Decline & Fall of the United States

The article that follows is a review of an article that Martin Armstrong wrote in 1999 just before his arrest. In Mr. Armstrong's latest 77 page article writen in prison and released in October 2008 he appears to have softened his position as to the USA having a civil war and breaking up, he now thinks the USA will survive but not in the form we know now...

The United States of America hit the end of the 224 year political cycle in 1999 from its revolutionary beginning in 1775.29863. Martin Armstrong predicted in Oct.1999 that Sept/Oct 2001 would see an attack on the USA! He in effect predicted the 9/11 disaster and also predicted the reaction to it further on, which would be a new war. "The turning points following 1999 now appear to be Sept/Oct 2001 on the quarter cycle and late 2003. These targets often work in an attack followed by a response."

It is a very strange world. As he wrote in the past the same thing happened to Rome, as their power declined they became vulnerable to outside attack and also got embroiled in wars with Persia. History is repeating now and America is bogged down in a quagmire in the ancient Persian Empire - which encompassed Iraq and Iran. Iraqi dictator Sadam Hussein warned when the USA first invaded Iraq that the Americans would end up stuck in a quagmire that was unwinnable.

Martin Armstrong revealed the existence of a political cycle that is 224 years in length and gives massive amounts of evidence of how this cycle has been dominant for thousands of years all over the world. He developed the Economic Confidence Model during the 1970s which is related to the 224 political cycle. "Aside from the importance of the number of days of the 8.6 year cycle constituting 3141 days or roughly Pi, the data that this cycle emerged from was a period of 224 years spanning between 1683 and 1907. There were 26 financial panics during this 224 year period that produced the actual time frame of 8.61538 years." While he found that this cycle moved in waves of intensity that built up into 6 groups of waves forming a major wave of 51.6923 years, this is not the only timing interval that is important for understanding of the business cycle he said.

Mr. Armstrong went on to say that Americans could expect to see their liberties being stripped away from them after 1999 as the government would attempt to shore up its waning power and war would increase. He said the the power of the USA peaked in 1999, just as it did for the Roman Empire after the death of one of Rome's most brilliant Emperors Marcus Aurelius in 180 AD. The consequences from what President Dwight Eisenhowser warned of, by letting the Militry Industrial Complex become too dominant are now starting to be realized, a civilization that became a worldwide military empire is now starting to crumble from the burden of supporting the military machine. On top of all this US corporations systematically tranferred manufacturing overseas into Asia thereby destroying the industrial manufacturing wealth that Americans have previously prospered from. Of course from a cyclical perspective Armstrong would argue that is was all inevitable, human nature being what it is.

We can see now that the power of the Chinese is surging forward and that as another financial advisor James Dines predicted in the late 1970's - the 21 Century would be the Chinese century. In Marco Polo's time China was the weathiest nation on earth, they are now in the process of getting back that status. Will the new China Era last 224 years or will it move to a greater Europe before then?

At a lecture that Martin Armstrong gave in the early 1990's I approached him and stated: Don't you think that the Chinese will dominate the world's economy going forward now? He said to me that they would at first, but he believed that a greater Europe including Russia would eventually be the largest economy in the world. I don't know if he still thinks the latter to be the case but he wrote in late 1999 "We see the economic power shifting toward Asia and believe the United States has peaked here in 1999". He went on to say that to prove that the USA has peaked in its power may require another 8.6 years (pi cycle - Feb 2007)and may not be verifiable until Martin's death which would likely be in the 2030 time frame. (2032 is the end of Martin's 51.6 year 'confidence in private markets cycle' - so after 2032 we can expect something like 1929 again where there is a massive collapse of the debt markets and then a new confidence in government cycle appears again with another Franklin Delanor Roosevelt style 'new deal' perhaps, except this time China will be the leading economy and the USA will be Britain or Italy as in a fallen Rome.

Martin wrote: "The entire period of rising political chaos appears to begin with 1999 going into at least 2011 but more likely late 2012. The 224 year cycle that began with the start of the American Revolution will reach its end of the most chaotic period 2012.471 which is 224 years from the last state of Nine required to ratify the constitution, which was New Hampshire on June 21, 1788. President George Washington was elected in 1789 and thus this formally began the United States. It does not appear that 1999 will become noticeable as a major turning point until at least one 8.615 year interval takes place. Thus by late 2007, dissatisfaction will become self-evident. Of course, between 2012 and 2020, the real problems will unfold regarding social security, healthcare, and a host of government benefits. Funding such programs will lead to major economic short-falls."

"Cyclically, if the United States were to survive in the form as we know it today (a big if), recovery is not likely before 2103 to 2111 with the extreme projections into 2223. Historically, nations that have had civil wars in the past, breakup along the same lines of political differences even though the issues will have changed. We thus may see a division between north and south taking the issues of religion this time rather than slavery. One must keep in mind that the religious differences have survived the Civil War."

"The Middle East is universally believed to be the source of future problems. Looking at the 224 year cycle of political change provides an eye-opener to say the least. It was the year 1095 that the Byzantine Emperor Alexius Comnenus asked Pope Urban II for help infighting the Turks. If we look at the 224 year cycle between the West and the Muslim World we see the dates 1095, 1319, 1543, 1767 and 1991. Iraq invaded Kuwait in August 1990 and the West invaded Iraq in February 1991. The invasion stopped short of Baghdad leaving Saddam Hussein in power only because he may be the lessor of two evils - keeping the religious extremists under his control. Often overlooked is the conflict between the two prime divisions in Islam the Sunni, who followed Abu Bakr as the successor to Muhammad (570-6432AD) and the Shites, who followed the son-in-law and first cousin. While the Sunni constitute about 85% of Islam, it is the Shites that largely believe that there should be no separation between church and state. Thus, the Shites would overthrow the monarchy of Saudi Arabia if they could and would rejoice had Hussein been removed from power. This would have allowed Iran to expand its power taking Iraq which is believed to be about 40% Shite. This would then put Saudi Arabia at risk not to mention Syria
and Turkey. In other words, if Iran could expand its religious control over the states in the Middle East, it would most likely result in a civil war similar to that of England between the Protestants and the Catholics. It is disturbing that the West invaded precisely on the 224 year cycle target of 1991."

Its all in the cycles, it appears that nothing can be done to stop the cycles from manifesting their effects. As Martin has stated before the whole Universe is cyclical, galaxies, stars, planets are all subject to cyclical laws (our Sun he wrote has a 300 year cycle which causes its output to vary by 15% and the Sun could not even shine if it did not have cycles) it is therefore logical that humans and their societies are also subject to these cyclical energies - 'as above so below'.

If we are to believe in the greater purpose of human society then perhaps the USA has fullfilled its purpose in the 20th Century, showing the world that relative democracy and free markets are the right way for societies to go. Just as Rome led to Great Britain which in a way united the whole world with the English language, then the United States maintained and strengthened the structure. The question is, which country is going to take over from the USA?

Martin seemed to be suggesting that the Earth's climate is likely to start cooling down now based on the Sun's 300 year cycle and it appears that 2007 saw some records being made for cold and snow. There is some evidence now that the sun's output is starting to fall, the sunspots are not being created at this point. Over the past year, anecdotal evidence for a cooling planet has exploded. China has its coldest winter in 100 years. Baghdad sees its first snow in all recorded history. North America has the most snowcover in 50 years, with places like Wisconsin the highest since record-keeping began. Record levels of Antarctic sea ice, record cold in Minnesota, Texas, Florida, Mexico, Australia, Iran, Greece, South Africa, Greenland, Argentina, Chile — the list goes on and on.

Anecdotal evidence, but now, that evidence has been supplanted by hard scientific fact. All four major global temperature tracking outlets (Hadley, NASA's GISS, UAH, RSS) have released updated data. All show that over the past year, global temperatures have dropped precipitously.

http://www.well.com/user/pdeep/pages/warm07/stat02/stat02.shtml This link purports to show evidence that we can expect temperatures to fall for the next 20-25 years.

Could it be that human produced Co2 has created a blanket that will protect our societies from a future ice age or will any cooling now be just a temporary lull in an ongoing warming?

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