QUESTION: Mr. Armstrong, I believe the difference between the Austrian school of economics and mainstream economics is that mainstream economists believe recessions are inherent to capitalism and can be controlled by manipulation where the Austrian school argues the causation is fiat money with or without central banking. You seem to ascribe to something in between. Can […]

Asia, and China in particular, put in a stellar performance today, eventually closing up over 4%. Rumors pushing the market that the PBoC is pursuing a tighter relationship between Shanghai and Hong Kong, and also that President Xi Jinping said the country’s economic growth rate will not be less than 6.5% in the next five years […]

QUESTION: Mr. Armstrong; If I understand you correctly, should the IMF accept the yuan as a reserve currency, this will have zero impact other than political. Correct? RH ANSWER: Correct. The IMF will decide in November whether to expand the current composition (U.S. dollar, euro, yen, and British pound) of Special Drawing Rights (SDR) with another currency. […]

Far too many people have underestimated the changes in the global economy. This year’s conference will focus on the significant instability risks that are associated with the economic slowdown in China, and the crisis in the emerging markets. This will impact the German exports, and the refugee crisis in Europe will only help to push the economic […]

The IMF has come out and warned that Saudi Arabia may go bankrupt within the next five years if the government maintains its current spending habits. Some emails are asking if the IMF is now copying our projections for they have the same timing. Who knows. I would assume the economic numbers are the numbers, but they […]

Some people have wrongly expected a crash in the long bonds. What has actually happened is that China and others have sold into the high, liquidating their long bonds, and moving short-term. This is why rates are negative on the short-end. The CRASH comes in the opposite direction this time. Why? Because the central banks […]

QUESTION: Mr. Armstrong; I heard you on Infowars. I understand how the gold standard would not solve anything for the problem is politicians and not what we call money. Some think that you can create a floating gold standard so gold would be money but not fixed. I really have a hard time seeing where […]

The economic data released from China earlier this morning has been the most talked about economic topic across almost every trading desk today. China’s Q3 GDP resulted in a small beat at 6.9% (expected 6.8%), and the September Retail Sales also slightly better at 10.9% (expected 10.8%) and then finally September Industrial Production released 5.7% against an estimated 6.0% expectation. All rather disappointing really – well, as […]

Globally, it has not been a pretty day for equities. Asia and U.S. indices are down with the worst being the Nikkei (off 2%) and that carried into the U.S. session losing another 1%. It appears the world has finally awoken to the fact that the economy is on life support with little to no sign of a recovery anytime soon. Today’s sell-off […]

The import numbers released from China early this morning was the last thing the commodity based countries wanted to see, especially after having found some decent optimism in recent trading. The Nikkei suffered the most, losing 1.1% on the day, and that carried forward into late U.S. trading where the futures are currently down a further 0.95%. […]