(0:00 - 0:52) Tariffs, Canadian sovereignty, war in Europe, Alberta separation. These are the topics that all Canadians are concerned about today, and we should be, as all of them can and will profoundly affect our future, both as a nation and as individuals. Many people mistakenly believe that economists are glorified accountants, and perhaps some of them are. But good economists, real economists, study how people, businesses, and governments use resources like money, labor, and materials. They analyze data, identify trends, and make predictions about things like prices, jobs, or economic growth. Their work helps guide decisions on government policies, investments, or business strategies. (0:54 - 1:28) Martin Armstrong of Armstrong Economics has been an advisor to Margaret Thatcher. He's addressed US Congress, and he knows personally many of the world's past and present leaders. In the early 1980s, Martin created his economic confidence model, with which he has successfully predicted the 1987 stock market crash, the decline of the British pound, the Russian financial crisis of the late 90s, the 2008 global financial crisis, Brexit, and the election of Donald Trump. (1:29 - 2:40) In my first interview with Mr. Armstrong, released just a few weeks ago and titled The EU Will Start World War III and They Will Lose, he explained why Russia will not back down, why the EU will go to war, and predicted that the inevitable Russia-China coalition will win that war. In this second follow-up interview, Martin answers questions about America and Canada, what will happen if the US becomes involved in that war, his model's prediction that Alberta will separate from Canada, and what will happen to the rest of Canada as a result. We all want a secure future for ourselves and for our children. And when we know the future, we can make plans not only to protect ourselves, but even to prosper. Martin, welcome back to the show. Thank you once again for the generous gift of your time. (2:41 - 3:54) Well, thank you for inviting me. So last time we discussed the EU, Russia, China, the fact that there is a war coming, and you even went so far as to predict it is a war that the EU is going to lose. And so I think since we're here today to discuss North America, primarily the United States and Canada, I think the first question has to be, there's really two possibilities for that war as far as America and Canada are concerned. Canada almost certainly would get involved because we're a NATO state, we're under a liberal government, you even said that there might even be a draft. However, the US has two possible futures. In one, the United States gets involved in that war, goes to war with Russia on the side of the EU. And the other, Donald Trump actually listens to your advice, withdraws from NATO, and America does not get involved. So under those two scenarios, Martin, what happens? You know, Trump is pulling troops out of the EU right now. I have spoken to, I won't say who, but I mean, to some very high level people on Capitol Hill. (3:56 - 5:20) And I was saying, look, we should get out of NATO because they're going to create a false flag to invoke Article 5, claim that Russia did something to drag us in. And I mean, I was surprised. You know, sometimes people would say, oh, that's a conspiracy theory or whatever. And the response was, no, you're right, we know. I was like, wow, okay, we're getting somewhere. But my problem is I'm afraid some of these neocons, and look, I've been to dinner with these people. You look in their eyes and you do not see a warm light. If you shake hands, you better take a shower afterwards. It's just, I can't explain it. Their thinking process is, it seems to be just racist or, I don't know. I mean, I think that because of Khrushchev back in the, you know, saying we will bury you and all right, fine. Everybody got against communism. (5:21 - 7:17) But that was a, not to invade Europe for an economic reason. It was more of an economic, you know, spreading a religion, sort of saying, is that, you know, communism is going to defeat evil capitalism? So, I mean, you know, if you look at, for example, why did Japan go invade Manchuria? It was to get assets, you know, energy, you know, it was profitable. Okay, so if you look at most of the wars, why did they attempt to invade Russia? Because Russia is the richest country in the world from a natural resource perspective. So it is profitable if you can do it, all right. I mean, look, they tried back, you know, in the 18th century and that ended up with Peter the Great, you know, won Russia war, you know, won then. Hitler tried it, Napoleon tried it, you know. So at least there's profit to be achieved if you do that. On the other way around, economically, Russia would be out of its mind to invade Europe. They have nothing, okay. I mean, you're not talking about, oh, they get that we're going to have gas reserves and energy and gold or whatever. You'll get nothing. You know, all you'll get is headaches. And then maybe the French will say, are you going to pay our pensions now or what? You're going to get civil unrest. So in all honesty, Russia has no interest in taking, conquering Europe. There is nothing there. (7:20 - 7:51) Even Trump's rhetoric with Canada, okay, at least there's natural resources there, all right. Also, you know, if Russia were to attack the United States, the missiles would come over the top of the globe, over Canada. You don't go, you know, the Earth, like even if you fly from New York to Tokyo, they fly over the top because it's a shorter distance than flying around the belly. (7:52 - 8:07) All right. You know, it's, you can't go to Tokyo nonstop, you know, across the, you know, from across the middle of the Earth. It's just, it's too big. (8:07 - 10:59) Whereas, you know, New York to Tokyo, over the top, you can make a nonstop flight. So I understand Trump with the whole Canada issue from a national security perspective. Okay. I understand that. Plus Canada has natural resources. So there is at least an economic reason. Whereas if you look at Russia versus Europe, there is none. You know, so if you look at all the wars throughout history or whatever, they have been largely driven by economic reasons. Simple as that. I mean, it's, you know, you don't go, you know, waging war against somebody that's going to cost you money and you're going to get nothing out of it, you know. The troops of Alexander the Great, you know, shared in the spoils. If there were no spoils, they're going, what the hell are we doing here? You know, so. So if you look at war, you know, just statistically throughout history, you see it's, there has to be an economic reason, you know, basically to do so. So it's the other way around. The EU is faltering. You know, as I've said, you know, I was, they came to me when they were creating the currency and I said, this is how we do it. But everything they said about, oh, the euro will, you know, compete against the dollar. I said, it's not going to happen. All right. You have to consolidate the debts, create a national currency. It would be kind of like Canada, you know, before union. You know, each province is a separate country. You know, you don't have a civil currency or a single debt or anything else. This is what Europe is. All right. And it was mainly because Helmut Kohl knew if he allowed the German people to vote, he admitted before he died that he acted like a dictator. And if he allowed them to vote on joining the euro, he would have lost 73. So he just took Germany in. But his criteria was since Germany's 25% of the, you know, of the EU GDP was no consolidation of the debt. Because the Germans might think that they're bailing out Greece or Italy or whatever, you know. (10:59 - 11:08) And that's the problem. So I warned them. I said, fine, you can have a single currency. (11:09 - 11:28) United States has a single currency, but we have 50 states and they all pay different rates based upon their credit rating. You know, the currency doesn't make everybody equal. So they told me back in 1998, they understood what I was saying. (11:29 - 12:01) Yes, you're right. But they just had to get the euro in to create the bureaucracy. Then they would worry about the debts later. OK, here we are 26 years later and they still haven't addressed the issue. So the problem here is we saw it like in 2010 in Greece. When Greece got into trouble and needed a loan from the IMF, it started a contagion that the traders said, oh, who's next? Oh, Spain, you know, because they're all in the same boat. (12:02 - 13:36) You know, and you can read, like I said, you know, Herbert Hoover's memoirs, 1931, where one country defaulted, it's turned into a contagion. One after the other defaulted on their debts. And he said it capital acted like a loose cannon on the deck of a ship in the middle of a tempest. You know, and that's what happens. This is the risk of Europe. And this is why they need war, because they know it's failing. Right. I mean, I do podcasts from Netherlands to Palermo and Sicily, Serbia, Croatia. I'm you know, I. I speak around the world and mainly I do that because I want to see what questions I'm getting. What is their thinking process in that particular country at that time? So that's interesting, because, you know, as my father always thought, it's not what I think, it's what everybody else thinks, because they respond according to what they believe. So, I mean, this is, you know, this is the issue in it. Three, you know, honestly, even three years ago. I would say, look, the EU is going to break up and they go, really? Now it's the questions I get even from Netherlands. Where? You know, it's. They're all kind of fed up with this. (13:37 - 14:27) And the problem historically is that when you have a centralized government. And the lethal next that we are in the middle of is that you have a centralized government, Canada, United States, all of them. And you've had this climate change, you've had socialism, and then they try to enforce their agenda on everybody else. I mean, this is really what communism was. And therein lies the problem. You know, as I've said, I've been to Canada, you know, I've been advising in Canada, probably, you know, since the early 80s. (14:27 - 18:38) You know, and it's, you know, I've dealt with everybody from central banks on that, you know, whatever. And it's, it's been interesting because of the, I've watched things change back and forth. In the 80s, they were raising interest rates to fight real estate speculation in Toronto, putting farmers and miners in bankruptcy in Alberta. You know, this one, this is what I mean, this one size fits all from a centralized government does not, you know, it just doesn't work. It breeds separation eventually. You have different economic economies, things of this nature. And as I've said before, when the Federal Reserve was originally created, it was done correctly. There were 13 branches, but each was independent. So if there was real estate speculation in New York, they could raise interest rates that didn't affect Kansas. And you can look at an old newspapers.com and look, and you'll see the newspapers from 1920s, which show all the different interest rates for each branch. You know, the idea was if there was a shortage in one area, you raise your rates to attract money to your region. And if there was excess, you lowered your rates, supply and demand. Simple as that. And it was FDR to sell his socialistic agenda. He usurped all the power of the Federal Reserve and stuck it in Washington and then won a single interest rate for the whole country. And Canada has followed it. This is not right. So this is what creates the regional tensions. And then on top of it, you have Trudeau and this climate change nonsense. And it is nonsense. I mean, all you have to really do is look historically. I mean, the planet has always had warming periods and cooling periods. I mean, there's been ice ages, et cetera. You can read Cicero talking about, oh, pollution in Rome. And so I go out of the city to get fresh air. It's the first Clean Air Act was passed, I think it was in 541 A.D. in Byzantium. So I mean, this stuff is not new. It's been going on for a long time. And the worst, what these climate change people don't understand is that you can look at a book, the year that there wasn't a summer, 1860. Krakatoa went off and a volcano throws off more ash into the atmosphere than you'll ever get with all the cars. And it blocks the sun. And so crops failed. And the year without a summer, and there's a book on it, it was snowing in July in New York City. So, I mean, it's these people, oh, gee, it got warmer this year than last year. It must be because of us. They always want to blame us for everything, as if we are in charge of this planet. I mean, I think the Earth's been around a long time. And it has its own mechanisms, et cetera. I mean, there's a woman here in Florida running, because we have like a red tide, which is like a bacteria that shows up in the Gulf now and then. And immediately the same thing. Oh, this is all because of the farmers and their chemicals. And vote for me and I'll make sure a red tide doesn't happen again. (18:38 - 19:10) I just Googled it. What was the first reported red tide? 1840 or something like that. Or no, 1640 by the Spanish. I mean, I think it's a long time before there were farmers or chemicals or anything else, you know. But they always want to blame something that we have done rather than, you know, maybe just look at history to see has this ever happened before. And I've encountered this in financial crises. (19:12 - 20:07) They'll have some investigation and somebody will say, gee, we should do this. Oh, OK, that sounds good. Never do they ever ask the simple question, has this been tried before? Did it work? So not one investigation from the panic in 1907 to, you know, 2007. Has anybody ever simply asked that question? Right. I can't find one instance. So now I want to ask a very specific question, as you've just summarized for us again, the situation with Europe and Russia and the way that people's minds are affected. And you talked about this last time and summarized again this time that Russia, Putin probably is being quite honest when he says he doesn't want Europe. He just wants those areas of Ukraine that are primarily Russian. And you gave some very good examples of why he would want that. (20:08 - 21:26) And once he gets it, he'll probably just stop because he doesn't want anything else. But what I wanted to ask was specifically the impact on America. First, I guess maybe there's first minor question there is if America did get involved in that war and they go to war against Russia and China, because China, as you said, will join Russia when this happens. Does that change your prediction of Russia and China winning that war? Or does the U.N. America still lose? Still lose. OK. So then I wanted to ask this very specific question about America in particular. What happens to America socially, politically, economically under those two scenarios? One, they go to war and as you predict, lose. Two, Trump withdraws from NATO and they stay out of it. Well, my concern is largely even if Trump takes us out of NATO, he's not going to run again into 28. And my computer is not very bullish on even having an election by 28. Put it that way. Look, the neocons have they tried to assassinate him. (21:29 - 22:11) I mean, they're trying to hold up evidence right now as to they have at least conceded that there was more than one person involved in the shooting in Pennsylvania. And the other shooting in Florida, you know, the Biden administration said they want to suspend the Speedy Trial Act and not put him on trial. Why? All right. Look, you get somebody like that. You can always get somebody deranged to fire a gun. But who did it? I mean, this guy was a felon. (22:11 - 25:36) He drove all the way down from Maryland or something and got down here and magically gets a gun with no serial numbers. Who gave it to him? He couldn't have walked in the store and bought. All right. So, you know, will you ever know? Who knows? It's the same thing with the Kennedy assassination. You know, there are documents now coming out where one CIA agent. I put it on my site. He was freaked out that the CIA killed Kennedy. He told that to people, to his friends in New Jersey and said he feared for his life. And sure enough, he was shot to death, you know, a few weeks later. That has at least surfaced. I mean, I think pretty much everybody questioned whether or not, you know, I mean, look, JFK, he wanted to shut down the CIA. So, you know, like I said, any agency that is threatened with its life, per se, like an animal, it will fight like a cornered animal, you know, to survive, no matter what agency you talk to. To ask this question, my understanding is that JFK was also trying to shut down fractional reserve banking, which is what Abraham Lincoln and James Garfield were doing. And they died in office. Is that correct? Not really. That's been spun out. What he did do was in 63, he basically took silver out of the coinage because of inflation. And that act that people kind of distort a little bit was basically the transition from the Treasury to the Federal Reserve. And, you know, fractional banking has been around since, you know, banks existed. It's, you know, you do that, you're going to create a massive depression. People don't really understand the economics, you know, and it's all Bitcoin, you know, replace the dollar, really, you know. And then you want to raise and you want your house to go up. Well, I guess you want Santa Claus to come at the same time, right? I mean, these things are mutually exclusive. All right. Our problem is not the central banks or banking. It's politics. All right. As long as you're going to have a politician to say, vote for me, I'll give you a free car and a lollipop. All right. You're bribing people to get votes. You cannot have a fixed exchange rate, regardless if it's Bitcoin, gold or whatever you want to do. All right. You can't have that. And deficit spending. There is a debate, which you can look at it. I think it was the first debate between Nixon and JFK. (25:37 - 26:25) And he created a bit of a gold panic in 1960, because in the debate, he said that the decline in the dollar was because we had all these military bases around the world. They're spending dollars locally. And that was the real problem. Gold shot up from $35 to $40 real quick, because they thought he was going to kill the gold standard and everything else. And he was the first one, actually, to articulate this problem. And that Brenton Woods collapsed. (26:27 - 28:00) I mean, honestly, a three-year-old with a pocket calculator could figure that out. That's what I mean. You can't fix gold at $35 an ounce and then keep printing dollars. I mean, come on. I mean, how stupid can you possibly be to think that can go on forever? So it broke. That's why Nixon had to shut the gold window, et cetera. And people argue, oh, well, gold has not been a standard. Gold as money, yes, but it wasn't fixed. If you have a where people are using gold coins, fine. But gold also rallied in prices and fell in price, like the dollar would or anything else. There's a business cycle. So when they would discover gold, the California gold rush, you can look up. There were books on it. The price of gold dropped dramatically. The silver ratio changed. And then they discovered silver in the Comstock. And then silver goes down and gold goes up. It's supply and demand. There's a big problem with all that. You can look at the gold-silver standard. It's been all over the place from 16 to 1 up to 120 to 1 during World War II. (28:01 - 29:22) They replaced nickel out of the $0.05 coins, replaced it with virtually pure silver because nickel was worth more than silver during the war because that's what you made weapons from, not silver. So I mean, look, these things are nothing is absolutely stagnant throughout history. So it wasn't a gold standard, as some of these people suggest. They use gold for coinage, yes. But it still rose and fell in value as everything else does. That's what Marx was actually trying to do. He was trying to eliminate the business cycle. And that's where his theory comes up. If we take all their toys away, then we can create a perfect world. It didn't work, all right? Because you're also trying to change humanity. And what progress takes place because somebody is free to pursue their curiosity. And under communism, okay, you're next in line. (29:23 - 29:39) And we need somebody to sweep the floor. Here's a broom, go do it. You were not given the personal freedom to say, what did you want to do in life? That's why communism failed. (29:41 - 30:23) You had the famous Nixon-Khrushchev debate, the kitchen debate in 1959, it was, I think, when he was vice president, where he showed the American kitchen with all those dishwashers and stuff like this. And he was explaining, this is what capitalism is. It's the freedom to create things. The government didn't create this. Somebody figures out, oh, okay, fine, I can make a machine that washes dishes, becomes a millionaire, okay. It was Ford who invented the assembly line to bring car prices down for the average person. (30:24 - 31:28) And then you get the socialists, oh, he's evil because he has money. Really? How many jobs did the guy create? You don't look at that. You only look at how much he had. And look, I mean, this is the problem. Even if you look at the Ten Commandments, thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's goods, wife, uncle, whatever. It was because this whole idea of socialism and communism existed back then, too. The city of Sparta didn't even issue coins because, oh, wealth is evil. It was the same exact thing. The fact that you find this in the Ten Commandments, you look at Hammurabi's legal code, fixing prices and determining, shows that there were economic booms and busts back then, too. (31:28 - 34:44) You know, otherwise you wouldn't create a law that says that thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's goods, all right? Your jealousy, he has more than you. Suppose that, which is what all this socialism's about. Equality, oh, he can't have more than me. Well, maybe you should get a different job to improve your skills to make more money. But like I've said before, you don't want to pay me $30 million to throw a football in the Super Bowl. I'm not going to be as good as somebody else. Oh, gee, it's not fair. So I should get the $30 million because I stand next to the guy? I mean, come on. Well, fortunately, one thing Trump is doing is shutting down a lot of those DEI policies. Something that we would love to see happen here in Canada, because yes, it's any system not based upon merit simply doesn't work. Now, Martin, just before we return to talking specifically about North America, you said something a few minutes ago that triggered another question for me. You were talking about the importance of gold and how using it correctly or incorrectly can have a huge impact economically. And I know from some other financial experts I've been talking to that in recent years, governments and private central banks have been buying up vast amounts of gold. I believe America has done it as well. Canada remains one of the few countries in the world that does not have a gold reserve, not a cent of it. So the question that comes to my mind then, and this is a discussion I had with these other financial experts, so it's something I want you to either verify or correct us on. The conclusion we came to is that the reason they're doing this is that currently there's a three-way economic war going on. You've got Trump who's attempting to rescue the American dollar. You've got the BRICS nations who want to create their own BRICS currency so that they can have a separate economy. And you've got the globalists who want CBDCs and digital IDs. And the reason why these governments and banks are buying up all this gold is because they don't know what's going to happen either, but they do know that if they have a lot of gold, it won't matter. They'll still be rich. Do you think that's correct or do you see a different reason for it? No, that's not really correct. What happened was when they took Russia out of the SWIFT system, that's what created BRICS. And it wasn't about the dollar or CBDCs or something like this. The Biden administration was using the dollar as a weapon. To put it in context, in 2014, when Russia did go into Crimea, Obama went to SWIFT and said, I want them removed. SWIFT refused. They said, you're not going to turn this into a weapon. So they replaced the head of SWIFT in 2019. And this guy goes, oh, okay, whatever you want to do. All right. So they have basically destroyed the world economy. (34:46 - 36:13) You have Blinken and Biden's administration as Secretary of State actually threatened China, if you help Russia, we'll do it to you. These people are idiots, complete idiots. They only look at their own neocon agenda. They don't understand how the economy functions, no less the world. Okay, go ahead. Take China out of SWIFT. It's the second largest economy in the world. What do you think that's going to do? You're not going to sell widgets. All this stuff is going to crash. They're only looking at their geopolitical nonsense. So when he made those threats, China said, okay, thank you very much. This is what created BRICS. It was geopolitical. It wasn't whether the Dow was back or this, you know, that's all nonsense. It was geopolitical because they were using it as a weapon. All right. And that was the real issue. It's a defensive move. Right. Okay. So they began buying gold because gold is neutral. (36:14 - 37:40) All right. It's not beholding to any particular political situation. It is more of a hedge against geopolitical events, period, not inflation. That's another myth. I mean, gold peaked at 875 in 1980, went down to 250 in 19 years. All right. National debt went up, inflation went up, gold didn't respond. All right. It has responded because of the rise in geopolitical events. Even if you look at gold, it was 100 in 1976. It finally reached 400 in December 79, but it went from 400 to 875 by January 21st. And, you know, that last six to eight weeks. Why? That's when Russia invaded Afghanistan. So the one thing about war, and I have a lot of bonds I've collected over the years, you can buy them on eBay, all of Europe defaulted. I mean, Spain, you know, Spain is a serial default seven times. You know, France has defaulted. They're in their fifth republic. When you create a new government, they never pay the debts of the old one. (37:41 - 37:51) Even the United States in the constitution, it said, oh, we'll honor the debts of the Continental Congress. They never did. You can buy all the continental currency you want on eBay. (37:53 - 38:43) So, I mean, this is what gold is about. When you get into war, all right, it is the movable asset that basically, you know, makes the transition from one to another. Other things, anything that's tangible does. Real estate. Even if you look at the 1920s and the hyperinflation of Germany, which also hit Hungary and other countries too, but what survived? Basically land. When they had to come up with a new currency in 1925, it was back by real estate. (38:45 - 40:00) Art. Anything tangible other than the currency. So this is why you've seen real estate booming in a lot of places. Here in Florida, I mean, the traffic has doubled in the last eight years that I've been here. The real estate agents I know around here say houses that are one to five million people just pay cash, not mortgages. They're just parking money, getting it out of the banks or whatever. Florida is, my computer had said it would be the best state. So I moved here in 2016 and everybody said, really? I said, computers picked Florida. DeSantis has just now signed in that gold and silver are to be legal tender in Florida. First state. The only sign I ever saw for Hillary down here was Hillary for prison. That was it. (40:02 - 40:26) You have a constitution that prohibits an income tax. That's important because you can change legislation, but to change a constitution requires a hell of a lot more work and votes. Plus you have a lot of retired people that moved here. (40:27 - 40:50) As you get older, I mean, they always say, I have a cousin who was up there in New York and he had emphysema and stuff. He moved down here because I did. He says, I can walk. It's amazing. I told you warmer weather is better for you than this freezing cold up north. It's just the way it is. (40:51 - 41:11) A lot of people that have problems like that, the doctor recommends moving to a warmer climate. These things are systemic throughout history. This is what you're really looking at. (41:11 - 41:28) This is the role of gold. It will rise much further as war unfolds. We have probably more institutional clients than I think everybody else even combined. (41:30 - 41:53) I can tell you most of our institutional clients in Europe, they listen. They've been moving their out of London and Switzerland and moving it to New York, some of it going off to Singapore. Why? Because they hear the news all the time, talk shows, war, war, war. (41:55 - 42:29) When they go into war, what do they do? They immediately slap on capital controls. They shut down all the stock markets in World War I. Most people don't realize, but the world was much more connected in 1914 than it is today. The same stock would trade and bond, would trade on the St. Petersburg Exchange in Russia, in Europe, and in New York. (42:30 - 42:54) They shut down the exchanges because they didn't want people selling and then taking the money out of the country. You have to understand, capital controls are part of it. This is why Russia now as well as the EU, they're both moving towards CBDCs. (42:55 - 43:16) Why? Because it's very simple. You can't go to the bank and say, give me my cash, I'm going to leave the country. You need permission. Even Spain just came out. You can't take more than 3,000 out of your account without permission from the government. Yes, I reported on that. (43:17 - 43:37) Yeah, so this is all part of it. The more threatened they get, the more authoritarian they become. They will act like that cornered animal, as we were talking about, fighting for its life, and they will do whatever it takes to survive. (43:38 - 55:16) So this concept of keeping money in the country leads to my next question, and that's Donald Trump's tariffs and the real reason for them. There's been this rhetoric, especially directed at Canada, that it's to shut down the inflow of fentanyl and possible terrorists across the Canadian border. This makes no sense whatsoever because he leveled tariffs at everybody. I don't think that there's terrorists slipping across the border between America and China. So what's the real reason and what's he trying to achieve with it? He has been advising. It is correct that before the income tax, the U.S. survived, paid its bills on terrorists. That's correct. Okay. However, that was all before socialism as well. All right. So the government budgets were not that big. Right. All right. So I disagree with him. Just to clarify for the viewers who don't even perhaps have my level of economic knowledge, when you say before socialism, you mean before all of the tax dollars were being spent on ridiculous social programs. Yes, that didn't come in really. It started in the 1890s. You had a progressive party in the United States. That's when Teddy Roosevelt split because he didn't get the nomination from the Republicans. So he created his own party. Maybe he still gets tickets and stuff off eBay, the Progressive Party. That was the first thing. Of course, then his cousin FDR took it all the way. So the Progressive Party was for the election in 1912. The income tax was installed in 1913. You can look at all the promises. This is the problem with approving anything for government. You can look at all the newspapers. Oh, we're putting it, it's not going to be on you. We're only going after the evil rich. Okay. And they swore income tax had nothing to do with you. Okay. Sounds nice. But then everybody has to file one. Why? Because, well, I don't reach that, so I don't have to pay. They still need that information. How do we know you're really not one of the rich? Then FDR starts his social security pension. Okay. So in order to pull that off, now everybody has to pay because we're going to save for you. We're going to take from you. All right. So many people even today pay more social security taxes than they do an income tax. And so once then World War II comes, then what does he do? Oh, the payroll tax, because now I don't even trust you that you're going to pay me at the end of the day. So I'm going to take it before you even get it. So the total tariff issue is well before this whole progressive area begins. Women didn't have the right to vote, didn't really need it. Okay. It was kind of like the Athenian, it was based really on the Athenian model that the head of the household voted for everybody that was in it. It was kind of like a congressman, but there was nothing they could do to you personally. It wasn't like even income taxes didn't exist. Okay. It was more like he would go down to Athens and vote. Do we go to war with Sparta? Yes or no? That sort of thing. Women needed the right to vote when you went into all this socialistic stuff. Now, oh, I'm doing this for you. Okay. So all of a sudden, if you're doing it for me, then I need a right to vote on this. When they started getting personal like that. So that's, you know, if you really look at history, that's why women didn't have the right to vote. It wasn't really necessary. It was the Athenian model, like just really the head of household, not even the son, slaves, nobody else voted. He represented everybody in the house. But again, it wasn't personally directed at anybody. So it was a different incentive. So in that framework, we can see socialism as a move from a system which created a country in which everyone could become equal if they wanted to work hard enough to a system that was trying to look after everyone rather than giving them a foundation under which they could look after themselves. Correct. You know, and it's gone to crazy extremes. You have some of the far left in Australia arguing that when you die, everything should go to the state because it's not fair that your child will have more than another one. So then why should I work to save all my life to leave it to my family if I'm not allowed to? I mean, you leave these people alone and they just come up with some of the craziest ideas you ever heard. And it's to eliminate basically humanity. Some people want to work a lot and some people don't. You know, it's as simple as that. Not everybody wants to be the boss. When we opened up offices in London and they had basically six weeks of vacation, I said, look, you know, I'll pay you U.S. wages. You know, it's two week vacation and you're talking about at least 25 percent more in salary. They go, oh, you Americans, that's all you think about. Okay. They did not want to, for even 25 percent more, go from six weeks to two. Simple as that. Right. Okay. So now, Martin, I'd like to turn our attention to Canada. I know from reading your articles and you made references earlier, despite the fact that you yourself are American, you spent a lot of time analyzing Canada and what's happening here. And we had a discussion very briefly last time about Alberta separation. And your model predicts Alberta is going to separate, that Alberta is going to do what Quebec failed to do 30 years ago. So the next question then would be, what is going to be the impacts for Alberta when that happens and how is it going to impact the rest of Canada? I just put out a report. It's on our site now. I think it's like 1995. And I laid it all out. How do countries separate or go to revolution? And it's quite shocking. It surprised me. But the way you do research is you don't start with a theory and try and prove it. You go in to try and discover how do things actually work. To my shock, how do countries separate? What percent? That's basically I wanted to know. What percentage of population does it take to achieve separation? What would you think it would be? We're told it's got to be 50% plus one. It's less than 15%. Wow. And many of them have taken place with less than 5%. But that begs the question, how does that work? Because you have to have a referendum and you have to get 50% plus one of the population to vote in favor. What happens is that you have what you would call zealots or whatever, and they're pushing the idea very much. And they're the ones that actually cause the change. And you can even see this when you step back and look at who elects the president of the United States. No president has really got more than 60%. Most of Obama, 52. When you really analyze it, less than 10% of the population decide who's the president. Because 45% are always going to vote for Democrat. The other 40 are always going to vote Republican, regardless of what the issues are. So it's really only about 10% that even decides who the president of the United States is. And so what it appears to be is that you have this small fraction of zealots or whatever you want to call them. They push the idea. What happens is that the vast majority remain silent. They go along with the flow. They don't get up, go out and protest or something like that. And it even dovetails to somebody, I mean, I've known Mike Campbell and Gordon Campbell from out in DC. And I remember it must have been, I don't know, at least 20 years ago or longer, probably. Probably more like 30 years ago. We went to breakfast with Gordon Campbell. And I think he was mayor back then. He explained right then and there, which was true, because there was some sort of protest and they were all in front of his house or whatever. And he said, the vast majority do not get up off their ass. A very small group gets out there, the TV stations come, they film it, and you've got a big controversy for a small handful of people. It's the minority that always moves the majority. (55:17 - 55:30) And when I did this report, I remembered that conversation with Gordon. And that's got to be 30 years, maybe 40 years ago. And I thought about it, I said, you know, he saw that a long time ago. (55:32 - 56:43) Of course, Gordon became the ambassador for Canada to London, etc. But this is really the way it functions. Now, the polls in Alberta are showing more than a third, if not 40%, are in favor of separatists. That is overwhelming. I asked the question, okay, did the research, what percent of the American population were for revolution? At best, a third. You never see 50, 60%. You don't see it. And in all of these revolutions, if they're violent, or just a separation, or something of that nature, the vast majority is silent. And they just go with the flow. I mean, everything. So you'll see the American Revolution, French Revolution. That's the question for every one of these events. (56:45 - 57:38) Back to ancient Roman times. You know, you hear the video, the Jews revolted against the Romans. And, you know, they lost the temple. How many zealots were there? Josephus tells 10,000. You know, so you're not talking about millions of people. It's like 10,000 zealots basically caused the whole problem. You know, their temple was overthrown and sacked, etc. Because they're the vocal ones. You know, they even made a movie, you know, Masada. You know, I've been there, you know, climbed up Masada just, you know, to do it and came down or whatever. But it was harder coming down and going up, I can tell you that. But, you know, a few thousand people, it couldn't have been a half a million people up there. (57:40 - 58:44) So it is a small minority. It's very interesting going through all these things from ancient times to modern times. It's never a majority. So then Canadians who know their history in this regard are going to ask this question. So I'm going to ask you. When the Quebec referendum happened in 1995, the first polls, I think was 39% were in favor. But that was a month before the referendum. And over the following month, it crept up and up and up, hit 47% about two days before. And then the day of the referendum was 49.4% voted in favor. It came within 55,000 votes of deciding to separate from Canada. Currently here in Alberta, and I'm an Albertan myself, so I've been watching this closely. We started out with 30% a few months ago. Then it was 33%. The last one I saw was 36%. And so I think we can assume we're going to see the same pattern as we get closer to an actual referendum. And the Alberta Prosperity Project already has twice the signatures they need to require a referendum. So it's going to happen. There will be one. (58:45 - 1:00:46) And we'll probably see that number continue to creep upwards. So the question that people are going to ask is, okay, well, the numbers are pretty parallel right now. We've got Alberta starting right where Quebec did and Quebec went up and Alberta is going up. So the difference then, the reason why Quebec didn't separate and why your model says Alberta will, and I'm going to take a guess here, I'm going to go at it on a limb, is because when Quebec was talking about separation, it was a cultural thing. It was a language thing. With Alberta, it's an economic thing. There's a huge financial benefit for Albertans to separate. In this report, I dealt with Alberta because we have so many clients in Canada and I laid out how to do it. And this is what I would say. You don't want to become the 51st state and you don't want to be like Quebec sovereign within Canada. You want to be a separate sovereign. Now, I know people are saying, oh, you do that, your real estate's going to fall. Sorry. What you do is very simple. No income tax. You don't need it anyhow. You have a corporate income tax, max 15%. All right. That's the maximum you can do. And you create a constitution that that cannot be changed. All right. And like Florida, no income tax. You'd have to change the constitution to even do it. What will happen? Everybody and their divorced brother-in-law will want to come there. (1:00:46 - 1:01:52) I would open an office there. Why? Because you would basically create a watershed event. All right. You would be setting the stage to show the world this is the way out. All right. Look, I reorganized, you know, multinational companies. I got to know Margaret Thatcher, the Japanese, when they get into Europe for the coming Euro, etc. And so I made the decision where, what countries to go to. We had to look at what they needed, etc. If they needed the best tax deal, I was putting airlines in Ireland. They needed the highest skilled worker, like court car manufacturers, etc. I was putting them in Britain. (1:01:54 - 1:02:16) And Maggie had heard that this rumor that there's this guy sending companies to Britain. You know, I happen to have known her personal economic advisor, Sir Alan Walters. And he said, yeah, that's Marty. She says, there is a guy. You know him? Yeah. I want to meet him. (1:02:18 - 1:02:52) So that's how I got to meet Maggie. She even came and spoke at our, I think it was our 1996 conference. And she asked me, why are you doing this? And I said, look, if I pay a worker the same price here in Britain versus Germany, all right, all the regulations and things that a worker does not see, all right, those costs are 40% higher in Germany than they are here in Britain. (1:02:53 - 1:04:13) So I am going to put those that need skilled labor here. And she's had no idea. And I showed her, look, this is how we make decisions. And we do it for major companies around the world. And it all depends who they are. I put some in Macedonia. Why? I got a 25-year guarantee from the government not to raise taxes. You can't attract a company, build this plant here, and they spend $3, $5 billion to build it. Oh, OK, fine. Our tax rate's 15%. Thank you very much. It's now 35%. You can't do this, all right, if I don't put anybody in Iran. Why? Simply because they've nationalized assets before. It's country risk, all right? That's at the top of our decision treaty making. Is the country basically trustable? Can I trust it? If I can't trust it, forget it. That's the first question. You're crossed off the list. (1:04:16 - 1:06:19) So I'll give you an example. I was in our London office. I got a phone call from one of the biggest telecommunications companies in Germany. They said, we're having a board meeting here tomorrow. We need you here ASAP. I said, what's up? You'll find out when you get there. I get there. They appoint our firm advisor to their pension fund with no proposal or anything. And I go, huh? What's going on? And then they're resigning. I said, what is this, a Harry Carey meeting or something or what? They then explained, and this is the regulation in Germany, with the socialistic stuff. They wanted to lay off 20% of their workforce. They needed government permission to do so. The government gives them the permission. Okay, fine. Then what happens? At the last minute, government says, oh, that's not fair that you pick who should leave and who should stay. You have to make the same proposal, which I think was 150,000 to voluntarily give up your job. What happened? The people that knew they could get a job across the street took $950,000 and left. And the company got stuck with the very people they wanted to get rid of. The chairman said, I have to resign because this company is going to go down. And if it goes down with my name on the board, I'll never get another job again. So he took $950,000 and left. All right. I told this story to a board member of the IMF, and she said to me, you're absolutely correct. We saw the same thing happen in Greece. (1:06:19 - 1:06:32) I said, you can't do it this way. All right. They come up with these lofty, wonderful ideas. Oh, be fair, equal, whatever. It doesn't work. It just does not work. (1:06:33 - 1:07:14) So I think it's pretty obvious to anybody who understands the Alberta economy that, yes, becoming independent would be, assuming that they handle it correctly, and I love your suggestion of no income tax, that it's going to be very profitable, very beneficial for Alberta. But what happens to the rest of Canada? The rest of Canada becomes a third world country. What may also help with your separation is that Europe is preparing for war. (1:07:15 - 1:08:05) I think your minister of defense just came out today, I believe, and said they have to increase their spending dramatically for military. They're getting that decree from NATO. Yes. Next will be drafts. Every country over there, I just had one of our sources went to the Vienna Peace Conference about a month and a half ago. He calls me and says, you're not going to believe it. This is no longer about peace. Everybody's talking about how we have to institute drafts. It's all war. (1:08:06 - 1:08:25) Still, the Vienna Peace Conference, our staff in Germany has relayed that people even up to 60 years old have been told to report. Yes. Why, if I'm Putin, I'm not going to agree to a peace deal. (1:08:26 - 1:09:14) When you're seeing this across the border, oh, I should reduce all my military, I'll agree to peace while you're building up. They pulled that one along with the Minsk agreement. Even Merkel came out and said that. Plus, the deal that they've got on the table right now has him pulling back to the original 2014 borders, which completely defeats everything he's been doing for the last 10 years. Yes. Look, first of all, I even said this on Russian TV. The solution is very simple. All right. If you look at this whole region, was once occupied, was part of the Ottoman Empire. (1:09:14 - 1:09:27) So you have three different religions. You have Islam, you have Orthodox Christianity, and then you have Western. On top of the fact, you have all these ethnic differences. (1:09:28 - 1:10:14) I mean, and you really want to create peace? I mean, come on. Otto Bismarck, the former chairman of or the chancellor of Germany in 1888, you can look this up. He said Europe is going to be in a major engulfed in war and it's going to come from the Balkans. It was right. It came in 1914. Why? Because Czechoslovakia split. Czech Republic, Slovakia, ethnic lines. Yugoslavia broke up. All right. Croatia, Serbia, ethnic lines. All right. You have different religions. (1:10:14 - 1:11:52) You know, we gave a handful of jets to Greece. And you can look this up. They actually said this publicly, made the press. Oh, now we can stage a sneak attack on Turkey, another NATO country. Look, I've been throughout all those areas. I've been in Athens when they're protesting Merkel, not wanting to give money to the Greek banks, dressed in Nazi uniforms, walking in parade. You know, the memories are there. I'm sure if a girl in Paris brings home a German boyfriend, the father will go, you do know what they did to us. You know? I mean, in Asia, you see it. I mean, I don't remember. I think I was in Beijing. But I asked the concierge in the hotel, is there a Japanese restaurant? He looked like he wanted to kill me. Maybe you might find one in it, like down the alley or something. The resentments were just there. I mean, and I just asked for a Japanese restaurant. That was it. And even when I was 13 and my father took us to Europe, I walked into a bakery in Rome. I asked for a cannoli, and the guy practically wanted to pull a knife on me. That's not Italian. That's Sigi. You know, excuse me. (1:11:52 - 1:12:38) You know, I thought it was Italian from my perspective. You know, most of the Italians that came to America were from southern Italy. You know, pizza was really invented in the United States. I got down in Naples, and when I was 13, I finally saw a sign that said pizza. I, oh wow, I get a pizza. It was a cracker with some tomato sauce on it. You know, that was it. I've been in Venice, you know, and even a couple years ago, and I said, can I get a pepperoni pizza? And they looked at me like, what? Well, maybe we could put some salami on it. I see people really need to learn how to become Italian, you know? It's just, we don't realize all the differences. (1:12:40 - 1:13:16) India, I mean, I can go to an Indian restaurant, London, United States, and you get every flavor, Andreas, Vindaloo, etc. And I've been to Mumbai. I stayed at the, you know, the famous Taj Hotel. One was part of it, yeah, the terrorist attack one. I said, can I get a Vindaloo? And a guy looked at me, oh, that's southern. Sorry. No. Okay. It's kind of like trying to order grits in New York City, you know? Just certain things you can't. (1:13:17 - 1:15:43) You know, there are differences. And, you know, the Minsk agreement was the path to peace. And it was supposed to be, you know, enforced by France and Germany, and Merkel even came out and said they never intended. It was just to buy time for Ukraine to build an army to attack Russia. They've always wanted war. I mean, the Donbass, the Russians, ethnically Russians there, the same way as Yugoslavia broke up ethnic lines, it should have been broken up. You go to Crimea, I've never seen a Ukrainian there. 15% of the population are Tartars from the old Mongol invasion at 1240. You know, they're not Ukrainian. Right. So what are we doing? It's just we're fighting for land. And it's just really to piss off Russia. That's basically it. You know, Europe does not want peace, period. You had the former Prime Minister of Estonia, now she's like, you know, charges international security or something for the EU. She actually publicly said, there's videos on this, Russia's too big and needs to be broken up. Can you imagine if Russia said that about the EU, Canada or the United States? I think that would be, you know, like, oh my God, what are you doing? But we can say that about Russia. The hatred over there is just, it's systemic. I don't personally see any solution to it other than dividing. Ukraine should have been separated. You know, as I said, in Canada, they're raising interest rates to fight, you know, real estate speculation in Toronto and screwing the West. There are different regional economies, period. US Civil War, the North was industrial, the South was agricultural. It's just the way things are. (1:15:47 - 1:16:33) So, you know, the West has a different base economy. And if the East is going to say, oh, that climate change and you shouldn't. So, okay, so everybody that's in mining should be shut down, make solar panels. And farmers, oh, you know, you're creating, you shouldn't have cattle because they fart or something. I mean, in Europe, they're putting a tax per head of cattle because they fart. Oh, that creates global warming. Really? Okay. Should we put a meter on your ass? You know, I don't know. This stuff just gets to be more bizarre by the day. (1:16:35 - 1:18:18) But this is the problem, what I mean, that centralized government. It cannot take these types of socialistic agendas and force them down the, you know, you might as well change your, you know, look, if Canada did the same thing as Zelensky did, outlawed their language, can't speak French in Canada, I think you're going to go into civil war. You can't do this, these sorts of things. You know, he's outlawed their language, their religion, their Christmas, no longer going to be orthodox. It has to be December 25th. And you expect them to accept this? Right. So, Martin, I think that leads to one last question. And I have to confess, it is an extremely hypothetical question because it's a situation that's never going to happen. But would you then see that, I mean, because there's always been discussions about, could we ever put an end to war? And from what you're telling me, but the only way that would ever happen is if all national borders were divided upon, perhaps not just ethnic lines, but also economic lines, as we're seeing happening with Alberta, probably separating from the rest of Canada. If we ever had a system like that, and as I said, I recognize it's just not going to happen. So this is a very hypothetical question. But if we ever had that, do you think it would put an end to war? There is no war when people are fat and happy. War comes when the economy turns down. Look at the Middle East. People don't understand it because we drew the borders. (1:18:19 - 1:18:26) Yes. We carved out the Ottoman Empire. You go to Syria, they don't see themselves as Syrians. (1:18:27 - 1:18:44) The Shiites versus Sunni versus Kurds, they all see themselves differently. Religions, ethnic lines, et cetera. So drawing these borders, oh, that's Syria. Oh, this is Iraq. We did that. It's not them. (1:18:45 - 1:19:09) Churchill and company redrew the Middle Eastern map after the First World War. I'm familiar with that bit of history. And yeah, they paid no attention to the ethnic groups. They stuck different ethnic groups that historically hated each other for thousands of years into the same country. Well, what do you think is going to happen? I don't know if they were delusional about that, didn't think about it. I don't know. (1:19:11 - 1:19:18) But oh, this is mine. You can have this. It's like a Monopoly game or something to them, I guess. (1:19:19 - 1:22:03) But that's not the way. We have to respect humanity. Communism failed because it tried to change humanity. You can't do that. And somebody is going to want to work. Others are not going to want to work. It's just the way it is. We're not all the same. Some people like action movies, other people like love movies. I mean, come on. I mean, it's not everybody's the same. And when governments get into this position, I had a friend who grew up in East Germany. And when the wall came down, his father went and got his Stasi file. And he came home and he started punching holes in the wall. He thought his father was like deranged or something and he's pulling out microphones. And in his Stasi file, everybody he thought was a friend was ratting on him. And he said his father, after reading that, he would never speak to anybody again other than family. This is what governments do. I mean, they had, you can look this up. They had a shocking, they were called the smelling jar room. They actually sent people into your house to take your used underwear and put it in a jar. In case you disappeared, they could then pull that out, give it to a dog. The dog would sniff it and find you. Smelling jars. So they've always been doing this sort of thing, attempted control. And when they're imposing laws that are not practical, you get resistance. So Alberta will separate. The difference this time, besides economics, it's happening everywhere. When I talk to Europe, it's like, when do you think we're going to break away? I believe maybe the catalyst might be the war. I just did an interview in Netherlands and I was told, the interviewer said, I just went to a session. (1:22:04 - 1:22:33) With the youth of Netherlands. And the overwhelming consensus was they want to leave. And he said, what recommendation would you make? I said, well, they're correct. They're going to be drafted. The people up top, they want war. Because they see their economic model declining. (1:22:33 - 1:23:44) Right. And that's the problem. It cannot. This EU, it's absurd. I mean, I have a video, it's on my site. The former president of France, Holland, standing in parliament alongside Merkel, explaining why they created the EU. To eliminate war. One government. That's a nice theory. One government so it doesn't go to war with itself. I said, Rome, how many civil wars did they have? It doesn't solve anything. But you have these people, these globalists, and this is their nonsense. Oh, one world and that will eliminate war. Not going to happen. It's never, ever happened once. So yes, it's hypothetical. Maybe overly optimistic or whatever. But if you look at history, it's just not going to happen. (1:23:45 - 1:24:23) Humanity is humanity. Okay. Well, Martin, thank you once again so much for your time today and for your insights. Folks, for those of you who might be unfamiliar with Martin's work, you can find it at armstrongeconomics.com. And I have to say that of all the economists who I've read, and that's a list, Martin by far understands what's happening. And I think that's a good thing. He makes some very good predictions. His economic model has made some very accurate predictions over the last several decades. And I think he's probably right about what he's telling us today. So Martin, once again, thank you. Well, thank you. I think the difference is we actually have clients rather than theory.