The Global Outlook | Armstrong Economics

This year’s Institutional Report is an eyeopener. The world is undergoing a shift in preparation for 2032. We are witnessing a significant decline in the belief in American exceptionalism, particularly among younger generations in the U.S. However, this is a complex trend. While the belief in the nation’s unique moral and political superiority is waning thanks to the Neocons, the country’s economic and market performance still sets it apart in most respects yet it remains at risk from rising communistic and progressive socialism that demand engaging in class warfare tearing society apart at the seams.

The global landscape is entering what we have long identified as the “Panic Cycle” of 2026, a period where the structural weaknesses in the Western financial system converge with escalating multi-front geopolitical conflict with a significant global trend shift in 2027 taking the world into a significant economic low in 2028 infected by stagflation accelerated by rising conflicts that are unwinnable on many fronts.

This is not chaos; it follows a predictable rhythm of human behavior governed by the 8.6-year Economic Confidence Model (ECM) . We are currently witnessing the death throes of the Western republican form of government, which our models have projected to culminate in a systemic collapse by 2032 and a reorganization of political government in most of the world governments mired in republics. The convergence of sovereign debt crises, stagflationary energy shocks, and a shift from unipolar to multipolar conflict defines this outlook.

We are not heading toward a traditional World War III, but rather a simultaneous eruption of regional tensions that are all interconnected. The model indicates that the conflict in Ukraine, the tensions surrounding Iran and the Strait of Hormuz, and the dynamics in the South China Sea are not isolated events; they are manifestations of a single cycle of declining confidence in the established order.