New Armstrong Essay

Armstrong Economics: Presidential Elections: 2016 the Year from Hell? (Martin Armstrong, 06/25/11)

Political Instability's affect on markets. As always, full of typos and interesting ideas


some key pullouts: 

While we can argue politics until the world ends, within a two party system, the eternal sea of politics will always churn back and forth. The data illustrates that only about 10% of the voters will remain independent and swing back and forth between the left and right during  NORMAL times.  It is this independent group that determines the election process. The bulk of Republicans will never vote for a Democrat and vice versa. The bulk of the people cannot be persuaded to change camps until there is a real full-blown economic implosion. This is true in all free political nations. Nevertheless,  hidden within this data series  lays a secret kernel that is of incredible importance. It is clear that if you take the economy and trash it, you will get political change. The year 1933 saw such change with FDR coming to power in the USA, Hitler in Germany and Mao in China. How that change will  manifest is not that difficult to forecast. Whoever is in power just gets thrown out

and

Illustrated here is a rarely observed factor – the third party element. There is a very dominant 51.6 year Economic Confidence Model frequency within politics as well as currency. The major turning points were 1860, 1912, 1964, and still ahead, 2016. The first target produced the Civil War. The second marked the peak in Britain  as the financial capital of the world followed by the  start of World War I shortly thereafter. The year 1964 had been the last year silver appeared in coinage just after the assassination of JFK. This was the beginning of the end of the Bretton Woods fixed exchange rate gold standard. These peaks in Third Party votes reached well above 20% of the population stretching to 30%. What is incredible about this data is that generally only 10% of the swing vote determines the victor. This illustrated in a prelude to revolution, this will spike to the 30% area during political disturbances. The target year 2016 has not looked good for a long time. It appears to be the fifth such event that is unlikely to mean revolution, but it will signal significant change. 

He also forecasts 2068 as the start of the next Revolution cycle.  Good times!