I always welcome the chance to get to talk to, well, I mean, he's on the short list of best known forecasters, analysts in the world. Of course, I could say how many have had a movie done after them and another Hollywood movie in the works. Well, Martin Armstrong is with me. I always love to, first of all, Marty, I want to say thanks so much for finding time for us. I know you're extremely busy and not a surprise given all the geopolitical sort of stuff that's going on, you know, impacting the investment market. So thank you for taking the time.

Well, thank you for inviting me, Mike. It's always getting interesting these days. Well, and that's what it is. I'll also say two things very quickly here. Marty was in Armstrong Economics were the first people to use artificial intelligence that I was aware of in market timing, et cetera, and forecasting of all sorts of directional change, that kind of thing. And I'm talking 1983, you know, and.

It, of course, has continued to evolve, but along the way, it made these spectacular forecasts, whether we're talking about literally the day of the top of the Japanese index in 1989, it could have been the fall of the Berlin Wall, the list goes on.

goes on on this way. And we've been beneficiaries of that. As I like to say, Marty, you are the controversial, if I was, could be Howard Cassell, the controversial Martin Armstrong, because you say things that your model produces. And it's a very difficult one, especially in the early days to people understand that you were following a model that you had created yourself that had put in, I mean, tens of thousands of variables at this rate, you know, early days, and that produces the forecasts that you use.

Yeah, I think that the biggest issue is that as a international hedge fund manager, I was kind of like forced to see the world through everybody else's eyes. And when you start looking at the world and how it's all connected, you can see the capital rushing around. I mean, I was in Geneva in the 80s and where everybody was managing Yopech money.

Then Japan was starting to rise. And then all of a sudden the money was going to Japan, but so was the talent. And then when that peaked in 89, they go, oh, gee, what's next? Oh, Southeast Asia. Yeah, that looks good. And off they ran to there. And then that peaks in 94.

Then you have the 97 Asian currency crisis because the capital is like, oh, well, gee, the euro is coming in 98. Let's all go over there. And this is the way it has always been. And I can recommend, you can read for basically on free online, Herbert Hoover's memoirs and just read chapter from 1931.

And he acted, you know, he said that, you know, this is when all the governments were defaulting and stuff. And he said Capitol acted like a loose cannon on the deck of a ship in the middle of a hurricane. He said it was shooting off in every which direction so fast they couldn't figure out what was going on.

And that's still the way capital moves. When Greece got in trouble in 2010 and everybody made a lot of money in the dealing rooms, they go, oh, OK, fine. Who's next? Oh, Spain. Yeah, let's go over there. You know, then they move from one to the next. This is the way money really moves internationally.

Well, you know, a real key is how important that is in the investment side of things is Armstrong Economics has been bullish. The U.S. dollar, I can't remember how long, but your point was always because when we have problems in the world, money is going to flow into the U.S. And I know the weakness of the U.S. dollar going back just so reasonably about six months ago, you were still writing and saying, no, no, no, no. You know, unless you're telling me there's going to be no geopolitical tensions or conflicts,

the US dollar isn't done yet. I know you have a date. I'll talk about that in a minute and you'll talk about it because you have an upcoming conference called The Road to 2032 where you're going to delineate literally a roadmap on all of these investment themes and the US dollar, of course, being one of the prominent ones. So I know you do have a target for when it will peak out, but

My point back to what you were saying is you said, hey, you just have to follow where the money flows. European, you know, Ukraine conflict, uncertainty around that. Oh, guess what? The euro is going down and the US dollar is going up, which of course is proven to be the case. But it's just sort of to highlight the importance of what you're saying about following how capital moves. And your work is the pioneer. Armstrong Economics is the pioneer for that kind of work.

Let me come to something else about your modeling. And I found it greatly beneficial. First of all, I'll grab three major trends that now look obvious, not at the time when you say it, but you said, hey, be careful. We're talking about around 2015, actually October 1st, 2015, I think you said the model told you to say, hey, we're going to begin a sovereign debt crisis now.

I would hope that's somewhat obvious to people at this point. But the scary part was it was coinciding broadly with the trend of the cycle of war picking up, civil unrest picking up. And that's a global concept. You know, I mean, as you say, you look at globally. So I'm looking at all three of those and just wondering for an update, especially on the sovereign debt crisis. I mean, it seems pretty obvious to me, but an update from you.

Well, this is actually, you know, the backdrop to the whole central bank digital currency issue. And from their perspective, we are all just the great unwashed. You know, they wouldn't have a problem if we all paid our taxes and, you know, and walked in a straight line and bowed whenever they told us to. Right.

And this is really the primary issue. I mean, I've been arguing with governments for 40 years is that this is not going to be sustainable. And their excuse has been, oh, yeah, but we're the government. And that's very nice, but you have to sell your debt at some point. And what happens when they stop buying? And they think like that would never happen. And I mean, just look at what's going on.

You have these what we call neocons who are, you know, hell bent on creating World War III.

I mean, they targeted Ukraine. I mean, this has all been orchestrated. And I mean, to my shock, you had Merkel actually come out and there was a Minsk agreement where the Donbass was supposed to get a right to vote. And then she actually came out and said, well, we never really intended that. That was just to allow Ukraine to build up its army.

I mean, why would anybody negotiate now with the West if this is their attitude? I mean, it's just I've never seen a head of state ever do something like that in my life. And so, I mean, now you have them bashing, you know, China over Taiwan. Well, it just so happens that China is, you know, was the largest holder of U.S. debt. I think now it's number two. Right.

They've been selling billions, tens of billions of dollars per month. I mean, you don't, you know, you can't go to them and say, gee, would you buy another hundred billion worth of our debt so we can buy some missiles to shoot you? I mean, where's the logic here? I mean, nobody seems to even understand what they're saying.

I mean, China is just not going to buy U.S. debt anymore. That's part of the whole dollar de-dollarization scheme that's going around that people don't understand either.

But let me interrupt just for a sec because we're seeing, again, examples of what you're saying, you know, and you wrote about it. We talked about it. Some would say ad nauseum on Money Talks. But September 16th, 2019, the overnight repo market hit.

There were no lenders all of a sudden. Nobody was buying the debt. So presto, you had the Federal Reserve step in. Interest rates for the overnight market went up 500% at one point. But we've seen it subsequent to that. Look at Japan. Look at Great Britain. I think your message that had been long in writing, copywritten in writing, was, hey, the side you got to worry about is you're going to get no buyers at one point. I would think we're pretty close to that right now.

Or they're going to have to raise interest rates to entice the buyers. Well, even if they don't look at raising the rates, I mean, the market will do it by itself anyhow. I mean, the bonds are starting to crash again. And that's, you know, people are beginning to realize that the Fed is, it has come out and it has clearly said,

that find it's concerned about inflation, blah, blah, blah. And at the end, it says, and international considerations. And people are watching the OCPI and unemployment. That's very nice. The Fed's not really looking at that. The Fed knows the number one cause of inflation is always war. It was Vietnam that broke Bretton Woods.

You know, this is it. I mean, World War I, World War II destroyed Europe. The U.S. was bankrupt in 1896. That's when J.P. Morgan had to lend $100 million in gold to the U.S. Treasury to bail it out. Britain was the number one

Excuse me, boss. I have a text message.

Let me come to a couple of things around that. One is, of course, the big question on individuals' mind is, and well, the market's mind, you see it debated every day is, well, have interest rates topped out here? Are they about to drop? I mean, you know, okay, stop laughing. No, I'm just kidding. But they, you know, that we've seen,

you know, lots of forecasts about this. None of them have come to fruition at this point. And so I'm just wondering within that context, if the Federal Reserve needs and other central banks, we're just talking U.S. for a second, needs to raise so much money, needs to, you know, how do they do it without raising rates? How does that allow rates to actually go down if you have that level of need to sort of entice lenders? Well, I mean, that's the problem. It's

The marketplace sets the long-term rates. It's not the central banks. The central banks can set the short-term rate. That's very nice. But even that is out of their control. It really comes down to the market. As you were saying, with the repo crisis...

So you had Merkel standing up saying that they weren't going to bail out Greece. So therefore, she had to say, well, we're not going to bail out Deutsche Bank. Then all of a sudden, U.S. banks said, well, we're not going to lend anything to Deutsche Bank overnight if you're not going to bail it out. You know, and it's like the politicians do have zero understanding of how the world economy even works.

And they're their own worst enemy. I mean, this is crazy. You take the whole inflation thing and everything else. And then you then you have the UAW, you know, basically going on strike. Why? You're causing inflation. Everything has an impact. And they just look at everything in isolation. They never look at how things are actually connected.

It would seem to me also the further we go down this path, the more desperate everything becomes. You know, I mean, it looks like an individual. If you owe a million dollars, it's probably pressure. You owe a hundred million. You've got to, you know what I mean? It's, it's intensified every mistake, everything. And that's what I'm sort of seeing is the mistakes become intensified. The consequences become more severe. And so let me just sum up that last part. Bottom line is you're not recommending people buy government bonds. Oh,

Of any level of government. I know. Stay away from all of them. Federal, state, local. We're in a serious debt crisis here. This is what the central bank digital currency is about. They think that eliminating paper money, they can destroy the underground economy. And this is their view, all right, that if they eliminate the paper money,

and go to forced digital currency, they will collect 35% more in taxes. This is the way they look at it. I mean, you and your wife want to go out to dinner, and so you hire this 16-year-old girl next door to watch the kids. Well, how did you pay her? Did she pay her taxes? You gave her a $20 bill? What? You know, it's...

This is the way they look at it. We, you know, honestly, I've been in meetings and I've actually heard some of these people say it's all their money. They just decide what we're allowed to keep. Absolutely. Let me come back to the bonds.

The other thing your model always measures is if it hits this point, X will happen. Well, I know that you've been writing about if interest rates, they're not going to collapse, they're not going to drop unless the Federal Reserve gets interest rates down to 4.75% at the end of the year. And again, monthly, weekly, yearly rates are very important, yearly the most important. So if we can get that interest rate down to 4.75%, then maybe we can drop some.

But if we don't, you've got some numbers that are pretty scary if they go to the upside. Yeah. I mean, you're just basically going above the five and a half level for year-end closing. You're looking at minimum targets of about 8%. Yeah.

So that's the warning that people just have to know the interest rate risk is out there. And it's the dynamic is, again, how much they need to borrow. But as you know, as I say, they've been Federal Reserve, the central banks have been stepping up because there wasn't anybody willing to lend at certain rates, you know, and that's what pushed the rates up. So I just think it's an important part of the conversation. And I don't want to skip around too much, but I'm worried about our time. So I'm going to come to something else you were writing about that I thought was fascinating.

Because a lot of people will say, okay, well, are they going to bail it out by just printing up more money? Whatever the problem is, you know, UK pensions, oh, let me print more money. Pandemic, print more money. Oh, energy crisis in Europe, we'll print more money. And that's got people thinking gold must have gone up, must go up. Well, it hasn't. Let's be straight. And you've been writing a really interesting piece on

what really fiat currency is that it's just too casually thrown around as a cause and effect. That's the cause and the effect will be rising gold prices, which we haven't seen. Yeah. I mean, it's, I mean, most of that has been the same scenarios put out since 1971, you know, and it's just not true. But when,

You're going to see gold take off. And it has made three major thrusts at this 2000 level. The fourth time it will go through. But what is it? All right. Gold had bottomed in 1976 at 100. It finally rose to 400 in December 79. It went from 400 to 875 in the last six weeks when Russia invaded Afghanistan. OK, it's confidence.

It's when you suddenly begin to wonder, you know, is the government going to survive? Who's going to survive out of this? That's when this comes. The average person doesn't look at, oh, gee, CPI is up 2% this month, so I better buy some gold. That's just not the issue. Gold has never been some sort of lock nest, you know, all the way lockstep to inflation. It's just not true.

Gold went down for 19 years after 1980, and the national debt went straight up for 19 years. There's more to it than that. So we come back. Oh, sorry. Go ahead. No, no. I mean, it's just a question of confidence. And what all of this is doing is it's spreading the lack of confidence in government.

I mean, you got gold bugs, they will always buy gold no matter what. All right. We're talking about having to expand that to other people. And that is what's necessary to make that fourth thrust up. And I believe a lot of it's going to be connected to the central bank digital currencies. And when they see this is basically what...

is really on the agenda is to eliminate all physical money. And so they can get a hundred percent of whatever they believe they, they think they're entitled to in taxes.

And we're certainly seeing the evolution. I remember when you first brought that up, gosh, off the top of my head, 2018, you were starting to talk about that. And then you, I remember chronicling for us here, actually, on the World Outlook Conference, both in 2019, that already seven central banks outside of China, China was already well underway and wasn't hiding it.

you know, had made progress. I think the progress on that is obvious now. You know, I mean, if anybody's looking, they can see that that's, that's where we're going and they're just going to create a rationale for that, you know, on the way. The whole COVID thing is if you look closely, that's when they used it to start. Oh, cash is dirty. Talking to stores not to accept cash is,

They, you know, even in Britain, they got, you know, a lot of stores to agree not to accept cash anymore. You know, this is they fear the underground economy.

And this is what this is all about. I mean, there is a clip on my site from Christine Lagarde saying, you know, yes, it's the gray market and there will be controls. And I mean, you have Bank of England actually saying,

put out the preposterous thing. Oh, gee, you know, a mother should be able to control the money she gives her child to make sure he can't buy a chocolate bar for lunch. If your mother can do that, what can they do? Let me come back to the oil because I know Socrates predicted if you had a year-end close, right,

I think it's above 99, 99.50, then that opens the gate for another new high, you know, a significant new high. And I'm just thinking that'll certainly erode confidence in government because people don't like it when stuff affects. You know, again, I know you'll be talking at the conference November 17th and 18th and 19th, you're going to be talking about food prices, but wheat,

you know, looks like it forms a low this year. All of those things going up at the same time, I think is that you want to erode confidence. We'll just attack somebody's food prices, energy prices and shelter. But we seem to be well underway on all of those things. Yeah. I mean, all of this, this craziness with the, you know,

migrations into everywhere. I mean, Europe, America, Canada, you're getting infiltrated by it. And

All that just adds to the civil unrest and prices rising. I mean, you have these people coming in and I will tell you, I had the mandate from Hong Kong and I met with they were trying to get me to, you know, I knew the government of Australia and I met with the former prime minister, Paul Keating.

And I had a blank check to buy an island off the coast of Australia. Everything I tried to do to buy land, the answer was no, no, no. And I finally said to him, I said, is this racist? I mean, because nothing made any sense. And he actually said to me, he says, no, if we allowed those people to come in, they would vote conservative.

And Keating was labor. Before we finish, let me just quickly come back to the market because you've got a lot of people suggesting

you know, I, for lack of a better term, a crash, you know, but a severe downturn, let's leave it at that. And of course that hasn't manifested at this point. Are you seeing more volatility? Are you worried about, you know, I think you said if it closes below 33, 600, that's an alarm bell for you, but you know, but basically trading in a wide range. Yeah. I mean, you have to understand that you,

You have all these people, you know, like they just pull out the charts from 1929. Oh, it's going to be this big crash. All right. What they fail to point out is that the United States government had a balanced budget. All the sovereign nations of Europe defaulted. Britain went into a moratorium. So the capital was coming here. All right. So it was pushing up the dollar.

It wasn't going down. The dollar went to record highs. Now, if we have a problem this time, it's not in the private sector. It's in the government sector. You really want to sell all your stocks and go buy government bonds?

Yeah. I mean, no. I mean, you know, it's the opposite this time. So I don't think you're going to see the stock market down crashing 90 percent or what some of these people are saying. It's quite absurd. Capital has got to go someplace. And when a stock market goes down, it's a flight to quality and they buy bonds. They're not not going to happen this time.

It's so fascinating as we started right off the top saying there's so many different variables and events hitting, but it's not a surprise just so people know that, you know, your model's been calling for the 2030-32 period as being, you know, pivotal. Well, we're getting there and we're intensifying as we get there, but that's why your conference coming up November 17, 18, and 19 in Orlando called The Road to 2032 is going to give a roadmap for

rather a roadmap to all of these kinds of things because they're interrelated. And I'm looking forward to it. I think it's going to be dynamite. And I think it's the most important conference you've put on because we're now getting to the pivot point. We're now getting to, we're seeing it all around, whether it's a spike in some commodity prices, a

sharp drop, the volatility, the interest rate markets, all of that is sort of producing this period. And you've got to be on the right side of it. So, Marty, I want to just say thank you. And I want to invite people, by the way, to go to armstrongeconomics.com. You've got a blog there, absolutely free. And the other thing you've done is you can be part of the private blog, and it's unbelievably inexpensive. You've made it available to everyone to see what Socrates is saying next. And I want to remind people of that.

But I also want to just extend my personal thanks, Marty, for you taking the time here. Well, it's always a pleasure, Mike. Thank you. I've been doing Vancouver for, I don't know, 30 years or so. Yeah, absolutely. I looked a lot better then, by the way. I look forward to seeing you in Orlando. Thanks, Marty. Nice to see you. Thank you very much.