates that obligate platforms to verify ages, censor content, or restrict access. In places like the United Kingdom and Australia, age-verification laws have already compelled platforms to collect IDs and run facial scans just to remain compliant.

Anyone familiar with recent proposals, such as the French VPN ban, will recognize the same patterns emerging where safety and protection are used to justify sweeping surveillance and control over individuals’ digital lives. As I noted in my discussion of France’s VPN considerations, the move toward mandatory identity verification online is a omen of a surveillance mechanism that treats every user as a potential risk to be managed.

Once platforms begin requiring documented identity for access, the mechanisms of consent, data storage, and third-party verification become new levers of power. Discord, in particular, was once a domain for free speech. There is no room for anonymity on the internet. No matter how securely the company claims it deletes sensitive data, history has shown that trusting third parties with personal identification is a privacy nightmare waiting to happen.

Worse still, age verification systems can easily be repurposed for broader social control. Once governments have established that private companies can function as identity checkpoints, the next step becomes normalization of digital identity layers tied to every aspect of life: access to information, social interaction, even basic digital participation.

Age checks are not about content; they are about control points. Once the infrastructure of identity verification is established, anything becomes enforceable. The broader trend, seen from France’s VPN discussions to Discord’s corporate compliance with government expectations, is clear. The premise of protection leads to permission, which becomes power. Online platforms are rapidly transitioning from spaces of open interaction to gated systems requiring validated identity and behavioral compliance. This is being done in the name of safety for children, but the logical endpoint is a digital ecosystem in which every individual is known, categorized, and controlled.

The Commerce Department’s advance retail sales report for December revealed that total US retail receipts were essentially unchanged from November, coming in flat after a 0.6 percent increase in November and well below economists’ expectations for a 0.4 percent rise in December. Core retail sales, or the measure that excludes volatile categories like autos, gasoline, building materials, and food services, and which feeds directly into GDP calculations, actually slipped about 0.1 percent in December following a downward revision to November’s core gain to just 0.2 percent from 0.4 percent previously reported. For the full year of 2025, total retail sales still registered a nominal gain of roughly 3.7 percent compared to 2024.

From the outset, the numbers tell a story that echoes the longer, unavoidable economic cycle rather than the distorted confidence many policymakers still cling to. Retail sales are the largest component of household consumption and by far the biggest driver of GDP. So, when retail sales fail to post any real growth in December, at a time when spending should be concentrated and elevated, it reflects more than seasonal adjustments. Core consumption, which excludes the big ticket and volatile segments, is arguably more telling than the headline, and it turned negative at precisely the point in the calendar when it should have remained positive if households were truly confident about their spending capacity.

Even when you look at the annual figures, a 3.7% advance relative to 2024, those gains are heavily influenced by price effects, tariff-driven cost pass-throughs, and earlier quarters’ momentum rather than rising volumes of goods moved off shelves. Nominal increases can mask real consumption stagnation because they do not strip out inflation or show whether households are actually purchasing more items versus paying more for the same baskets. The flat December reading underscores that the consumer’s grip on spending is loosening at the margins. Retail categories traditionally dependent on discretionary income, such as electronics, furniture, and clothing, struggled, while the modest nominal gains in the annual totals often reflect spending in necessity or inflation-catch-up categories.

This pattern has implications that extend beyond a single monthly release. For much of the past year, robust consumer spending masked underlying weaknesses elsewhere in the economy. Households used savings, leaned on credit, and when forced to spend, focused on the essentials. Real incomes lag behind cost increases in essentials like housing, insurance, food, and healthcare. Wages are rising but they are mismatched with the price of living.

It is now increasingly apparent that the robust GDP prints from mid-year, often cited as evidence of economic resilience, were driven by transient factors and delayed data rather than sustainable consumer strength. The late-year softness puts at risk the projections for fourth-quarter GDP growth and may dampen expectations for early 2026 monetary easing if the Federal Reserve interprets slowing demand as disinflationary pressure.

The reality one would think that most governments are acutely aware of the risk of capital and talent will flee when designing regulatory policies and targeting the rich and corporations for excessive taxation. The dynamic seems to be one of ignorance, or denial that their marxist goals are simply against human nature. The only politicians to have publicly admitted this was Democratic President Grover Cleveland who was chastising his own party for the unsound finance of the 1890s that led to the Panic of 1893. He understood that capital can flee to other jurisdictions, and what is left is a poorer state for the average worker cannot put their labor offshore.

Cleveland also saw reality that when a state demands taxes more than what is necessary, it becomes “ruthless extortion.” Indeed, this undermines representative government and kills the very thing of equal justice for all and the basic principles of a “free government.”

As they say, you can lead a horse to water, but you cannot make him drink. The same is sadly true about politicians. Gavin Newsom and the Democrats are completely destroying California all for their Marxist beliefs and sheer stupidity. Now Zuckerberg is moving to Florida. California’s total taxable wealth from billionaires has now plummeted to well under $1T from over $2T just a few weeks ago. No matter how many times you can show them what happens, they refuse to listen. We are watching the same stupidity taking over NYC. They are always in denial and want to believe in their Marxist dreams of Utopia. They refuse to comprehend that this is why China and Russia discovered the hard way that these philosophies do not work. Europe is in the same crisis.

These were all people that were paying 13%+ in state income tax every year WITH NO COMPLAINTS UNTIL A FEW WEEKS AGO. Imposing a one-time 5% wealth tax would force them to liquidate assets for their wealth is NOT cash. Having to sell stock of that magnitude could even cause them to lose control of their companies. History demonstrates that they do it once, they will do it again. Here are just some major companies that have left California and where they went:

McKesson (Texas),
Chevron (Texas),
Oracle (Texas),
Tesla (Texas),
Playboy (Florida)
In-N-Out Burger (Tennessee)
John Paul Mitchell (Texas)
Realtor.com (Texas)

After 50 years, the Anheuser-Busch, the world’s largest brewery, is also closing its facility ending production in California. That will layoff nearly 240 employees.