Armstrong Is Useful… If You Treat Him as a Historian-Analyst, Not a Prophet
If someone really wants to understand long arcs in monetary history, coinage debasement, sovereign defaults, capital flows, collapse of banking houses, then yes, Armstrong’s historical essays are worth reading. He pulls together ancient through modern monetary cycles in a way most economists never bother to do.
Where he’s strong:
Vast amount of historical material
He’s written hundreds of articles on the fiscal histories of France, Spain, Rome, the Middle Ages, the Lombards, the Medicis, etc. Most people have never even heard of the Gran Tavola, but the events you quoted around 1298–1320 are basically correct:
- Philip IV debased currency ? silver outflow.
- He seized Gran Tavola assets ? major banking shock.
- Siena collapses as a commercial power afterward.
- Florence rises (Bardi, Peruzzi, then Medici).
- French Crown seizes influence over the Papacy ? Avignon Papacy.
All of that lines up with reputable historians like Raymond de Roover, Carlo Cipolla, Nicholas Mayhew, and of course Machiavelli (whom Armstrong quotes).
So on medieval-European monetary history, the guy is solid.
Where Armstrong Exaggerates
His claims about “building AI since the 1960s” are not plausible
He would have been around ten years old in 1960. There was no functional economic AI back then, and what existed at places like MIT or RAND were toy symbolic systems. What Armstrong actually did was:
- Build a cyclical database in the 70s–80s
- Feed historical price, interest rate, and political-event data
- Build a pattern-recognition model that he branded “Socrates”
That’s impressive—but it is not advanced AI from the 60s.
His model is basically:
“Human behavior repeats in cycles; markets reflect those cycles.”
Not a crazy idea, but not sci-fi either.
Where Armstrong Is Flat-Out Wrong or Misleading
Claims about “secret global cabals controlling everything”
He hints at shadow groups that direct world history.
But the actual history he cites—like Philip IV’s actions—is better explained by power politics, debt, and incompetence, not coordinated omniscient elites.
Claims that central banks were created by medieval orders
No, the Knights Templar were not “central bankers.”
They were:- A religious order
- With a large deposit/transfer system
- That ran a kind of proto-banking operation
But central banks as we understand them began with:- 1609 — Amsterdam Wisselbank
- 1694 — Bank of England
- 1816 — Banque de France
- 1913 — U.S. Federal Reserve
And even those were nothing like modern central banks.
Medieval banking families (Siena / Florence / Venice / Genoa) were powerful, yes—but not centralized currency managers.
What Armstrong Gets Very Right
This is why so many people read him:
Sovereign defaults follow predictable cycles
Look at:
- Spain (16th century)
- France (1789)
- U.S. states (1840s)
- Russia (1917 & 1998)
- Argentina (8 times)
He’s correct that government fiscal collapse looks eerily similar across eras.
Debasement capital flight political crisis
Exactly what happened under Philip IV.
Exactly what happened in Weimar.
Exactly what happens today when governments monetize deficits.
His historic timelines are usually accurate
He draws on legitimate medieval/renaissance banking scholarship, especially De Roover.
What You Can Safely Take From Him
If you strip away the mystique and “AI from the 60s” branding, Armstrong is best understood as:
A historian-economist who believes human behavior is cyclical and that government fiscal collapse follows predictable patterns.
That’s it.
And viewed that way, his work is actually useful.
If you like the material you quoted, here's why it resonates
You’re drawn to:
- Hidden patterns in history
- The real mechanics behind economic collapse
- How elites behave when a system starts to fail
- How banking power shifts geographically over centuries
- The origins of modern financial infrastructure
Armstrong scratches that itch because he connects events like the 1298 French banking crisis to modern cycles in a way mainstream economists don’t. |
