Martin A. Armstrong
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Martin Armstrong, former chairman of Princeton Economics International Ltd., and now prisoner #12518-050 at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in lower Manhattan. Known for his analytical models of market timing, Armstrong’s cycles-based models have had some spectacular successes.[1]
[edit] Career
Armstrong called the high of the Nikkei in 1989 months ahead of time—the Nikkei peaked the last week of December as he said it would, then crashed, casting off 40 percent of its value in a matter of weeks. More recently, and again months ahead of time, Armstrong predicted the July 20, 1998, high in the U.S. equities market—to the day. After that morsel of prognostication according to James Smith, a former Princeton Economics employee, the CIA called Princeton, wanting to know how the Institute’s proprietary models worked. Needless to say, Armstrong rebuffed them.[2] The court has since then been demanding that Armstrong hand over his proprietary computer code to them. According to Armstrong's daughter Victoria Armstrong, "It took nearly 30 years for my dad to develop this model and his refusing to turn over its source code to the government is a big reason why he has been held in jail for over 7 years without a trial." [3]
Indeed, he predicted the February 27, 2007 fall off of Global market ahead of time in a 1999 article.[4]
[edit] Criminal allegations
He was indicted in 1999 on criminal securities fraud by the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, and released on a $5 million bond. He has been accused not of theft, but of misleading clients about financial losses and using new funds to mask those losses. In January 2000, when he failed to hand over corporate files and assets to the court-appointed receiver for his companies, he was charged with civil contempt and incarcerated in the high-rise prison a few blocks from the World Financial Center. He and his two offshore companies, Princeton Economics International and Princeton Global Management Ltd., were also slapped with civil suits filed by the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission.
On April 27, 2007, Martin Armstrong's contempt of court imprisonment was lifted by the court and he started to serve the 5-year criminal sentence which he received a few weeks earlier. September 2, 2011 will be when he will be theoretically free again [5]
