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The New Yorker On Martin Armstrong

Submitted by Tyler Durden on 10/10/2009 15:12 -0400

Genius or madman, at least his thoughts are getting prominence. (Also, another example of stretching a $0 marketing and advertising budget.)

Full Nick Paumgarten article below, compliments of Barry Ritholtz.

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Sat, 10/10/2009 - 15:21 | 95407 Cheeky Bastard

I don't know if he is a madman or a genius, but reading Armstrong regularly; i know one thing, he is an excellent historian of economy; probably one of THE best historians of economy.

Sat, 10/10/2009 - 16:08 | 95425 Anonymous

I know many things. For example, given your endorsement of this article, I know that I need not bother to read any farther.

Sat, 10/10/2009 - 17:35 | 95463 MountainHawk

lol... must be the Joker face

Sat, 10/10/2009 - 17:48 | 95465 Cheeky Bastard

so you just left a worthless comment on your personal actions just to what; inform me about how you wont read it because i mentioned it ( which i clearly didn't ). I have had morons attacking me on this site in the past, and guess what; none of them are here anymore ( you should ask them why that is so; but they left shortly after they engaged in a debate with me ). Ad hominem don't work my good man; and my opinion on Armstrong or his theory is completely irrelevant and should not prevent you from reading some of his brilliant work. And also, it would be nice to actually know who is attacking me; but yeah, paper bags were invented for people like you ( i mean, ZH virtual paper bags )

Sat, 10/10/2009 - 18:09 | 95478 Gordon_Gekko

Given your statement, I know two things as well:

a) You are an idiot.

b) The article DEFINITELY needs to be read.

Mon, 10/12/2009 - 08:08 | 96309 Anonymous

I know many things. For example, given your endorsement of this article, I know that I REALLY need not bother to read any farther.

Sat, 10/10/2009 - 20:26 | 95558 svendthrift

Definitions of ad hominem:

appealing to personal considerations (rather than to fact or reason); "ad hominem arguments"
wordnetweb.princeton.edu/perl/webwn
An ad hominem argument, also known as argumentum ad hominem (Latin: "argument to the man", "argument against the man") consists of replying to an ...
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_hominem
In an argument, this is an attack on the person rather than on the opponent’s ideas. It comes from the Latin meaning “against the man.”
kmhs.typepad.com/parrott_ap_english_langua/files/rhetorical_terms.doc
(Latin) literally “to the man”; if two political candidates come together to debate an issue, but one of the two attacks his opponent instead ...
ablemedia.com/ctcweb/glossary/glossarya.html
A fallacy that attacks the person rather than dealing with the real issue in dispute.
highered.mcgraw-hill.com/sites/007256296x/student_view0/glossary.html
appealing to feelings or prejudices rather than intellect
ww2.aps.edu/users/apsedumain/CurriculumInstruction/glossary.htm

Sat, 10/10/2009 - 16:29 | 95433 Anonymous

for any serious scholar, prison is one of the best places
to conduct a study. Isolated from media noise, internet addiction and other daily distractions he can focus on his some real work.

http://www.martinarmstrong.org/economic_projections.htm

ot: cb, was island of Olib your summer destination?

Sat, 10/10/2009 - 17:47 | 95466 Cheeky Bastard

no; i went there a couple of times but im not stationed there; nice remote place to get away from the urban ( relatively ) jungle of the mainland.

Mon, 10/12/2009 - 08:16 | 96313 Anonymous

Maybe you could consider the northernmost polar cap for your long term residence. The lack of Internetz would save us all from you.

Sat, 10/10/2009 - 15:31 | 95410 etrader

Armstrong peace instead of the FED doing 90min Monetizing turn arounds. Hmm

Or no banks have gone under this weeked, convenient for the FDIC then ...

One thing about Armstrong is he sharp on history if nothing else.

Sat, 10/10/2009 - 17:34 | 95462 Anonymous

This is a three day weekend for govmn't folk. They aren't going to spoil that by mucking around with banks. Priorities rule.

Sat, 10/10/2009 - 16:00 | 95420 arnoldsimage

from now on... i'm putting my money to work where it will encounter the least resistance.

Sat, 10/10/2009 - 16:01 | 95421 Fish Gone Bad

Marty Armstrong is neither a madman, nor a genius. Marty is a schemer. He talks about his proprietary software. Anyone can reproduce the cycles using EXCEL or a calender if they know how to count. I will give him that he was right once. But now everyone knows about his cycles. Do some digging. The guy is a criminal. I grew up with my father ranting on and on and on about how smart Marty was, and how everyone was out to get him, and ... I really thought this guy was something. So I looked at his work and could reproduce it simply enough. If I can reproduce it, so can everyone else.

Sat, 10/10/2009 - 17:02 | 95446 Fish Gone Bad

Marty has been locked up a long time. Prison changes people. Now I am certain that guy is a nut. That dark matter comment was grasping at straws. Oooooh, dark matter.

Sat, 10/10/2009 - 17:10 | 95453 Anonymous

So- what have you done lately?

Sat, 10/10/2009 - 16:11 | 95426 _Biggs_

I am patiently waiting to see how this pans out. He says that he thinks the next leg down will happen sometime between October 2009 and March 2010. The man is without question very intellegent. Marty doesn't care much for Goldman Sachs. Gotta love him. One thing I question is he seems to be sympathetic with Michael Milken and has mentioned him several times in his essays. That bothers me and so does the story of Dendreon.

Sat, 10/10/2009 - 16:55 | 95445 Anonymous

I wish everyone would get over the useless Pythogorean bean chart reading already enriching Bloomberg et al beyond their wildest dreams. While some of them most likely believe in their own snake oil, other are laughing all the way to the bank.

This is all you need to know:

“On September 1, 1894, we will not renew our loans under any consideration. On September 1, we will demand our money. We will foreclose and become mortgagees in possession. We can take two-thirds of the farms west of the Mississippi, and thousands of them east of the Mississippi as well, at our own price… Then the farmers will become tenants, as in England…”

-- Mortgage Bankers Association Memo, 1891; Congressional Record, 29 April 1913; cited in Gertrude M. Coogan, Money Creators: Who Creates Money? Who Should Create It? (1935)]

RAG

Sat, 10/10/2009 - 20:14 | 95547 Anonymous

It's happening again, I would call it a takeover of assets. This is an extremely important quote that provides people with brains a perspective in light of the historical record.

The bankers are out of control, they are massaging their earnings while manipulating markets through trillions in credit default swaps and working over congress and fasb to change accounting rules so that despite being insolvent they can still rule the world. Who cares if they are insolvent if they can still continue to foreclose on assets.

That is why we need to foreclose on them.

Sat, 10/10/2009 - 20:20 | 95551 Anonymous

"Banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than
standing armies. If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around the banks will deprive the people of all property until their children wake-up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered." Thomas Jefferson

Sun, 10/11/2009 - 00:34 | 95672 London Banker

Another good read is The Money Game by Sir Norman Angell. This book was intended to simplify fiat banking by telling the basics as a story and allowing regular people to play the game until they understood how fiat banking enriches and impoverishes the economy.

Sir Norman won the Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts to prevent war by demonstrating how war between developed nations is always destructive of wealth. The loses loses most, but the winner will be impoverished too.

http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_ss?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=...

Sun, 10/11/2009 - 02:47 | 95720 Hephasteus

God's a banker and a trouble maker. He is loki. Real war, cold war, currency war. He just likes indebting people holding them responsible for the shit trouble he causes.

Sat, 10/10/2009 - 18:20 | 95481 trader1

nice read.

his cycle theory is not a perfect science...for example, in his september essay on switzerland, some of the dates don't line up exactly, i.e. 1513 for appenzell's joining the swiss confederations vs. armstrong's 1515 date. nevertheless, i found his commentary on the history of money flows into and out of switzerland quite revealing.

coincidence? model-fitting? hidden order?

hard to say with 100% confidence if armstrong is on to something, but i do know that time will be the ultimate judge (pun intended).

Sat, 10/10/2009 - 18:20 | 95482 Gordon_Gekko

Given the fact that the government did some hanky-panky with his jail sentence (being in prison for like 7 years or more for a judge's contempt - who probably deserved it for all we know) because (as usual) they wanted to forcibly take something from him - I think the guy definitely has something worth having (some kind of IP most likely). His cycles work is brilliant - I was able to pinpoint movements to the day in "certain" markets (and profit from them) twice this year by following/extrapolating his work.

Sat, 10/10/2009 - 18:27 | 95483 trader1

his mid-April turn date concerning a potential top (at the time) in the US dollar index and 10-year treasury note is brilliant (and scary)...

Sat, 10/10/2009 - 19:49 | 95528 Anonymous

It definitely rings true that the CIA (or NSA, or whoever) probably wanted his cookies. It doesn't matter if they were good or not -- someone told the CIA they were, and they wanted them.

Sat, 10/10/2009 - 21:17 | 95593 Anonymous

the only reason i would give him the benefit of
the doubt without necessarily agreeing with him is the nazi
government attempt to kill him and lock him away
for 7 years over contempt of court....the dumb
bitch who kept silent over the clintons was released
after 18 months...

yes the nazi-french terror of the bastille has
come here....the terrorist regime of the usa must
be brought down....

Sun, 10/11/2009 - 06:21 | 95754 aus_punter

don't you think he'd be dead by now if they wanted to silence him ?

Sat, 10/10/2009 - 18:48 | 95492 Zippyin Annapolis

Ralph Acompora where are you?

Seriously, thought the article was good enough to motivate me to pull a tome or two written by Armstrong and give them a good read.

Sat, 10/10/2009 - 19:38 | 95523 Anonymous

Whatever your take on Armstrong's economic theories, he is definitely a victim of utter perversions of the US legal system,

The multi-year contempt of court jailing of Martin Armstrong was entirely illegal and imposed by corrupt federal judges linked to the Wall Street apparatus. It is the old mediaeval torture system - Armstrong was given a choice to make a guilty plea, with several years more in prison but with an ending date, or remain in prison under 'contempt of court' for the rest of his life, with no trial or conviction. A man named Beatty Chadwick was in jail 14 years for contempt of court, no trial, no conviction, I think he's the US record so far.

With Armstrong, as is typical of US legal system victims, the corporate media helps the US corrupt judges with a slander and dis-information campaign against the target, and most Americans - even ZH readers - are blind to how corrupt the US legal system really is, unless they personally know a victim or become one. Most US people believe the Hollywood-movie version of US judges and lawyers until they know someone railroaded.

The USA is a sick, sick place. The so-called 'civil rights groups' in the US don't fight the corrupt judges and lawyers, in order to keep their corporate funding. Independent media and bloggers are attacked-threatened-destroyed if they try to write effectively about these judicial extortion crimes, and US lawyers are jailed or disbarred for trying to defend victims of US legal corruption (e.g., Richard Fine, Los Angeles, elderly lawyer in jail at the moment).

The crimes of US judges in the Armstrong case, are significant among European businesspeople, deterring them from operating inside the US.

Sat, 10/10/2009 - 20:56 | 95579 Anonymous

Hey Cheeky, I have noticed for months you taking some flak.

Some have stated it's because your a foreigner. Personally I don't have much time for foreigners either. I think most of them are elitist snobs who I wouldn't trust to mow my lawn.

You are the other hand are alright. I have read your stuff for months and enjoy it.

Sat, 10/10/2009 - 22:13 | 95614 Anonymous

he is usually six months out on the big moves, which means second leg is now coming

Sat, 10/10/2009 - 22:33 | 95621 Village Idiot

Absolutely fascinating.

Sat, 10/10/2009 - 22:57 | 95626 Abraham Snake

I find Marty quite fascinating but only discovered him via a Zero Hedge comment last month. I've read a few of his prison papers. His insider descriptions of 'The Club' and it's goals and methods is completely believable. It's also pretty clear that his prosecution was exceptionally heavy handed and very likely corrupt.

I'm stunned by some of his unconventional thinking. For instance, if our monetary system relies on a steady increase of the money supply, let's say a 3% annually, why should we tolerate the inefficiencies of a complicated, convoluted, and endlessly gamed tax system?
Better to eliminate taxation and let the government fund itself entirely a reasonable annual monetary increase, let's say 7%. Marty claims that would fix 90% of our fleet, however I'm aware of no academic critiques.

However, I'm skeptical of Marty's overall competence. His writing is disjointed to a degree that suggests a pathology in thought processes. His models are sold as amazing discoveries that so precisely foretell future turns, every power in the world wanted his advice, access to the models themselves. The claims seem largely mystical and less rigorously academic. Others have written that he was a joke as a trader, often incurring large losses. Now he offers a vague statement that he's linked pi and dark mater to the geometry of time. One cannot escape the gut feeling he suffers from delusions of grandeur, that he's more Rasputin than Einstein.

Mon, 10/12/2009 - 08:41 | 96329 Anonymous

Riddle me this. If the Feds have it out for Marty and his work, do you think they would allow him to publish information from within a correctional facility without the CIA changing it's content before it gets out?

If you have a mathematical predictive model, the first time you don't have an event on a predicted date your model is flawed, worthless, crapola, Cheeky'ed. No?

Sat, 10/10/2009 - 23:06 | 95628 Anonymous

I am probably the only person posting here who has spoken to Armstrong personally, during the early days of his incarceration. I also spoke at length to the folks from the legal community that prosecuted him. For what it is worth, I have two points on the man and his situation:

- He is not sane in the sense most people use the word. He speaks exactly as he writes - non sequiturs, deviations, and rambles. If there is a great intellect hidden underneath, you have to cut him a lot f slack while listening to him. He speaks in a way that forces a lot of interpretation.

Folks who post on this site who are MUCH smarter than I - Cheeky, that's you, among others - say his stuff rocks. I will only point out that you may need that kind of intellectual horsepower to get anything from Armstrong. It is too dense and too convoluted for most.

- He absolutely did withhold assets that the courts required him to return. When he is released, do not be surprised if he instantly has a few million dollars from these assets. The reason he has been locked up for so long are entirely sound.

Sun, 10/11/2009 - 08:36 | 95773 Narcolepzzzzzz

Interesting thread on Martin Armstrong begun in 2006, with a good debate on the legalities of his case from page 3 onwards.

http://www.topix.com/forum/business/TS8IHELKS6G8FDV65

Sun, 10/11/2009 - 12:13 | 95852 Anonymous

This genius needs to be set free. Putting people in jail without a trail is dangerous for all Americans.

Sun, 10/11/2009 - 14:04 | 95918 Rari Nantes In ...

Once more I agree with CB. M.A. is one of the best historian of monetary systems and of economy. His scripts sometime deviate towards the legal adventure/misadventure he's going trough, but guess what he's in prison and he may feel a bit bitter after some time behind bars.
He puts his work out there for free, you can contact him if you wish to do so or just read his work and walk down to your favourite coffee shop and forget that he's locked up.
Mr. Armstrong deserves at least the greatest amount of respect if only because his willingness to share his vast knowledge for free!

Sun, 10/11/2009 - 14:31 | 95935 Anonymous

On one hand, Mr. Armstrong makes big-picture arguments about how predictable markets and the forces within them can be, using wave theories. On the other hand, he's obviously quite agitated about the impropriety of the corrupt machinations of markets beneath the surface (or behind the curtain) and rails against the fact that the powerful will use any means to keep their power.

Doesn't he have to pick one theory or the other? If the markets are really being manipulated by the corrupt for their own purposes, then why does he claim he can predict the markets based on wave theory? And conversely, if he can predict the markets based on wave theory, then why would he care about the futile efforts of the "powerful" to manipulate markets that are ultimately dominated by these waves?

Sun, 10/11/2009 - 15:46 | 95975 time123

I never stop to be amazed at what an incredible human mind can do. This guy is truly amazing.

There is a new software based market timing system avaiable at http://invetrics.com

I do not think it comes even close to what this guy has done (at least so far). But its daily DJIA index trading signal is up a respectable 62% for the year (as of October 9, 2009) and it is free of charge for individual investors. It is worth checking it out!

Mon, 10/12/2009 - 15:41 | 96752 Anonymous

Dark matter in trading? Nuff said, he's a nut.

Mon, 10/12/2009 - 18:47 | 96956 tip e. canoe

so is the world as we know it.

takes a schizo to understand a schizo...

Wed, 11/10/2010 - 06:29 | 715657 cheap uggs for sale

The New Yorker On Martin Armstrong

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