[0:00]going into Iraq. Oh no, it's only going to be a matter of weeks, not months. Turns out to be eight years. We've been borrowing since World War II with no intention of paying anything back. After 9/11, they were looking for people who bought puts on airlines, you know, a few days before. The computer's definitely showing this is not something like Venezuela. This is how you silence opposition. They did it with COVID. Oil still rising in price. They replaced the head of Swift in 2019 and he does whatever he's told. They use war to default. Martin Armstrong, trend forecaster and founder of Armstrong Economics. It is a true pleasure to host you on Palisades Gold Radio today. Well, thank you for inviting me. Excellent, Martin. What an incredible time to pick your brand today. The world is a volatile place. We've seen war breakout in the Middle East, we've seen gold Skyrocket past $5,000 an ounce, and we've seen shock waves go through our financial system. Now, incredibly excited to talk about all that today with you, Martin, but perhaps we should start looking out a bit further, perhaps a decade. When we go out that far, what do you think are the most important trends that will dominate the next 10 years? If you actually look at the national debt, we're still paying interest on World War I and II. The vast majority of the national debt has been largely to fund all these neocon endless wars. You know, Vietnam, you know, Korea, I mean, it just go it never stops. So these people, I look, I know some of them. I mean, Bill Crystal's father Irving started the whole Neocon movement. I know Bill, he even spoke at one of our conferences. It was Bill Crystal that wrote the book to justify going into Iraq. You know, Iran has always been on the top of their list. I think it was General Wesley Clark. You can see him also on YouTube, I think a speech he gave in 2007 after 9/11, he went to the Pentagon and they told him they were going into Iraq. And he said, oh, you, Tides's arm to 9/11. They said, no, we're just going in. He was also in the form that they had intended to go from there into Iran and seven countries in total. This is the Neocon movement. As you're seeing with Iran, it's the same scenario. They tell whoever's president, you know, Cheney back then, of said in an interview that going into Iraq, oh no, it's only going to be a matter of weeks, not months. And turned out to be eight years. They're saying the same thing again. And I really think that's why Trump has been kind of hoodwinked into this.
[3:06]He thought, I think he thought it was going to be another Venezuela. In out over with. This is a completely different situation. So the computer's not showing that this is going to be short, sweet and to the point. It's going to be long and dragged out. These people are going to continue to escalate the national debt. And then you have Europe, which is intent on a war with Russia. Because they're also economically you know, imploding. So on top of all this, we have effectively a sovereign debt crisis. We've been borrowing since World War II with no intention of paying anything back. So you're constantly rolling the the national debt like a Ponzi scheme. So our interest expenditures this year have exceeded military. That's not going to stop. All right, the end of this is a sovereign default. And it's happened many, many times throughout history. This is why gold has been going up. You know, I've said before, if you look, you know, gold doesn't go up really because of inflation. Gold goes up because of uncertainty. And I saw that by going into 1980. Gold went from 176 up to 400 by, you know, the end of '79. But it then went from 400 to 875 in the last six weeks. Why? That's when Russia invaded Afghanistan. I've learned over the years. We have probably the largest international client base of anybody. In the seventies, we were really the first to start forecasting currency. Currency futures just began in 1972. I happened to have known a senior VP at Franklin National Bank. And that was the bank that started MasterCard, but it was the first bank to go down after the fall Bretton Woods, because they lost 10% on the Italian lira. So after that, pretty much any currency issue, I said to get the guys that did that one. We got called in and asked to do a model on the Lebanese pound. By the Central Bank there. And they found a ledger, somebody put all the prices down into mid 1800s, so we put it in. And I thought there was something wrong with the data. And I called them, I said, look, the computer says your country's going to fall apart in eight days. And very calmly, they said to me, what currency does it recommend? I said the Well, the Swiss Frank, eight days later, civil war began. So obviously, they saw the capital moving themselves. They only really came to me for the timing. After that, we had a client, who was one of the biggest shippers of oil, et cetera, tankers in the Gulf. And he called and said, what do you think Gold's going to do tomorrow? Iran's going to start attacking shipping in the Gulf. I said, you tell me. And he says, arm, we're going to start tomorrow. He goes, yeah, yeah, yeah. By '98, you know, I stood up in London and I said, look, our computer shows that Russia's going to collapse. I give it a little more than 30 days and they put that on the front page of the London Financial Times. So what I learned from dealing with this was that obviously somebody knows when war is going to start. There's always insiders, okay? And they start to move their money in advance.
[7:08]And that's what the computer picks up. So I can't tell me you're doing it versus somebody else. I just see like in the case of Russia, 100 billion going in, but I see 150 billion coming out. What's interesting here is that reactions in markets tend to be two to three units of time. So we had the high in oil in 22 and then a three-year decline into December 25. January our computer was projecting a what we call panic cycle in oil. Sure enough, it immediately starts to rise. I had published also in January on our blog that Iran, the government may not survive in I said by February, that came out. Today's episode of Palisades Gold Radio is proudly brought to you by our parent company Palisades Gold Corp. Canada's leading junior resource investment vehicle trading on the Toronto Venture Exchange under ticker symbol PALI. With equity and warrant positions in over 200 companies, ownership of mineral projects and royalties and a significant stake in Newfound Gold. 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I would say the computer's definitely showing this is not something like Venezuela. It's not short, sweet and to the point. This is going to be a long drag, you know, dragged out affair, and I would expect it to go at least for two to three years. So I don't see this is really subsiding in any way. I think it's only going to get worse from here on out. I mean, I've dealt with the Middle East for a long time. These Neocons, I, to put it bluntly, I don't think they know their ass from a hole in the ground. They don't understand you took out the Ayatollah. He was like, kind of the head of the Shia Muslims and then there's Sunni, all right? The difference is it's kind of like the Protestant reformation in a way. The Shia, you know, with the Ayatollah, it's that there's no separation between church and state. So that the church should be ruling the state. And that's why they've been opposed to Saudi Arabia, et cetera, because they're kingdoms. So that's why all of a sudden you saw Iran attacking bases in UAE, Saudi Arabia. You know, you have a serious risk here that I don't think anybody really quite took into consideration. About 40% of the population of Saudi Arabia are Shia. So my warning has been that this can easily turn into not just a Islamic civil war in a way, but, you know, this can turn into a a religious war. And that makes it much more serious. So I mean, I think the State Department has just warned that, you know, there are sleeper cells in the United States and to be careful about terrorist acts. So it ends up being when it's religion, it can be spread out in a much broader way. You're not looking at Saddam Hussein was the guy that kind of kept the crazies in line. You know, you took him out and then you got ISIS, you know, and, you know, this is what I think the computer is showing and why you're looking at the metals. I don't see that going into a bear market. I still see that, you know, gold still rising probably into around 2032. You're looking at the legitimate shortages in silver and there are deep concerns in the energy markets where they really are concerned that they may not be able to provide enough electricity. So I've I've spoken to some people that are in that field and, you know, these are legitimate concerns. So I don't see, you know, there is a legitimate shortage in silver. You know, China, cut off exports. You got now Trump talking about trying to build a silver reserve. So we're in a different situation right now. You have some of these economists that just look at a chart and they don't understand the fundamentals and saying, oh, well, 1979, okay, that war, then the stock market crashed. It was a different situation back then. You know, you had OPEC problems and things of that nature. Since then they created a strategic petroleum reserve. So I mean, there's been a lot of changes since then. Even the Neocons didn't quite understand what the '79 revolution in Iran was all about. The Ayatollah took the embassy and held them for 444 days. Why? He needed an external enemy. Because he was facing domestic opposition against the religious state. He brilliantly took the embassy, called it the Great Satan, etc.. And then anybody that opposed him, he could then say, oh, you're an agent of the Great Satan, or Israel, or something like that, and then shuts them up. Europe is doing the same thing. Anybody that says the remotest thing about positive about Russia, oh, you're a Putin supporter. This is how you silence opposition. They did it with COVID. Oh, they're a bunch of crazies, there's this, they're, you know, whatever. You dehumanize the opposition to win. Now, this becomes the problem in Iran, that he used the United States and Israel to justify his power. This is what the Neocons, in my opinion, don't understand. Okay, fine, so you killed the Ayatollah. I can say after the 2025 attack, Israel was going after specific leaders and thought that they could kill the the top people and then win the war. So Iran understood that and reorganized the government in August of '25. They created four layers of redundancy. So, okay, fine, you took out the Ayatollah, there's another one now. And the fact that they did that, you deliberately went to kill the Ayatollah. Proves the very thing that they used to retain power. It's Israel and the United States, they're evil, et cetera. That's what makes this, from what I can see in the computer. So it's not my opinion. The computer's just showing this is going to drag out. And I think what I'm trying to explain is why, what's different. And I think this makes it different. They set up four tiers of redundancy. They assume they were probably take out the Ayatollah. They wanted to do that in '25 and Trump said not to. This time, he acquiesced. So if you look at it objectively, these Neocons have usurped foreign policy. Every administration since Clinton. You know, you had Madeleine Albright, who was from Czechoslovakia, hated Russians. Got NATO to attack Serbia because they supported Russia. With gold trading at new all-time highs, gold producers are printing money. And this means that for the first time in years, money is beginning to flow into exploration. This is a trend that we at Palisades Gold Corp have long anticipated. Which is why we spent the last decade assembling the largest junior health mineral claim package in the United States through our subsidiary Made in America Gold Corp. Made in America Gold Corp holds over 700 square kilometers of prospective ground. Located exclusively within America's most prolific gold mining trend, the Battle Mountain-Cortez Trend. 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Irving Crystal started the whole Neocon movement. All right, he's in Neocon. He, you know, Trump, I think, is wrongly looked at him as a head of state when he's in sync with the Neocons in America. You can see we have to take out Iran. Again, without any consideration, you could create a religious war. And they won't, they can't think beyond the end of their nose. These things are never so simple and even with Iraq, all they looked at, oh, we got to take out Saddam. Ask what happens if you do. They never answered that question. They don't even ask that question. And then they go, oh, shit, we got ISIS running around chopping up people's heads. How about that? You know, they should have known this stuff. They don't. They just look at that objective and that's it. And so I see this as the same stupid mistake with Iraq. Take out the Ayatollah. It didn't, Iran didn't collapse, sorry. You didn't do your homework.
[19:04]So, longer term, I think, you know, you're going to be looking at oil still rising in price. The U.S. only gets about 3% of its oil from there. After OPEC, we built up the strategic reserves. When Biden put the sanctions on Russia and gasoline prices were rising, he released the reserves for political to save his own ass. That was it. And he was out there saying, oh, it was Putin's inflation. No, it was yours. Okay. And so the problem now is that we import about 6 million barrels of oil per day. The oil reserves went down to the lowest level in history. By 22, and Trump's been trying to rebuild it. But even if you pump out a million barrels a day from the reserve, which might last up to a year, that's a million. We import daily 6 million. Any idea that this that the strategic reserves will be able to suppress prices is a pipe dream. You know, I have had discussions with people in the beginning to to think that maybe even a monarchy is better than than a republic. Because these people, they don't care about the country. I just got to win the next election. So Biden unleashes the strategic reserve just for the election. I just got to win. So that's, you know, you're personally using national assets for your own benefit. I mean, to me, that's criminal. But you might as well be taking bribes from somebody. The same shit. Martin, so many follow-ups there. Um, I would love to hear your take on oil on the short term for now. Oil is currently trading WTI at least very close to $80 a barrel. It seems that smart money in the market is saying that the situation with the street of moves will resolve itself quickly. Otherwise, one would expect significantly higher prices. What is your take here? Is the oil market complacent or is it correctly calling what will happen? No, I don't think I think oil is going up. It's not really just the straight of hermos here. Trump has come out with saying that he'll ensure tankers. I mean, this is not going to to go very well. I mean, trying to get to about 80% of Iranian oil. I think Europe gets about, you know, the majority of it of the balance. And Europe has to import. So we're not going to be that dramatically impacted in the United States because we only gets 3% from there. All right, but it's Europe, they is going to, which doesn't get, doesn't really have any oil other than Norway and UK. Other than that, the demand is going to continue to rise. You know, they can think that, oh, okay, fine, this will all be over soon with the, you know, the straight of Hermos. The computer saying, no. And I don't think it's really based solely on the straights of Hermos. You know, you're not really reducing the risk, you know, longer term here. It's all short term and that's the headline, so they'll sell oil today. And then they go, oh, shit, it really didn't matter and then it flipped back the other way. You know, we, you know, markets can be very schizophrenic. Markets can definitely be very schizophrenic. That's for sure. I would love to talk about the role of gold in the geopolitical chessboard. Do you think there is a good chance for gold to return as a settlement currency or perhaps even a re-monetization of gold? Not really. What's happening with gold and why like China's been acquiring, you know, acquiring gold, etc.. It's because it's neutral. The risk of war going forward, I mean, I've heard even from people in Washington saying they don't think that there would be a war with Russia, but they do think there would be one with China. And I've heard that from politicians in Washington. That means they're telling me that, so China has to know the same thing. If we're going to go to war, you never own the debt of your adversary. China owned 10% of the US national debt. They've been selling it off. And they can't buy Europe. Europe's a basket case and if they go into war with with Russia, that's worthless. So they've been stop piling gold, and so it's neutral in the sense that it doesn't matter who you're at war with, or who wins at the end. It's not politically determined in value that way. I know people say, oh, gold standard, whatever. Look, a gold standard as it was with Bretton Woods. The reason it collapsed is I think a three-year-old with a pocket calculator could have figured that out. All right. You can't fix the price of gold and not the quantity of dollars. Obviously, it's going to go bust. The only kind of a gold standard for say, or backing of a currency that would be possible is it has to float. In other words, okay, fine, you got dollars, you can convert it to gold. Gold's 5,000 today, fine. But you can't fix it. Because everything in the in the world economy fluctuates. It goes up, it goes down. I mean, that's reality. The idea of a gold standard was completely different when you go back to Gresham, et cetera. At that point in time, there was no single superpower. Okay, so there wasn't a premium to the currency. The exchange rate was based solely on the metal content between countries. That was it. And that's what he was talking about with Henry the VIII, debasing the currency. Bad money drives out the good. These people then start hoarding the higher quality. We saw that with Rome, et cetera. If you go back and you look at, you know, ancient coins tell us a lot. The coinage of Athens. Athens was like the major power after defeating Persia. So you see imitations of their coinage from Asia, even Egypt imitated their coinage. They didn't counterfeit it. They struck coins of the same quality for international trade. When Rome took over, you see the same thing. India was the source of they used to imitate Roman gold coins all the time for hundreds of years. That raises the the issue. If they had gold, why didn't they strike their own coins? And the reason is is that the Roman Empire was kind of like the United States. In that it was the biggest economy. Everybody wanted to sell to America, you know, to Rome as they want to sell their Toyotas and BMWs to America. So it had a premium to it because it was the powerful entity in the world at the time. You know, I've been to Greece and went to go buy something and knew I was American. They said, look, I'll give you 10% off if you pay me in dollars. Why? Because Europe routinely cancels their currency. Part of the reason the dollar is also the reserve currency and 70% of our paper dollars are outside the country is because we've never canceled our currency. If you got a note from like 30 years ago from Britain, it's no good. They canceled it routinely. Why? Because they're they are Europe is particularly Marxist. Let's say you had a couple hundred thousand euros and you got them in your safe deposit box. They come out, they cancel the currency. You now have to bring that to the bank and say, give me the new one. And then they go, oh, gee, where'd you get this? Okay, did you pay your taxes? This is what they do routinely, and that's why the in part, the dollar is the reserve currency because they can hold it and trust it that it's not going to be canceled. They don't, you know, do that with euros, even British pounds. Canada canceled all its high denomination notes a couple years ago. This is what they do to go get, you know, what they say the the rich. So it's just part of their policy. Right now, you have Christine Lagarde in Europe saying making it a criminal act if you bought something more than a thousand euros and you paid in cash. Spain, you have you need government permission to pull out 3,000 euros from your account. So they're always, you know, against cash over there. The central banks, this is why they are buying gold. They don't have to worry about currency, you know, canceling and also the fact that you definitely do not want to buy the debt of somebody that you're in war with. You know, going to Beijing and say, here, we're going to buy some bonds so I can buy some missiles to shoot your ass, you know. That's, you know, what Blinken did by taking Russia out of the Swift system. Again, it was a Neocon tactic. Oh, we we hurt their economy. They'll overthrow Putin and we win. Didn't work. But what he did, by blocking Russia from the Swift system, he threatened China. If you help Russia, we can do the same to you. He's destroying the world economy. And China said, oh, okay, fine, thank you. And they created BRICS. It's geopolitically, okay, to prevent somebody like Blinken and these Neocons from trying to use the World Monetary system to hurt them. So unfortunately, this is where we're at. And I do think that the monetary system is going to have to be completely revised, but I mean that will probably be around 2032 or so. I can tell you that Obama first tried it back in 2014 when Russia went into Crimea. He went to Swift and told them he wanted them to remove Russia from the Swift system. They refused. They said you're not going to turn the system into a weapon. So what did they do? They replaced the head of Swift in 2019 and he does whatever he's told. So they have ruined the entire world economy. All for war. And this idea that, oh, we put sanctions on them and will bring down the government. It has never worked once. But they tried it every time. You know, you just took out the Ayatollah, it didn't bring down the government, though, did it? They believe their own bullshit and patted each other on the back. That's a good idea, you know.
