Posted on 11/14/2008 10:07:38 AM PST by Dr. Marten
The man who predicted the 1987 stock market crash and the fall of the Soviet Union is now forecasting revolution in America, food riots and tax rebellions - all within four years, while cautioning that putting food on the table will be a more pressing concern than buying Christmas gifts by 2012.
Gerald Celente, the CEO of Trends Research Institute, is renowned for his accuracy in predicting fut ure world and economic events, which will send a chill down your spine considering what he told Fox News this week.
Celente says that by 2012 America will become an undeveloped nation, that there will be a revolution marked by food riots, squatter rebellions, tax revolts and job marches, and that holidays will be more about obtaining food, not gifts.
"We're going to see the end of the retail Christmas....we're going to see a fundamental shift take place....putting food on the table is going to be more important that putting gifts under the Christmas tree," said Celente, adding that the situation would be "worse than the great depression".
"America's going to go through a transition the likes of which no one is prepared for," said Celente, noting that people's refusal to acknowledge that America was even in a recession highlights how big a problem denial is in being ready for the true scale of the crisis.
Celente, who successfully predicted the 1997 Asian Currency Crisis, the subprime mortgage collapse and the massive devaluation of the U.S. dollar, told UPI in November last year that the following year would be known as "The Panic of 2008," adding that "giants (would) tumble to their deaths," which is exactly what we have witnessed with the collapse of Lehman Brothers, Bear Stearns and others. He also said that the dollar would eventually be devalued by as much as 90 per cent.
The consequence of what we have seen unfold this year would lead to a lowering in living standards, Celente predicted a year ago, which is also being borne out by plummeting retail sales figures.
The prospect of revolution was a concept echoed by a British Ministry of Defence report last year, which predicted that within 30 years, the growing gap between the super rich and the middle class, along with an urban underclass threatening social order would mean, "The world's middle classes might unite, using access to knowledge, resources and skills to shape transnational processes in their own class interest," and that, "The middle classes could become a revolutionary class."
In a separate recent interview, Celente went further on the subject of revolution in America.
"There will be a revolution in this country," he said. "It’s not going to come yet, but it’s going to come down the line and we’re going to see a third party and this was the catalyst for it: the takeover of Washington, D. C., in broad daylight by Wall Street in this bloodless coup. And it will happen as conditions continue to worsen."
"The first thing to do is organize with tax revolts. That’s going to be the big one because people can’t afford to pay more school tax, property tax, any kind of tax. You’re going to start seeing those kinds of protests start to develop."
"It’s going to be very bleak. Very sad. And there is going to be a lot of homeless, the likes of which we have never seen before. Tent cities are already sprouting up around the country and we’re going to see many more."
"We’re going to start seeing huge areas of vacant real estate and squatters living in them as well. It’s going to be a picture the likes of which Americans are not going to be used to. It’s going to come as a shock and with it, there’s going to be a lot of crime. And the crime is going to be a lot worse than it was before because in the last 1929 Depression, people’s minds weren’t wrecked on all these modern drugs – over-the-counter drugs, or crystal meth or whatever it might be. So, you have a huge underclass of very desperate people with their minds chemically blown beyond anybody’s comprehension."
"When CNN wants to know about the Top Trends, we ask Gerald Celente."
— CNN Headline News
"A network of 25 experts whose range of specialties would rival many university faculties."
— The Economist
"Gerald Celente has a knack for getting the zeitgeist right."
— USA Today
"There’s not a better trend forecaster than Gerald Celente. The man knows what he’s talking about."
- CNBC
"Those who take their predictions seriously ... consider the Trends Research Institute."
— The Wall Street Journal
"Gerald Celente is always ahead of the curve on trends and uncannily on the mark ... he's one of the most accurate forecasters around."
— The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
"Mr. Celente tracks the world’s social, economic and business trends for corporate clients."
— The New York Times
"Mr. Celente is a very intelligent guy. We are able to learn about trends from an authority."
— 48 Hours, CBS News
"Gerald Celente has a solid track record. He has predicted everything from the 1987 stock market crash and the demise of the Soviet Union to green marketing and corporate downsizing."
— The Detroit News
"Gerald Celente forecast the 1987 stock market crash, ‘green marketing,’ and the boom in gourmet coffees."
— Chicago Tribune
"The Trends Research Institute is the Standard and Poors of Popular Culture."
— The Los Angeles Times
"If Nostradamus were alive today, he'd have a hard time keeping up with Gerald Celente."
— New York Post
So there you have it - hardly a nutjob conspiracy theorist blowhard now is he? The price of not heeding his warnings will be far greater than the cost of preparing for the future now. Storable food and gold are two good places to make a start.
If I have food, fuel, water and light and can procure more for myself as I need it, why would I want gold? I cannot do one useful thing in a low tech world of scarcity with gold. I would prefer a supply of ammunition, candles, toilet paper, matches, distilled spirits, stabilized gasoline,motor oil, tobacco or medicines. Any of those commodities would be worth a portion of my renewable food, fuel, water.
In January in the Northern Hemisphere, would you sell your supply of firewood or preserved food for a commodity that only needs more security and produces nothing else?
Gold might be valuable in procuring needed essentials immediately prior to a collapse. That would be a sort of market timing. It would be preferable to have procured the means to produce the needed essentials for the foreseeable future well beforehand. You could end up expending all your hoard of gold for enough essential commodities to survive only a short time.
Like many others, I have some gold coins. However, I think they are less valuable than having the means to continually provide the essentials needed to live during the hardest times. I also have extra supplies of the commodities listed above. When choosing what to store, gold is way down on my personal list.
Gold is a store of value. It is not a currency. Gold is a good idea if you think the hard times are of a short duration and it would be available as a stake for getting started again in a modern world. An alternative scenario would be where currency is devalued and asset classes are reinflated by governments, making gold worthwhile to purchase assets. Assets, however, are not necessarily the same thing as commodities. However, what is to stop those same governments from setting the price of gold, limiting the amount that can be cashed in or banning private ownership? All that has happened in the past.
A lot of folks are hoping — in a fantasy kind of way — that skills sets that are not valued now will be valued in the future. This is like hoping a certain stock will rise.
I understand this. I’m of the generation that valued skills such as tuning up or changing the oil in a car and basic household repairs. These skills are either now worth less than minimum wage performed by illegals or done by franchises on the cheap.
Conversely, skill sets that seem to have little practical value, such as marketing, building economic models and various other abstract type work has brought their practioners millions of dollars.
About 35% of Mississippi is Comprised of low income Blacks who are on all kinds of Federal assistance programs. Lotsa low income Whites as well.
The States that get a lot more back from the Feds don’t do so because of ideology, not really. Mostly, it is due to the fact that they are the poorest states in the Union. The places that don’t get much back, such as Connecticut, tend to be wealthier, with less people requiring government assistance.
Yes, but a lot of those states condemn taxes and gubmint spending even as they have their hand out for their share.
Ditto. Food and ammo will be the new gold.
Well, if the Feds are gonna give it away anyway, might as well get in on it. The “transfers” are one of the reasons we’re in the shape we’re in.
Yeah, I know muzzies don’t buy Christmas gifts. They don’t buy dogs, either. Wonder if Obama is currently looking for a hypo-allergenic Christmas gift for his daughters.
Brown rice does. More than that.
So...will you accept payments in Spam or Bullion? :-P
If the brown rice is stored in a vacuum pack with less than 1% oxygen it may have a chance. The rice would have to be raw and unpolished.
Any exposure to oxygen causes rapid degradation of the oily hull as the oil quickly goes rancid.
LOL! It is a little weird - I miss the Paris Metro where I could always check out what clothes were in style via the many ads.
That recent laptop computer series ("Legally we can't say that...") was BEYOND annoying. Glad it's back to the usual tanks and figher jets.
Received wisdom has changed, I see. We used to think it lasted 200 years.
Have you seen this?
It depends on the economy in which one finds oneself.
Actually, we are discussing a form of economic modeling and speculative marketing models. We are in uncertain times. Nothing wrong with abstractions. I think there are a lot of people right on this thread with those sorts of jobs and many who are extremely successful and comfortable. However, in the sort of future we are essentially modeling here, the franchise will be gone because the credit lines will be gone. The illegals are not going to bother coming here if there are no low-skill jobs or any incentive via the American Dream model, due to the lack of either credit or stable currency or even the ability of a government to enforce law and order.
I think a majority of sober individuals see some huge changes coming in the world as we have come to accept it. Some of us are retired. Some of us have perhaps never had more than a dependable middle class job. Making preparations for dislocation is no different than preparing for an extreme weather event that might last longer than a week or so. Many folks have experienced this recently with the Gulf Coast hurricanes. In the instances we are trying to foresee, we are dealing with all the ways in which those in power could make things worse, through tax policy or lack of resource extraction, for example. Or through attacks on vulnerable-appearing rivals, like the USA.
I don’t think it is fantasy or hoping for wish fulfillment that would make marginal skills sought after. I hope fervently that nothing as dire as we project here ever happens. I hope that by 2012, we will joke about our stored supplies and arcane skills just as we do about our Y2K or Peak Oil planning.
It is easy to take it lightly when we are comfortable, have incomes, have dependable infrastructure, especially as we are in the deflationary portion of the crisis. I was raised by grandparents who fled Eastern Europe over 100 years ago and who, along with my parents, survived the Depression. Both totalitarianism and economic crisis exacerbated by that political modality are real possibilities in the near future.
I find utility in reviewing what skills and forethought would serve us best if what is approaching becomes real. It will happen quickly, as what has taken place already happened quickly.
There is economic evidence that the decline in consumer spending last Spring was actually a change in consumption from a variety of goods and services to a stockpiling of food and other consumables. The stats for all the large discount food and pharmaceutical retailers showed increased volume as appliances, entertainment, restaurants showed declines.
As for changing your own oil, I know professionals who decided this past summer to invest in older vehicles that they could service and repair themselves and not one of them could be considered a gearhead. These aren’t collectibles, but restored cars that will run in a world where an EMP is a possibility. Lots of people must do their own home maintenance. We have a friend who was earning six figures for over 25 years doing custom remodeling in Vail and Boulder and on the Chicago Lakefront. Beginning last June, his contracts for the the rest of the year were all put on hold as the housing crisis meant his clients no longer had an ELOC. Not one or two, but over a half dozen very wealthy and successful folks with those high-end skill sets found themselves short of cash/credit as the market began to deflate.
The coming storm is, IMO, very real. If I thought we could get through it on money, we have enough, even after our own losses, to hang on until things return to normal. I don’t know if things will return to what we all defined as normal just a year ago.
YMMV
Thanks! I’d better order more freeze-dried foods.
Oh, wait; isn’t the world supposed to end on December 21, 2012?
I agree that change is coming. I see some tough times, but not end of the world stuff. The primary problem is that folks have gotten to fear the future. I find that a very un-American attitude.
Forget the Obama stuff — Change you can believe in — I have no idea what that even means. Though I’m old enough so that I don’t understand a lot of advertising slogans these days.
The deal seems simple: You look at change with a clear eye — free of ideology and the way things should be — and deal with it the best you can. Change shouldn’t be an excuse for failure or nuttiness.
Very thought provoking!
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