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Feb. 12, 2025 - Health Ranger - Mike Adams
01:37:01
BBN, Feb 12, 2025 – Mar-A-Lago Accord CONFIRMS Trump is about to restructure...
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Welcome to Brighteon Broadcast News with Mike Adams, the Health Ranger.
Well, hold on to your hats, folks.
That's all I can say.
Welcome to Brighteon Broadcast News for Wednesday, February 12th, 2025. I'm Mike Adams.
Thank you for joining me.
And just from what I know is about to drop over the next three days.
I don't know if, you know, they say, like, get your popcorn ready, but it's not that.
It's not entertainment.
Crazy stuff is about to unfold.
I mean, even Mike Benz, who has spoken out against censorship, he posted this on his account online.
He said, just reposting this, and it's a video of him reading the CIA assassination guide.
He says, just reposting this in case something happens to me after all the stuff that's dropping tomorrow.
And then he puts like a pirate flag and an alien symbol in there.
We're like, whoa.
Okay.
Skull and bones and aliens and UFOs.
Well, and Tulsi Gabbard, I heard she was confirmed and then I heard it was delayed.
And then it seems that Anna Paulina Luna, like that's not her real name.
It's actually Meyerhofer.
And Luna just sounds more Latina.
Okay, that's interesting.
And then it seems like a bunch of files are about to drop.
By Anna Paulina Luna about the JFK assassinations.
Well, JFK and RFK. And then also she says she's going to go through the Warren Commission records somehow.
Although all those people are already dead.
And she's going to look at UFOs and all kinds of other weird secrets.
How much you want to bet they're going to still keep certain secrets?
You know, like...
Oh, I don't know, Israel's involvement in the JFK assassination.
Oh, it's funny how all the doge, everything they're looking at, it never points to Israel.
That's just, what an amazing coincidence, huh?
And then there's a left-wing judge in D.C. Of course, these judges are all lunatics, ordering the Trump administration to restore the webpages on the FDA website and the CDC website.
That talk about sex change operations.
So in other words, this judge says that when the American people elect a new president and a new administration, they're not allowed to update the webpages and eliminate delusional text.
According to this judge, who is himself, of course, a delusional lunatic.
So it's a U.S. district judge.
If I were Trump...
I would laugh.
I would tell the judge to go pound sand.
And I would say, what we say in Texas, come and take it.
Come and take it.
With an image of a cannon, of course, because that's, well, part of the history of Texas.
Come and take it.
In other words, come and make me repost the transgender child mutilation pages.
Yeah, come and make me.
What's he going to do?
Throw them in jail?
Oh, good luck with that.
Yeah, good luck.
Maybe we'll throw you in jail.
How about that?
Anyway, there's a lot of stuff dropping.
And also, at the same time, there is a global gold shortage panic.
Now, I talked about this yesterday, but let me sort of re-describe it, and I've got a short video to play for you on this, but remember playing the game of musical chairs, maybe when you were in grade school?
I don't know what your grade school was like, but in my grade school, sometimes in gym class, Which was one of my favorite classes.
I really had fun in gym class.
We would play, for whatever reason, musical chairs, right?
So if there were, you know, 20 kids in the class, they would set out 19 chairs, right?
And then everybody, the music plays, right?
And you all walk in a circle in front of the chairs, and then when the music stops, you're supposed to grab a chair.
And whoever is left standing loses.
Now, they would never play those games now because, you know...
That would damage the psyche of a child for life to be a loser without a chair, apparently.
But this is what's happening with the gold markets right now.
The thing is, there's a lot of people who think they own gold, and there's not enough gold to make good on it, just like there's not enough chairs for the students to sit down in the chairs.
There's not enough gold to fulfill the gold obligations.
COMEX. Bank of England, yeah.
The London Bullion Metals Exchange, right?
I mean, many examples of institutions that are involved in gold trading and gold lending and sometimes gold vaulting, etc.
Not enough gold in the system to meet the demands.
And so a lot of people who would normally trade in paper...
And I'm talking about institutions, sometimes hedge funds, sometimes governments, nations, what have you, sometimes other central banks.
They are placing orders on COMEX, and at the end of the expiration of the contract, they're saying, I'm not going to roll over the contract.
I want physical delivery.
Please arrange for physical delivery.
And these exchanges are starting to freak out because, like I said, musical chairs.
They don't have enough chairs.
They don't have enough gold.
Somebody's going to go without their gold, even though they have a legal claim to the gold.
And I talked to my contact at our gold sponsor, the Treasure Island Coins and Precious Metals Company.
I said, tell me what's going on with retail purchases now.
Because the story for the last, I don't know, year and a half, something like that, up until recently, the story has been that retail purchases of gold, that is everyday people, were really just...
Almost non-existent.
People weren't buying gold.
Central banks were buying it.
So you wouldn't get retail calls like, oh, hey, I want to get $10,000 worth of gold or whatever.
But central banks were buying it up, like China in particular and other nations.
Well, that's changed now.
The retail sales of gold or the retail demand is through the roof.
People, everyday people, are realizing they need physical gold.
Because something big is happening.
People don't necessarily understand what's happening.
I don't fully understand it.
I've got some pretty good ideas.
But people are realizing something's up.
And they don't want to be the kid without the chair when the music stops, is basically the situation there.
It looks to me like, and I talk with my contacts in...
In the financial markets and people who I've interviewed before, oh, I should tell you, I also interviewed Martin Armstrong today, and I'll be playing that interview for you here.
And he told me, right after we stopped recording, this is so funny, literally right after we stopped recording, he said, the central banks are screwed.
And I'm like, Martin, like, I thought the show was over.
And then he lays the best line of the whole show.
But not on the recording.
But anyway, Martin Armstrong told me today the central banks are screwed, okay?
He just didn't say that on video.
Although he said a lot on video, and we will get to that, and it's mind-blowing because, of course, it's Martin Armstrong.
But many people that I've spoken with, and I've got a lot of great contacts across the industry, you know what they've told me?
They've said that they think something is about to happen where there's There's going to be some kind of a gold backing or a gold, or no, what do they say?
A revaluation of gold related to the currency.
Okay?
A revaluation of gold.
What does that mean?
It probably means, and this is just my guess, and don't take this as investment advice because I don't know for sure, but it seems like Trump is indeed playing a very Dangerous but potentially rewarding global game of financial chicken.
You know, we went from musical chairs to chicken.
You know what chicken is, right?
Game of chicken.
You're in a pickup truck and your friend is in a pickup truck and you're like 100 yards apart facing each other, revving your engines, and then you go directly at each other and the first one to swerve loses.
Now, that's called chicken.
That's what we used to do in the Midwest when we were kids, at least.
Some of us who are still alive, maybe we did that, maybe we didn't.
But not everybody survives that game, it turns out.
And the same thing is going to be true on a global scale.
Not everybody, not every currency is going to survive this global game of chicken that Trump is playing.
And it's not a game.
It's really, it's a financial fight for the future of the world or the future of America, for sure, because the dollar is toast.
It's like Martin Armstrong said, the central banks are screwed.
Why?
Too much debt.
They can't make good on their obligations.
But something is up.
It looks like gold is going to be revalued.
I've heard other analysts like Catherine Austin Fitz talk about this.
I've heard Alex Cranor talk about this.
I've heard many other people talk about this.
I've seen experts on commodity culture and other channels as well.
The situation is the people who are in the know believe that gold is somehow going to be revalued.
Well, Peter Schiff has spoken about this as well.
Where would it be revalued?
Jim Rickards has spoken about this.
Jim Rickards calculates that if you were to have gold-backed currency in America to, let's say, reattach gold to the dollar, that you would have to value gold.
I think he said somewhere between $20,000 to $25,000 an ounce, something in that range, in order to have a partial backing of the M2 money supply, I think is the dollar figure that he was quoting, the dollar supply.
So gold could go to $20,000 in that scenario.
Will that happen?
I have no idea.
Something's up.
So listen to this.
So here's a clip from a show called Coffee and a Mic with Mike Ferris.
I've been a guest on his show, and he's been a guest on my show.
But this isn't about me.
This is about a different guest whose name is Matt Smith.
And Matt Smith is talking about what's going on.
And this is about a three-minute clip.
It's worth hearing.
Check this out.
So what's Trump doing with these tariffs?
Trump says he's doing it because to stop fentanyl, right?
That's just one of his reasons.
Or illegal immigration.
I think he wants to stop that, Nolan.
I think he wants to stop illegal immigration.
I think he's demonstrated that he's serious about those things.
But that's not the fundamental motivation.
The motivation is this economic reset, this monetary reset.
That's the main thing.
And all you have to do is look at the way that tariffs were used in the past.
Everyone remembers.
If you pay attention to these things, in 1971, Nixon closed the gold window, officially made the dollar not redeemable for gold anymore.
That same day, he instituted a universal 10% tariff on everything that was imported into America.
Why did he do that?
Because he wanted the cooperation of other countries in the devaluation of the dollar.
He wanted them to participate in it.
Because there's lots of things that the individual countries can do to defend their currency.
And he didn't want that to happen.
He wanted their participation.
So he used the hammer of the 10% tariff to force compliance.
And ultimately, they had something like that came out of the Smithsonian Agreement where they agreed to a certain level, that they would manage the currency exchange rates for.
And the same thing happened in 1985 at the Plaza Accord.
And essentially the threat, there was this bill rolling through Congress.
The enemy then was Japan, not China.
And there was all this anti-Japan.
Japan's taking all their jobs.
They produce shitty things.
It's exactly the same thing that we hear today about China.
And so there's threat of this tariff, plus knowing that the Treasury Secretary under Nixon just did it arbitrarily.
Without an act of Congress in the past, that threat got everyone to the table for the Plaza Accord to create something new.
Now, they're going to do something new called the Mar-a-Lago Accord.
Now, I wish I'd come up with it, but I didn't.
You know who did?
The nominee for the chairman of the Council of Economic Advisors.
Trump's nominee for that role.
He put this paper together, let's say the name of the paper, and he's got all the details about this plan.
He doesn't talk about, well, not all of them, but a lot of them are in here.
It's a user's guide to restructuring the global trading system, which he published in November of last year.
So between Howard Ludnick saying very clearly how they can use the sovereign wealth fund, between this guy, Stephen Miran, in this report, They lay out a lot of what the plan is.
And so tariffs are the cudgel to try and get people to participate, to come to the table, to negotiate the value of exchange of currency between one another.
They've been very clear about what's going to happen, I think.
So he's referring to the so-called Mar-a-Lago Accord.
And it turns out that this is a real thing.
It was written by a guy named Stephen Miran, M-I-R-A-N. Maybe it's Miran.
I'm not sure how to pronounce it.
But if you look this up, there is a document from HudsonBayCapital.com that's called A User's Guide to Restructuring the Global Trading System.
Now, of course, I took that document and I ran it through my in-house AI engine, which you could do with any AI. Good highlights and summaries.
And what's shocking about this is, yes, it talks about using tariffs to control other nations.
It talks about the economic consequences of it.
It talks about how to avoid dollar overvaluation, etc.
But the most shocking thing of this is that the Mar-a-Lago Accord appears to refer to a new...
International Currency Agreement, which would involve translating the current reserve holdings of foreign central banks, you know, dollar reserves, swapping those out for what are called ultra-long duration U.S. Treasury securities.
In other words, what Trump is proposing, or what he's doing, and what this is all about, apparently, He is restructuring the U.S. debt.
He is, in essence, refinancing the U.S. debt into an ultra-long-term payout schedule while taking, in essence, taking the foreign reserves and saying, well, think about what the European banks did to Russia.
They said, hey, your $300 billion of reserves in mostly the euro, that's ours now.
You've heard the saying, all your base are belong to us?
Yeah?
Well, all your money are belong to us, as the saying goes.
So it's our money now.
The Mar-a-Lago Accord would do this with other nations' holdings in the United States held in reserve in U.S. banks and Federal Reserve tied banks.
That would be taken.
And replaced with a bunch of long-term treasury IOUs.
Whoa!
That's what this is.
And remember yesterday, I said, like, the people who have money, like billionaires plus, the people who have money know something is up.
And they know because they're all demanding their gold.
Physical gold in their hands right now.
That panic is happening, but I couldn't figure out why.
Until today.
This is why.
It's called the Mar-a-Lago Accord, and I just explained it.
So think of the U.S. sort of confiscating, but not really.
This is like persuasively convincing other countries to let us take their reserves and replace it with long-term IOUs like a 50-year T-bill.
Like, I will pay out in the year like 2075 or something, right?
Think about that.
But we take their reserves and then those reserves become liquidity in our system.
And then Trump could reattach gold at some level to those assets that have just been taken.
And then he could sort of re...
Is liquefy the right word here?
He could then sort of rematerialize the U.S. currency without being burdened by the long-term debt and thereby dramatically reduce the annual debt service payments, which is now over a trillion dollars a year, I believe.
So he could cut that easily in half and save half a trillion dollars a year in interest payments.
And the way to convince the other countries to go along with this, this is what Matt Smith was referring to, is to use tariffs as a bludgeon.
To say, hey, we're going to put tariffs on all you other countries.
And then behind the scenes, if you let us take your reserves and replace them with long-term treasuries, well, then we'll go easy on the tariffs or we'll eliminate them entirely.
Huh.
How would you like that deal?
All right.
Pretty interesting.
Correct?
But in order to understand this, you need to know which countries hold the most U.S. Treasury debt, right?
Now, this answer is also interesting.
The number one Treasury debt holder is Japan.
Holds over a trillion dollars in U.S. debt.
Japan is not being targeted in any of these actions because Japan is a strong ally of the United States.
So Japan...
Gets away scot-free on this.
The second country that has, well, the second most holdings of U.S. Treasury debt are held by China.
$867 billion.
All right, so who did Trump just target with tariffs?
China, 10%.
10% tariffs.
So China holds $867 billion of U.S. Treasury debt.
China tends to allow those to expire, and then they roll it into gold purchases.
That's what they've been doing for the last couple of years, and then just collecting massive amounts of physical gold.
Well, Trump wants to take the $867 billion from China and convert it into maybe 50-year treasury debt.
Do you think China will want to take that deal?
No.
No way.
China wants this stuff to expire as soon as possible so China can roll it into gold.
Because China's going to be in the BRICS system.
So China doesn't want that deal.
So that's what the tariffs are for.
The bludgeon to coerce China to say, okay, if you let us roll this over, then we'll lift the tariffs, and then you can continue your exports as normal.
So, by the way, Trump realizes that the United States of America is broke, it's bankrupt, and what do you do when you're bankrupt as a business or a household?
In a business, you declare Chapter 11, which is a reorganization, and what do you do in Chapter 11?
You restructure your debt obligations, you negotiate with the parties to whom you owe money, and you renegotiate the structure so that you can pay out a smaller amount over a longer period of time and thereby possibly keep your company in business so that you can eventually make good on the loans.
But the parties that are owed that money, they're usually not happy with that because they don't want to wait longer to get the money.
But you tell them, well, you know, look, the other alternative is that we can just default.
And then you get nothing.
So would you rather us default and shut the whole company down?
Or would you rather take a longer term payout?
I think Trump actually has a very similar argument right now.
Whether it's...
You know, overt or just implied.
It's kind of like, hey, China, you can take a restructuring of this $867 billion, or we can just default on the debt and not pay you at all.
Which one would you prefer?
And also, we'll use tariffs to pound you over the face until you say yes.
Now, who are the other holders of U.S. Treasury debt?
Hmm.
United Kingdom, $655 billion.
Who is being targeted by Elon Musk?
Keir Starmer in the UK. Western Europe is being targeted by Trump, who has said that Western Europe has been unfair to the United States.
Trump is going to somehow conclude the war between Russia and Ukraine.
Trump's going to pull out and is going to leave Western Europe exposed to whatever risks Russia might pose to them.
Some of those risks seem to be all made up imaginary risks, but whatever.
Trump is going to punish Western Europe until they comply.
And what does he want them to comply with?
The restructuring of the debt.
Because it's also Belgium.
Belgium owns $354 billion of U.S. Treasury debt.
Luxembourg, $329 billion.
And those are all European nations, right?
So now it suddenly makes sense.
Why is Trump putting these tariffs on China?
And on Europe, coming shortly, he needs them to comply.
Trump is trying to, it appears now, he's trying to refinance the U.S. debt.
It's a way of defaulting on it without saying we're defaulting on it.
It's a way of kind of declaring a national Chapter 11 and restructuring.
That's what's going on.
That's why the people in the know are buying gold.
Now it all makes sense.
Now, my disclaimer on this is, look, this is my best analysis based on the information I have right now.
This is my understanding.
My analysis might not be on the mark here.
There might be other explanations for this, possibly.
But this document exists, and you can read it yourself.
So, again, if you go to HudsonBayCapital.com or you just search for it, it's a PDF there, and it's called A User's Guide to Restructuring the Global Trading.
And it's very clear what it says.
The conclusion that my AI engine wrote says, quote, If necessary.
Uh-huh.
Investors and policymakers should be prepared for increased market volatility and a stronger demarcation between friendly and adversarial trading partners.
What does that mean, a stronger demarcation?
It means you're either with us or you're against us.
You know, you're either on board with Trump's vision and you're going to play a ball and you're going to refinance the debt with America or you're going to be America's enemy.
You're going to be hit with tariffs and who knows what else.
Maybe a lot more, too.
That's what this is.
Now, it's worth mentioning our gold sponsor here, and thank you for supporting our sponsors.
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So give them a call or you can reach them at metalswithmike.com and you can find a form there to fill out or a phone number.
You can even check real-time prices on their gold and silver coins from all the popular mints around the world.
I'll just say this is not investment advice.
I don't know where gold is going.
I suspect it's going to go much higher beyond $3,000 an ounce, but I can't promise that and you should not.
Bet your life savings on that or anything like that.
Do your research.
Get good financial advice.
And I say work to minimize risk.
But I see gold as a way to minimize risk.
If you agree with me, check out metalswithmike.com and get more physical gold and silver into your hands.
And remember, today we'll bring you the interview with Martin Armstrong.
I don't think you're going to want to miss that.
That's really good.
Now, what if the other countries don't want to go along with this?
What if this escalates into kinetic conflict?
See, we're in a financial war.
We're in an AI tech war, that's for sure.
We're also in an information war.
But kinetic warfare becomes the weapon of last resort when nations can't get along, can't agree, can't trade with each other.
If we go to a nuclear war scenario, and rest assured, we are still right now very close to that clock ticking midnight.
Because of our disagreements with Russia and Ukraine recently, Zelensky saying that he needs a nuclear weapon in order to beat Russia.
He's calling for the West to give him a nuclear weapon, if not multiple nuclear weapons.
That sounds like the worst idea ever.
Is to give Zelensky nuclear weapons.
And clearly Russia would not allow that.
They would probably nuke wherever Zelensky is before they would allow him to have possession of a nuke.
I'm just guessing.
But what would a nuclear war actually look like?
Well, there's a book about that by Annie Jacobson.
And it's called Nuclear War, A Scenario.
And with our new BrightLearn.ai video capability, we have produced a book report on this book, Nuclear War, A Scenario.
It's about a six-minute video.
I'd like to play it for you here.
And, you know, each day, where it's relevant, I'll bring you a book review video of something that's highly relevant to what's going on right now.
This is a great one.
If you haven't read this book by Annie Jacobson...
I strongly recommend that you check out the full book.
There's also an audiobook version.
I know that because I bought the audiobook and listened to it, and I learned a lot from it.
And Annie Jacobson, who has done a number of really interesting books, she'd be a great guest to have on the show.
By the way, we should reach out to her.
But she's covered a lot of interesting subjects, and she walks through what a nuclear war would actually look like, step by step.
Minute by minute, from the missiles being launched to interdiction in flight to detonating to the radiation effects and the economic effects and all of it.
So check out this video.
Then we'll return on the other side with our main interview with Martin Armstrong.
Hello, everyone.
Welcome back to the show where we dive deep into the most intriguing and thought-provoking topics of our time.
I'm Bright Learn.
And today, we're exploring a subject that is as terrifying as it is fascinating.
Nuclear War.
Our source is the gripping book, Nuclear War, A Scenario, by Annie Jacobson.
This isn't just a book.
It's a chillingly detailed account of what could happen if the unthinkable occurs.
So buckle up, because we're about to take a journey through a scenario that could change the world as we know it.
Let's start with the prologue, aptly titled, Hell on Earth.
Jacobson paints a vivid picture of what would happen if a one-megaton thermonuclear bomb detonated over Washington, D.C. The devastation would be unimaginable.
The Pentagon, with its 6.5 million square feet of office space and 27,000 employees, would be obliterated in an instant.
The fireball, reaching temperatures of 180 million degrees Fahrenheit, or four or five times hotter than the center of the sun, would incinerate.
To help us understand the destructive capacity of a nuclear detonation over the nation's capital, Jacobson draws on exclusive interviews with experts from various fields, including nuclear weapons designers, former defense secretaries, and emergency management specialists.
These insiders reveal the horrifying realities of a nuclear attack, from the initial blast to the subsequent firestorm that consumes everything in its path.
Now, let's talk about the build-up.
Jacobson takes us back to the early 1950s, when the US government began preparing for the possibility of nuclear war.
The Pentagon, aware that it would be a top target, developed protocols to keep the government functioning after a catastrophic attack.
But here's the kicker.
The plans for general nuclear war are among the most classified secrets held by the US government.
Jacobson teeters on the edge of what can legally be known, using declassified documents to fill in the terrifying details.
One of the most chilling interviews is with General Robert Kaler, the former commander of the United States Strategic Command, who warns, The world could end in the next couple of hours.
This isn't hyperbole.
It's a stark reality, based on decades of planning and preparation.
The book is divided into five parts.
Part 1. The Build-Up explores how we got here, tracing the history of nuclear weapons development and the arms race between superpowers.
Part 2. The First 24 Minutes is a heart-pounding account of the initial strike and its immediate aftermath.
Jacobson describes the destruction of the Pentagon and the surrounding area, including the obliteration of iconic landmarks.
Like the Lincoln and Jefferson Memorials and the Arlington National Cemetery.
But it doesn't stop there.
Part 3. The next 24 minutes delves into the escalating chaos as the U.S. responds to the attack.
Jacobson reveals the existence of the single integrated operational plan, a top-secret plan for a preemptive nuclear strike against the Soviet Union.
This plan had it been activated during the Cold War.
The interviews with military officials and defense scientists reveal the gruesome math behind these plans, with estimates of casualties and the devastating effects of nuclear fallout.
Jacobson also introduces us to the concept of dead when found, a term used by civil defense experts to describe the victims of a nuclear blast.
These are the people who, despite surviving the initial explosion, We'll succumb to radiation poisoning or burns in the hours and days that follow.
In Part 4, titled The Next and Final 24 Minutes, Jacobson takes us to the brink of Armageddon.
The U.S. launches a counterattack and the world descends into chaos.
The interviews with experts like Dr. Richard Garwin, the architect of the first thermonuclear bomb, and Dr. Theodore Postol, a missile technology expert, provide a terrifying glimpse into the capabilities of modern nuclear weapons.
They discuss the concept of launch on warning, a policy that dictates the U.S. will launch its nuclear weapons once its early warning systems detect an impending attack.
Finally, in Part 5, The Next 24 Months and Beyond, Jacobson explores the aftermath of a nuclear exchange.
She describes the onset of nuclear winter, a period of extreme cold and darkness caused by the soot and debris blocking out the sun.
The environmental consequences are catastrophic, with global temperatures plummeting and agriculture collapsing.
The interviews with climatologists and environmental scientists reveal the long-term effects of nuclear war, painting a picture of a world unrecognizable to those of us living today.
As we conclude this episode, I want to leave you with a quote from the book that has stayed with me.
The nuclear-armed ICBM threatens us with annihilation.
This is not just a warning.
It's a reality check.
Jacobson's book is a stark reminder of the dangers we face and the urgent need for nuclear disarmament.
As she writes, The survival of the human species hangs in the balance.
Thank you for joining me on this sobering journey.
If you haven't read Nuclear War, a Scenario, I highly recommend it.
It's a powerful and necessary read for anyone concerned about the future of our world.
Don't forget to subscribe for more episodes on topics that matter.
Until next time, I'm Bright Learn, telling you to stay curious and stay informed.
www.learn.ai for more fascinating videos like this one and www.naturalnews.com for full editorial coverage and breaking news on critical stories that keep you informed and aware of what's really going on.
All right, welcome back.
We're about to jump into an interview with Martin Armstrong.
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All right, one more thing.
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Thank you for your support.
And enjoy this interview with Martin Armstrong.
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Welcome everyone to today's interview on Brighteon.com.
I'm Mike Adams, the founder of Brighteon, the Free Speech Video Network.
And as you know, we are really incredibly thrilled about some of the things that are happening right now in terms of accountability.
And I think Elon is saying that Ron Paul should audit the Fed.
I don't know.
It sounds great, but what will actually happen, I'm not sure.
But we're very concerned about finances and honest money and all the money printing and the debt, all that.
And we couldn't have a better expert than we have on today.
Martin Armstrong from armstrongeconomics.com joins us to talk about what's happening with gold, with USAID, with the Fed, and much more.
Welcome, Martin Armstrong.
You're a legend.
I mean, I honor you so much and your work, and thank you for being with us today.
Well, thank you for inviting me.
We certainly do live in interesting times.
Isn't that the truth?
And let's actually start out with gold, if you don't mind, because, of course, it crossed $2,900 an ounce, and it appears that the central bank in London is unable to deliver on a timely manner, and people are starting to panic, and everybody wants their physical gold all of a sudden.
Can you tell us what's going on in your view?
Mainly, well, the Bank of England had sold off gold before to raise money.
But a lot of the gold has been shipped from London to New York in anticipation of tariffs.
So that's part of the shortage of gold that's developing there.
And particularly in London.
But also what they have to understand here is that gold doesn't really go up with inflation.
I mean, it went down for 19 years from 1980, you know.
Well, national debt went up, inflation went up, etc.
Gold really rises for geopolitical questions.
When you really lose the confidence in government, And there's war, things of this nature.
For example, gold had fallen to $100 in 1976. It finally went up to about $400 by December of 1979. But it went from $400 to $875 in the last six weeks.
Why?
That's when Russia invaded Afghanistan.
So when you look back, that's what gold really does.
It's neutral.
It doesn't depend upon Any particular government winning?
And the unique thing about gold compared to oil, for example, you have Texas crude and you have Brent crude.
They're different.
Whereas gold is the same thing globally.
So an ounce of gold is the same thing in London as it is in New York or Tokyo.
So that makes it a bit different.
Even in a stock, for example.
So gold historically has been more of the hedge against government, but not inflation.
It's really more of the question of the survivability of a government or its credibility.
We're hearing whispers of the possibility of the dollar maybe being tied back to gold partially.
Partially backed by gold, or some new project that Trump might be thinking about, digital or non-digital, that might be partially backed by gold.
Are those just wild rumors?
What do you think of that stuff?
Pretty much.
The main reason you cannot have a gold standard is because in order to do that, we also have to change the entire political system.
You can't have this...
Nonsense.
Vote for me and I'll steal it from this guy and give it to you.
You have to balance budgets, things of this nature.
And I think really ever since the Great Depression, we've ended up where I think politicians have lost their way.
They don't understand how to run without promising you something they don't have.
True.
That's the real problem with trying to have a fixed exchange rate system.
I mean, that's why the gold standard collapsed.
You know, you fixed gold at $35 an ounce, but you didn't limit the amount of dollars you were printing.
Right, right.
But eventually, though, I mean, who wants to buy U.S. Treasury debt if there's no fiscal responsibility, no limits?
And if other countries now have new options, you know, like perhaps BRICS or just trading with their own currencies like China and Russia are doing, you know, isn't there a point where the dollar debt demand is just untenable?
Well, yes.
I mean, people maybe are looking at the central banks, the Federal Reserve, etc.
But the real creator of money is really the debt.
Mainly because, look, the theory that we had that it was less inflationary to borrow than to print was because back in the 60s, if you had an e-bond and you went to the bank, $100 e-bond, would you lend me $50 on it?
The answer was no, it was illegal.
All right, so that was why the theory was it was less inflationary to borrow than to print.
But then when Brenton Woods collapsed, if you want to trade gold futures, you can post T-bills.
So the debt has just simply become money that pays interest.
That's it.
There's no distinction anymore.
So this is, you know, everything that we grew up with basically has changed.
But the economic theories haven't changed.
We don't, you know.
They still like to blame the central bank for inflation when really the bulk of it is created with the debt.
And we're not unique.
All countries have been doing this.
Martin, it seems to me, though, that there is more behind this almost gold panic than just tariffs.
Because, I mean, Trump has put tariffs on steel and aluminum for all imports from all countries, obviously.
I don't recall him saying there's going to be a specific tariff on gold from all countries, although he may target specific countries.
But even if that were so, how could that explain...
What I'm saying is, Martin, that it seems like there's something beyond just the tariff concern that even institutions in the United States want physical delivery now.
Like, people don't trust...
Maybe the rehypothecation that's happening in London or something, like the gold's not there, is the thinking.
Well, no, it's not that he would put a tariff on gold specifically.
What there is concern about is that he's going to put a tariff on Europe.
And in doing so, they don't distinguish between things.
Unfortunately, The way the trade numbers are actually calculated, there's nobody there at the dock counting the number of BMWs or Toyotas coming off the ship.
We just look at the cash flows.
I've dealt with this for decades and argued with governments over it.
They just look at the amount of dollars coming in and out.
That's it.
That's what the Fed will report, you know, current account, you know, deficits, etc.
But, I mean, gold has risen not because of that.
That's only just the recent shift that's causing a, I would say, you know, a shortage in Europe.
But it's also added because...
Of the Europeans that just keep beating the war drums to go against Russia.
True.
That's your main reason gold has risen sharply.
All right.
And you go into war.
I mean, look, I've spoken to three European governments and I went over there, you know, last year and I was really shocked.
But they.
You know, like, well, Russia's going to have to accept our terms, whatever.
I said, what are you going to do, invade?
You know, what are you going to do?
It's just, I don't know if they're just beating their chest out of stupidity or what.
Yeah, I mean, that's Starmer right there, beating his chest out of stupidity and Scholz and Macron and others.
But I recall that gold crossed $2,050.
In February, when Russia first attacked Ukraine with a special military operation, that was the first time gold hit, I believe, 2050. Now, it's almost 50% higher than that.
But what justifies that much concern in the minds of people when Trump is saying, no, we need to resolve this war right now.
We need to resolve it.
There was a big...
Clash going on.
The neocons that were so against Trump here, they shifted to Europe.
And so, look, I've seen the internal memos from like NATO, for example.
They were concerned about all the money going to climate change, and they were like legitimately saying, how do we remain relevant?
And they can only remain relevant by constantly preaching, oh, if Ukraine falls, Putin's going to take all of Europe, so you better send us money.
That's basically it, all right?
And all you've seen, I mean, look, it's the confidence in government that's collapsing.
Take a look at France.
Corporate rates went below that of government.
All right, you have Macron saying, oh, he'll send in troops to Ukraine, whatever.
Yeah, go ahead.
You know, French interest rates on government debt went above that of Greece.
And Greece was supposed to be the basket case.
Wow.
All right, this is the second largest economy in Germany.
I mean, in Europe.
Then you have Germany.
Which is, you know, you've got Schultz hopped on a plane to Ukraine.
Oh, we're going to be your strongest supporter.
They keep this up because domestically their economies are collapsing.
Between climate change and then the sanctions on Russia, the German economy, which has been the cornerstone of the EU, has actually shrunk by 3%.
So you put a lot of small businesses out of, you know, And bankruptcy.
They're gone.
So the economy's shrinking.
We're not just talking about a recession.
We're talking about the number of institutions are declining.
And, alright, fine, we blew up Nord Stream 1. Nord Stream 2 is there.
The Germans have voluntarily cut it off.
Voluntarily.
And without energy, They're no longer the manufacturing centerpiece of Europe.
So our computer is showing we're looking at a strong probability of Europe going into a depression going into 2028. So your model, Socrates, you're known for being the expert on studying flows, capital flows, right?
Yeah.
One of the main drivers of your models analysis, correct?
Yes.
Over the years, from two aspects, one being one of the first international hedge fund managers.
You have to look at, you know, globally, every country, where you're going, whatever.
But also back in the 80s, I can tell you what was...
We were going to open an office in Geneva in 1985. And one of our clients was one of the top three Swiss banks.
And I went to lunch with him.
And I knew there was anti-Americanism there.
So I had a list of European, like European advisors, a few names we made up.
And I was asking him, which one do you think we should use?
And he kind of laughed and looked at me and he said, name one European analyst.
And I was embarrassed because at the time I really couldn't.
And he said, there are none.
He says, you don't realize why everybody uses you.
I said, no.
And he says, you don't care if the dollar goes up or down.
I said, it's just a trade.
And in Europe, he then explained to me, and still this way, Europe has had canceled culture since the 80s in the financial industry.
Because after World War II, the politicians used the currency to validate that they did a good job.
Vote for me, the Deutsche Mark's up 10% against the dollar.
That shows I'm doing a good job.
So, consequently, no analyst at any of the major institutions, banks, or whatever, could possibly say the Deutsche Mark would go down if it was a political statement.
An example of that, after the 2007 high, one economist in Estonia came out and said, we're going into a crash.
They put him in jail for six months.
Wow.
If a major bank analyst comes out and says the euro is going to crash, the ECB will be on the phone and say, fire that guy.
Well, and the UK has become so authoritarian about speech at this point, and so has Germany.
But it's the path that they're on.
I have to characterize it as a suicide cult.
That's the leadership of Western Europe.
Your comments.
Well, what I'm saying is that this began in the financial industry.
Wow.
That's how we became global.
And I didn't understand it initially.
But we were getting called into, you know, all sorts of things, different governments around the world, because we were the only ones really doing honest, you know, foreign exchange forecasting.
I got to know Maggie Thatcher that way.
The capital flows, I began to see, we had a client in...
Excuse me.
In Lebanon.
Let me just shut that thing off.
Are you getting emergency alerts coming in or what's going on?
Yeah, I don't know.
I get a lot of emails and stuff.
The dollar's crashing.
It's like you have the dollar alert radio.
One of the major banks in Lebanon had found a book in the basement and somebody had written down the Lebanese pound back deep.
Mid-1800s.
And they asked if we could build a model on it.
And I said, sure, okay, fine.
They sent it over.
We put it in.
I didn't really know anything about the fundamentals that were going on.
And I said, look, there's got to be something wrong with this data.
The computer says your country's going to fall apart in eight days.
And he very calmly said to me, he says, well, what currency would you recommend?
I said, excuse me?
I said, well, it says the Swiss franc.
Eight days later, the Civil War began.
So obviously they saw it themselves and they came to me for the timing.
Then I had a client in Saudi Arabia.
He was one of the biggest shippers in the Gulf.
And he calls and he says, what do you think gold's going to do tomorrow?
Iraq's going to start attacking shipping in the Gulf tomorrow.
I said, you tell me a war's going to start?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
What do you think gold's going to do?
Over time I began to realize So I became very famous with the Russian one.
You know, I stood up and we saw $100 billion going into Russia, but $150 billion coming out.
And I stood up in our conference in London in June of 1998. I said, look, Russia's going to collapse.
I give it maybe about six weeks.
And lo and behold, I didn't realize it, but the London Financial Times, it snuck in the back.
And next thing I know, on the front page, Armstrong says Russia's going to collapse.
And it did.
That was the long-term capital management crisis, etc.
Oh, wow.
So it's always capital flows that we've been monitoring.
And it's very...
When you're an international hedge fund manager, you see it.
Not domestic, but you see it internationally.
Like Tokyo, 1989. Everybody was there.
Every fund that I know, every manager was there.
Same thing on Russia.
Why did it collapse?
Because they're all in the same trade.
They try to get out.
They can't because they are the market.
There's no bid.
Then they start selling other assets everywhere else to raise money to cover their losses in Russia.
That's why it all collapsed.
Just like the Nikkei in 89, as you mentioned.
Yeah, these guys all get on the same trade, and that's the problem.
Right.
Soros was on with the pound, but he was not the only one.
They were all in the same trade.
Well, there's an argument for avoiding counterparty risk right there, but let's pivot a little bit.
but it's kind of related, but USAID, you know, talk about outflows, even though it was about, I think, $50 billion a year, which is small compared to the total federal budget, it was still significant.
It was a giant slush fund of corruption and fraud and pushing, you know, LGBT themes and propaganda and who knows what else all over the place, funneling money back into the pockets of really bad people in the U.S. and all over the world.
Now, what do you make of the fact that that's been shut down and that the so-called Doge team has got basically crawlers and AI agents working through the treasury data and apparently they're going to audit the Pentagon and maybe the Fed.
I mean, what do you make of all this and where is it going?
Well, I mean, you can go back to the day before 9-11.
You had Rumsfeld, and I think the tape is on YouTube.
There was $2.3 trillion missing just in that annual budget of the Pentagon.
And he promised an audit.
Of course, the plane hit in the Pentagon.
Hatcher so happened to hit the very room where all the records were.
Yeah, what a coincidence, yeah.
Yeah, quite a coincidence.
But they have failed, what is it, their fifth audit already?
Look, if you were running a small business, the IRS came in and you said, hey, where's that $100,000?
Oh, gee, I don't know.
I think they are going to come to handcuffs.
You know, that's not an excuse.
Yet, this is what is going on in government.
I mean, it's outrageous, but nobody's ever held accountable.
I mean, I can tell you, in my case, I was actually asked to put in $10 billion into Hermitage Capital, and this was the whole Russia...
Collapse and long-term capital management.
It was a regime change attempt.
All right?
And look, you can look at New York Magazine, the money plane.
All right?
They did a big article.
I saw skids, $100 bills, you know, in the basement of Republic National Bank being shipped off to Russia.
All right?
To fund all this regime change nonsense.
And, I mean, I sold them.
And so, I mean, they were trying to, basically, what they did, they got Yeltsin to move $7 billion from the IMF. And a wire went to Geneva.
And as soon as the wire went through Bank of New York to Geneva, the Republic National Bank ran to the feds and say, oh, they just did a $7 billion money laundering.
Now the feds run into it, okay?
And everybody gets upset, whatever, and they're threatening Yeltsin, all right?
This is basically he was going to run for election in 2000, and they're threatening him to step down and hand it to Boris Barostovsky, all right, who I, you know, even called me when I refused to put in the money.
And he was going to be their shill.
They were going to take over Russia.
The bankers in New York were going to get all the gold, the diamonds, the oil, the platinum from Russia.
It was all going to go through the New York trading desk.
And so it was a regime change attempt.
And I said, look, I'm sorry.
sorry, I'm not getting involved in this shit.
And so the feds run into, into bank in New York, I got the transcripts.
The two brokers that were involved, when the feds finally realized it was Yeltsin, they plead guilty and said, well, it also included a ransom to a Russian businessman.
And the judge goes, oh, okay, fine, thank you.
You don't even ask the name?
Who could possibly have that kind of money to pay for a ransom?
And then gives them six months house arrest.
Wow.
No prison time.
This is why Hillary started the Russiagate.
They were involved in this.
And she assumed in 2016, Putin basically is retaliating against her for what they did in 2000. Right.
Because they were trying to get Yeltsin to hand it to their guy.
Yeltsin at the same time...
The communists had filed a motion for impeachment on this corruption.
And so that's how Putin comes to power.
All right, Yeltsin turned to Putin.
That's why he was so popular, because one, he wasn't an oligarch, and two, he wasn't a communist.
That's why the people cheered him.
Martin, this is truly fascinating.
And let me bring in the new Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, here, because obviously he's very different from Antony Blinken.
And Victoria Nuland, you know, please leave forever from all anything related to government.
But Marco Rubio says, or Secretary Rubio says that the U.S. can't, I'm paraphrasing, but he says the U.S. can't dominate the world anymore.
It's going to be a multipolar world.
And it's actually not natural for a single dominant power like post-World War II to control the world.
Marco Rubio is saying.
That there's going to be China, there's going to be Russia, there's going to be the United States.
And all these efforts to destroy Russia over the last few years under the Biden regime and under Victoria Nuland and Blinken and so on have absolutely failed, if not completely backfired.
So what does this mean, this massive pivot from the State Department?
I mean, I've had contact with Rubio.
I hope he sticks to what he said.
I really do.
The neocons, I know, I've been to dinner with them, alright?
I know Bill Kristol, his father's the one who started the whole neocon movement.
And he's a massive recipient of USAID money?
Yes, exactly.
By the way, yes.
To go against Trump, basically.
Right.
And, I mean, I had arguments with Bill back in the 90s.
And he said, if we remove Saddam Hussein, Assad out of Syria, and Gaddafi, we would bring peace to the Middle East.
I said, you're out of your mind.
Don't you understand?
The Middle East is tribal.
Everybody in Syria does not consider themselves to be Syrian.
They're tribal.
Shunni, Shia, Kurd, they see that first.
It's very tribal.
Understand the Middle East.
There was a big Arabian war.
The Saudi tribe won, so that's why we call it Saudi Arabia.
The Hadjamites, which were basically lost, they got Jordan.
Jordan was supposed to be the place for the Palestinians.
Look at the king of Jordan.
What did he do?
He married a Palestinian to try and merge the two tribes.
That didn't work.
Look, this is the Middle East.
If you don't understand that, forget it.
You have no business even talking about it.
It's not the same as nationalism and things.
These borders, we drew.
I mean, breaking up the Ottoman Empire after World War I, we're the one that created these countries and stuck in dictatorships because it required a dictatorship because all the tribes were fighting.
Just look at Tony Blair's apology.
It's on YouTube.
He says, we thought we were freeing the people from Saddam Hussein and we subjected them to sectarian violence.
Just because he at least kept the tribes in check.
But without somebody doing that, they all want to kill each other.
And look at Qaddafi in Libya.
I mean, the post-Qaddafi Libya has been a disaster.
Oh, yeah.
I mean, look, this is because we created the borders.
All right.
Look, I know RFK. We even had a discussion.
Asked me, you know, how would you solve Ukraine?
To me, the solution is very simple.
We had it with the, you know, men's agreement.
Just look at, you know, Yugoslavia when it broke up.
And I had been called in by the Yugoslav government.
I met with them.
And they were like...
Oh, you know what they did to us?
They killed over 600 of us and threw us in a common grave.
And I was kind of shocked.
I mean, I thought I missed something on the news.
I said, oh my God, really?
I said, when did this happen?
Oh, about 700 years ago.
Oh, that one.
Okay.
I mean, that's what I mean.
These resentments go back, I mean, centuries.
The Greeks don't like the Turks.
All right?
This has been going on since the time of Alexander the Great.
Yeah, right.
I mean, we're not talking about new conflicts here.
These things have been going on for a long time.
Okay, I want to...
Iran, Shunasuni, and Shiite, these are religious things that, for example, that's like the Protestants versus the Catholics in England.
True.
True.
I mean, to this day, you still have...
You know, in London, they'll still call a Catholic a pape.
I mean, that was, you know, 1600s.
These things live on for a very long time.
Okay, I want to remind our viewers of your website.
It's armstrongeconomics.com.
And I think not only do you have the post here, but don't you also have a newsletter there, Martin?
You want to tell us about it?
Well, there are some things we have a private blog, which...
For political reasons, I, you know, we necessarily don't want to, it's not searchable by Google.
Okay, got it.
We try to at least keep it off the mainstream, and just for clients.
You know, it's, look, I, they don't really bother us because, and I was kind of surprised, but, you know, one.
Friend in Washington.
I didn't realize it.
He says, you're not blocked anywhere in the world.
He says, you're the only one.
And I thought about it.
I said, yeah, actually, you're right.
We actually have offices in China.
I've been on Russian TV. They know it's the computer.
And that it's not biased.
It's not going to say on page three, by the way, overthrow your government or anything.
It just is what it is, and it's been phenomenal in its forecasting, mainly because, I mean, like, Nigel Farage came to our conference in Rome in 2019, and he says, look, he says, not only are they the alternative to Davos, he called us, he says, they're the only ones that said I would win.
Every newspaper said that Brexit was going to lose.
And also, your model said that Trump was going to win this recent election as well.
But it said that they were going to win on a landslide.
It looks at it from the numbers perspective.
Right.
It's not calling up a bunch of people, oh gee, who would you vote for?
You know, that depends, honestly.
I mean, if you just did a poll and you called on any people in Washington, D.C., you'd be lucky if Trump would have got 5%, right?
Right.
So, I mean, those things can be skewed one way or another.
So, most of the, everybody wants to see what the computer's got to say because it's not doing that way and there's no human.
Interaction or interference in it.
So we just say, look, this is what it is.
All right, Martin, I really want to pivot.
I want to ask you about China and AI and tech and your thoughts.
Let me just set it up, okay, because I just want to remind our audience that China released the DeepSeek reasoning model.
I've done demonstrations of that model.
I run it on my desktop.
It's really astonishing.
The U.S. tech sector lost, I don't know, a trillion dollars in valuation the next day.
NVIDIA and so on, which I think was an overreaction.
I think NVIDIA's got a super strong future.
My company alone will probably spend half a million dollars on NVIDIA just this year, just saying, because we're building AI engines and using AI everywhere.
Martin, we are using AI in our logistics supply chain.
We are applying a whole new AI system for our own logistics, because to not do so is to become obsolete.
But China is really giving the U.S. a run for its money.
China has put out open-source decentralized models for free while the U.S. is focused on Trump funneling a bunch of money into a company called OpenAI, which is not open.
It should be called ClosedAI, that Elon Musk is trying to buy because they don't release their models to the public, or at least not until recently.
So it's a quagmire, but China is competitive, if not dominating in this space right now.
So give us your take, Martin.
Look, I mean, I think the DeepSeek and OpenAI, they're language-based models.
Alright, so the computer can learn a lot and develop quite good.
I mean, there are certain things it's not going to be able to do.
Alright, but look, AI, I mean, My computer, Socrates, I mean, it's the longest-running AI system in the world, really, and with a 40-year track record.
But it was designed differently.
This was designed for my understanding international capital flows.
So it will pick up things.
I did a...
Actually, before I think it was MSNBC, it was FNN, Financial News Network that they bought.
And I was on there one night with Walter Bressert.
And this was the beginning of the 80s.
And the computer came out and it actually impressed me.
The British pound was at 240. And I said, look, it's saying the British pound is going to fall to par.
And I gave it about five years.
And he was shocked.
And he turned to Walt and he said, what do you think of that forecast?
And Walt said, I wouldn't bet against his computer.
And indeed, the pound fell to 103 by 1985. So the analysis side that you're describing, that you really pioneered on the financial side of this, I think that today's AI models are able to do a lot of middle-manager type of tasks within a company.
For example, in our company, we're in the food business and we get documents from suppliers about their compliance with FDA or USDA organic and whatever.
So instead of paying a human being to sit there and go through the documents, we're just going to have an AI agent go through and read it and find out what's missing and send the email to the...
Like, you're missing this and this and this, and it's just done.
You know what I mean?
I don't need a human to do that, but the humans I have, I'm not firing them.
They're thrilled.
Like, they're thrilled about this because they're going to be able to get more done in less time and do higher-level tasks.
And my question to you, sir, is about what does that mean in our economy, in our society, when people have tools that can automate the tedious tasks?
And let them do more important decision-making that AI can't really do that well.
Look, I can tell you our own company.
Why do we, besides the foreign exchange, why do we become the largest institutional advisor?
Because our reports used to go out on Telex.
Wow, okay.
Those are the days.
Yes, it was $75 to receive one Telex in the Middle East.
No.
On one market, okay?
Oh my.
We had clients, this is why we started opening offices around the world, because they were paying $200,000 to $300,000 a year in communication costs.
Unreal.
Back then, all right?
So, I can say that from then we went, you know, you went from Telex, I can see in our own company.
Back then, we had staff around the world that would collect the data in each of these countries and input them into our computer.
Today, the computer just basically pulls it down from the exchanges around the world.
So we've eliminated that.
And it's all instantaneous.
So the computer basically writes Over a thousand reports every night.
There aren't that many analysts in the world to do this.
Right.
So AI, I think that it can expand something dramatically.
It allows us to do things that we would never have been able to service the retail market before.
You just couldn't do it.
I mean, today, anybody can go online and pull down our reports and whatever.
It's much more open today than it was, you know, 30 or 40 years ago.
So I think AI has the ability to really expand the economy, all right?
My father was a lawyer, wanted to push me into law.
I started studying law.
I just didn't want to go into it.
I just felt it was, you know, not for me.
And so he pushed me into computers.
And so I went into engineering school.
And back then, you had to do the programming and the design.
So we had to do hardware and software in a course to get out.
That was it.
So people don't realize, I mean, back then, RCA was the biggest in computers.
It had all the government contracts coming out of World War II. And then I was on the design team.
They asked me if I would do the presentation to the board because Integrated circuits had just come out.
And I said, why me?
I was a young kid.
And they felt that they were brilliant guys, but they couldn't sell a life preserver on the sinking Titanic.
And so they stuck me in front of it.
And I was kind of nervous.
And I got them to understand, look, we could shrink this computer the size of a room down to a desktop.
It's the late 60s.
They asked me a question I could not answer.
They said, what's somebody going to do with it?
And I didn't have the experience to know.
I mean, this is before Lotus, Microsoft, all this.
Right.
Now I know the answer.
Just build it and somebody will come out and figure out how to use it.
Well, I mean, you're talking about an era where, yeah, IBM was the big gorilla in the room of mainframes, right?
And they would fill rooms.
Yeah, this is what people don't realize is that RCA, because they had, you know, the radio was such a big thing coming out of the Great Depression.
It used to be a standing unit and everybody would sit around it and listen to FDR, etc.
When they decided, IBM was just a typewriter company.
RCA, because I couldn't answer that question.
The board decided to sell the computer division.
Oh, you're kidding me.
I was there for it.
They sold it to IBM. And part of it was also sold to UNIVAC. Oh, wow.
And then they exited because they thought they were selling these mainframes back then.
They were going for like $7 million.
Right.
A lot of money.
And they would do less than what an Excel spreadsheet can do today.
Yeah.
But they were still worth it for accounting.
Large companies would put them in for accounting.
They were very impressive.
I can tell you, you see old James Bond movies, these things with lights flashing and everything.
We used to call them idiot lights.
The salesman would say, more idiot lights.
Because if it didn't look like it was doing something, the more idiot lights it had, the more money they could get.
Yeah, that's right.
But, I mean, that's how IBM started.
And actually, to tell you, RCA kept the servicing of all the government installations.
So, the married guys were getting offered London, Hawaii, Paris.
I was not married.
I was offered Thule Greenland, Guam, or Vietnam.
I passed.
So to the Greenland back then, and that's why Trump wants it today, was where we had NORAD. And NORAD basically covers the top of the globe, because if Russia's going to send a missile, it's not going to come across the Atlantic.
It's going to come across the top of the globe.
That's right.
It's quicker to get here, all right?
Anything from the Atlantic is going to be from a sub.
So NORAD was up there to protect the United States.
And back then, planes were still props.
Demi Jets were around, but not many.
And I asked a guy that did two tours there.
Back then, you made $50,000 a year tax-free, and you had to stay there a year and a day.
And I asked him, I said, what did you do?
He said, nothing.
You had to be there in case something happened.
Because if it went down, they couldn't get somebody in quick enough.
I said, boy, and he did two tours, came back, bought a house for cash, everything.
I said, I don't know if I can do that.
I said, what'd you do?
I said, I watched the same movie about 30 or 40 times that played darts and cards.
Unreal.
It didn't sound like something thrilled that I wanted to do in life, you know?
No, no, not at all.
But if you don't mind me pursuing this question a little bit more about AI, we now have reasoning models.
Beyond language models, so they do go through a thinking process, and open AI, Sam Altman just announced that by the end of this year, there would be super coding AI agents that can make almost all human coders obsolete, which means the human coders will be in charge of the project, but not writing code, but they'll still be the architects of it, right?
Like, what should the computer build for us?
What are we building, right?
But they're not writing code anymore.
I mean, isn't this reasoning model phenomenon going to be a game-changer for things like policy areas?
Well, yes.
I mean, look, I think you could replace judges with AI, actually.
That would be more fair.
I think so, too.
They would be more fair.
Even doctors, I mean, look, what we would call a look-up program.
You list every disease, what are the symptoms, you put it in, and the computer can very well look that up faster than any doctor and say, this is probably what you have.
Those things are certainly possible and not really a problem.
Where AI probably will not be able to do things is more or less, for example, in trading.
As a major fund manager, you have to know much more.
It's little nuances.
Like you're driving down the road and the guy just looks like he's...
He starts to move out but hesitates.
You know what he's going to do.
You have to know that in trading.
True.
And there's the human element behind all of it.
Yeah, it's like a poker game.
Is he bluffing or is he not bluffing?
Do you think he has it?
Those are human aspects of intuition that I'm not sure you really can code or a computer can pick up.
I agree with you.
I think that human element is elusive to AI systems.
But let me just share something with you that I use DeepSeq reasoning model as a test.
I just want to demonstrate this, describe this to you and get your reaction because this derived knowledge that was not in any resource.
I run a food lab and I asked it, I said, what common solvents would be the best mixture for...
Extracting rosmarinic acid from rosemary herb.
Like, give me a recipe for the best solvents.
And it went through a thinking process and it realized that rosmarinic acid is a phenolic compound, so it knew the polarity of that compound.
And then it went through its list of solvents and thought about things like water versus isopropyl alcohol versus other things.
things and and and it went through a process and it came up with a a recipe of the best solvent mixture for that molecule based on solubility and the polarity of the molecule and like that was not in any reference book anywhere it figured that out like that is something different than what we had seen over the last couple years yes but it's also coming from a knowledge base it is i mean like the molecular structure
exactly right exactly So you can...
Possibly create things of that nature, where it's going to go off and search things and come up with things that are...
Our computer has done countless times on war and politics and things of this nature because it's looking across the board.
I would say you can say one common...
Trend in politics is you take the economy down and I don't care who's in, it always flips.
Right.
Like, you know, Hoover was just elected in the beginning of 29. I mean, the guy didn't cause the Great Depression, but hey, he's there, he gets blamed.
That's it.
And pretty much that's what you see in politics on a global scale.
It doesn't matter what culture you're looking at.
Or anything else.
Human nature will respond the same way to his very similar set of facts.
Wow.
Right.
Okay.
So Martin, we're almost out of time.
I want to give your website again.
Martin, I'm sorry, armstrongeconomics.com is where people can find you.
And I want to ask you too, do you also, I mean, you still do consulting for, it could be institutions or governments or nations or anything?
Like high-level parties, right?
Oh, yeah.
Look, we get called in mainly because, you know, it's the experience.
I understand.
I mean, I've dealt with probably just about every central bank and called into every financial crisis, you name it.
I mean, even the The Asian currency crisis in 1997 was called in by the Bank of China.
More or less, they come to us because they know, one, we're global, but two, that we have a track record that can be verified.
And that's everything.
If you came up with some model and say, look, this is the greatest thing since sliced bread, trust me, they can't touch it.
Mainly because if they lost money, then they're going to say, and you gave this thing a shot?
There goes your career.
So as long as everybody's in the same boat, they're fine.
But I've had to deal with central banks, and I can tell you, Right now, the real problem with central banks and even trying to send in anybody to audit the Fed,
what they don't get is that when Keynes came up with Keynesian economics in the 1930s, and I just recently read this to a congressman.
I said, wake up, will you please?
In the 1930s, we had a balanced budget.
So Keynes made sense.
If we raise interest rates or lower interest rates, they were affecting us.
Today, the government is the biggest borrower in the room.
So what's happened, Powell raised rates to try and fight inflation.
It creates more.
Why?
Because all of a sudden, the interest expenditures of the United States go up.
Right.
All right, so the Fed, all central banks, they have been basically neutered.
They've lost any ability to actually control the economy.
But now they can't publicly say that because everything depends upon confidence.
Yes, there you go.
I can tell you, why did the 87 crash happen?
Because in 1985, they stood up with the Plaza Accord and said, oh, we want to see the dollar down by 40%.
Very nice.
Then the dollar kept falling.
Then there was the Louvre Accord in early 1987. They all got together, became a G7 then.
And they said, all right, fine.
The dollar went down enough.
What happened?
The dollar made new lows.
And everybody went, oh, shit.
The central banks can't stop it.
Right.
And that caused your crash.
Black Monday.
Once the confidence is gone, everything is on the table.
I can tell you the Brady Commission started going after fund managers, asking them why did they sell.
The answer was overwhelming.
They called the floor.
Why is it dialed down a thousand points?
I don't know.
There was no information.
The Fed didn't raise interest rates, no economic number, nothing.
So what do you do as a fund manager?
You sell because you don't know if it's going to go down another 20% tomorrow.
It's prudent.
I didn't want to go into the 87 crash.
They started lobbying my friends.
The theory was computer trading caused it.
Actually, Jack Schwager called me and said, Marty, if you don't go in, they're going to come take a lot of computers.
I went in and basically what they said, we're going to find the guy that shorted this market and forced it down.
I said, do you realize that every investigation since 1907 began with those same words and nobody's ever been found?
I said, don't you understand what makes a market move?
When everybody's long, all right?
It's like that Russian thing we just talked about.
And something happens and they try to sell.
There's no bid.
Right.
That's when it goes down a thousand points.
Well, I think that's a little foreshadow of some interesting things to come.
Martin, we're out of time.
I apologize.
But this has been a fascinating discussion.
And I want to thank you for taking the time to join me today.
It's been a pleasure.
Well, thank you for inviting me.
We have to get people to understand what the real problems are here.
And once you understand that, then the future you begin to see is a little bit different than maybe what you anticipated.
Yeah, there you go.
Exactly right.
Thank you, Martin.
Again, it's been an honor.
Thank you for all that you do.
Thank you for joining us today.
And to our viewers, the website again is armstrongeconomics.com.
Be sure to visit there and read Martin's numerous articles, and he does a lot of interviews as well.
And again, thank you, Martin, for your time today.
It's always a pleasure to speak with you, and I hope 2025 goes well for all of us.
But wow, it's going to be a rocky ride.
So thank all of you for watching today here.
I'm Mike Adams of brighteon.com.
And feel free to share this and repost this interview on other platforms and channels as well.
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