Author Topic: Russia Today Interview with Gerald Celente  (Read 885 times)

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Russia Today Interview with Gerald Celente
« on: February 13, 2009, 07:58:00 AM »
Russia Today Interview with Gerald Celente

http://www.russiatoday.com/guests/detail/2114


In 2009 we’re going to see the worst economic collapse ever, the ‘Greatest Depression’, says Gerald Celente, U.S. trend forecaster. He believes it’s going to be very violent in the U.S., including there being a tax revolt.

RT: The fragile U.S. economy has been met with bank bailouts and stimulus plans. So what’s to come in 2009? Joining me now to answer that question is Gerald Celente, founder and director of the Trends Research Institute. Thank you for joining me.

Gerald Celente: My pleasure.

RT: How would you define the economic trend that you have forecasted for 2009?

G.C.: We’re going to see the economic collapse the likes of which the world has never seen before. It’s not only in the United States; it’s going global. At the end of 2008 we saw Christmas retail sales: women’s apparel down 23%; home furnishings and electronics off 27%; luxury items down 35%. These are Depression Era collapses. We saw major bankruptcies, such as retailers Circuit City and Linens and Things. One bankruptcy after another. Then we saw store closings. Starbucks, Home D&D Power and down the line.

The question becomes who is going to take all of the vacant retail space? Who is going to rent it? The answer is - nobody. Now we look at the financial collapse in 2008, we saw the Merrill Lynch mob go under the bed and the Lehman boys went bankrupt. You saw bond companies, brokerage firms, and banks go belly up. Who is going to rent all the vacant commercial business space that they used to occupy? The answer is - nobody. The commercial real estate collapse that’s going to happen in 2009 is going to dwarf the residential real estate collapse.

RT: You use the Great Depression as an analogy, as a comparison. During the Great Depression unemployment was 25%. Now it has increased, it’s I think over 7.2. Is that number going to get much, much bigger?

G.C.: We have to look at the real number. There are two sets of books that the government keeps. When they measure up unemployment they don’t add in the people who are no longer looking for jobs because they have become discouraged since they cannot find employment after looking so long. And they don’t include part-time workers. When you put that number into it, the number is 13.7%. And that’s a government number. And this is just beginning. And again, current events form future trends.

What did we see? We saw in one day some 61,000 jobs evaporate off the map. You’re going to see Great Depression numbers. Because, as I mentioned, with this commercial real estate collapse, all of these retail stores closing, like Starbucks and Macy’s, you go down the line. You look not only at people who work for these places that no longer have jobs, but how about all the supportive industries - the advertising, the manufacturers, the products. They’re going to be laying off people as well. We’re going to see Great Depression numbers. In that effect, this is going to be worse than the Great Depression.

RT: What are we going to see happening to the society, to people’s day-to-day lives in terms of how they treat one another, how they behave, crime?

G.C.: When I say it’s going to be worse than the Great Depression, we call it the Greatest Depression. By the way, to be using 1930s models to get the U.S. out of this is really stupid. Back then when we first crashed most people didn’t have homes. There was no such thing as home equity loan. And back then, people didn’t have credit cards. The consumer wasn’t 14 trillion dollars in debt. We had a manufacturing base that built the world out of the Great Depression following World War Two. We no longer have that.

Now people are at the edge. They’re stressed out. Look, the Americans are the most depressed nation on the world already. They take more antidepressant drugs than anybody, plus the other kinds of drugs that they are taking. You’re going to see crime levels in America that are going to rival the third world. Welcome Mexico City. You’re going to start seeing people being kidnapped in this country like they do in other underdeveloped nations. So it’s going to be very violent in America.

RT: You’re not exaggerating?

G.C.: I’m not exaggerating, the facts are there. I have a saying: when people lose everything and they have nothing to lose, they lose it. You’re going to see people saying, off with their heads. There’s going to be another revolution in this country.

RT: When will this revolution that you have forecasted in your Trends journal happen and what will ignite it?

G.C.: It’s going to be a tax revolt. We’re going to start seeing a tax revolt in the United States. People are one job away from losing everything. We’re seeing more and more closures, people are being laid off. People are stretched to the limits. And what do they do in New York State? Some130 new taxes are being proposed, they’re raising sales taxes. There’s going to be a tax revolt in this country from property taxes first and school taxes second. That’s what we’re going to see start to happen.

RT: Do you feel people are not hopeful that Obama will make a difference?

G.C.: People are hopeful, they are desperate and they are fearful. And they’ll hang on to anything. Let’s look at the facts. A man of change, who did he bring into Washington? You know they say by their deeds you shall know them. Let’s look at his Treasury Secretary, Timothy Geithner, former Robert Rubin from the Clinton administration, the former president of the New York Federal Reserve Bank. Change? How about Larry Summers, the former Clinton Secretary of Treasury? I mean, I’ve been around a long time. I never remember a newly elected president bringing in basically the national security team from the last administration who happen to be from another party.

RT: Do you not think Obama’s different in any way?

G.C.: By their deeds you shall know them! If I bring in a baseball hitter that strikes out every time and I want him to play in the World Series is he going to hit the ball over the fence? They brought in Larry Summers, Timothy Geithner. Look at the crew. Look who they are. They’re strike out artists, every one of them. The only thing that they know how to do is not to get their finger nails dirty.

RT: There was a sentence in your report, the Trends Journal, that really caught my attention. You wrote: ‘On 9/11, those who listened to the authorities and returned to their offices went down with the towers.’ So are you saying that Americans should not be listening to the officials who are saying the Stimulus Plans are going to make everything better? Is that the analogy?

G.C.: Read my lips. No new taxes. I didn’t have sex with that woman, Monica Lewinski.
I smoked but I didn’t inhale. Saddam Hussein has weapons of mass destruction and ties to Al-Qaeda. Why would anybody believe these people?

RT: So what are Americans supposed to do if they’re not supposed to trust their leaders?

G.C.: Personally, I buy gold. And I’ve been talking about gold since the Trends Journal 2001. We peg the bottom and we said it would start going up at 275. Number two, you don’t spend a dime you don’t need to spend.

RT: What would be the good jobs to benefit from in this year?

G.C.: Anything having to do with health. Anything. It’s going to be a growth industry. And fortunately a lot of them are going to pay a lot of money in that field because a lot of that is going to be care for the elderly. And the other thing really is anything having to do with conservation engineers, anything that’s going to prove technologically sound and smart to save money and to make money.

RT: What about geopolitics, what trends are we going to see in terms of the relationships between the United States and the rest of the world?

G.C.: Well the rest of the world is very hopeful, using the word ‘hope’, with the Obama administration. And again, we’re going to have to see what transpires, but so far, and again, by their deeds you shall know them.

Obama, when he first started to run, he was going to be out of Iraq. As soon as he became president he was going to start bringing soldiers home. Now they won’t be out for 16 months and now their reports say they’re going to bring upwards of 40,000 more troops to Afghanistan. He was also talking about preventive strikes in Pakistan. So it really doesn’t look like it’s going to be much of a smoothing of geopolitical relations.

The one factor we’re looking at, at a time that could only be the worst time for it to happen, is what’s going on in the Middle East, in the Israel-Gaza war. Israel, as they said, they were trying to do as the reports have come out, if they attack Iran at any level, it will begin World War Three. Because if this war spreads beyond Gaza, it’s going to inflame the Middle East. It can cause an oil crisis as we saw in 1973, that’s what ended the Arab-Israeli war when they embargoed oil going into the U.S. That’s our major concern. We’re also seeing, and we’re going to wonder, if Obama continues with putting the so-called missile defense shield in Poland and in Czech Republic in Eastern Europe and if they keep pushing more and more into Georgia. If that keeps happening we’re going to see a reignition of the Cold War.

RT: You have been trend casting since 1980, more than two decades. How do you compile your information and why do you believe you’ve been so spot-on most of the time?

G.C.: Current events form future trends. You can see what’s going on. A great scholar said, “In today already walks tomorrow.” So we say current events form future trends. But when people look at the trends, they colour them or shade them with their own ideology, their own beliefs. It’s what they want, what they hope for, what they wish for.

I’m a political atheist. I look at things for the way they are, not the way I want them to be. I don’t colour them or try to change them because of an ideology. The other major factor that we do differently at Trends Research Institute than anywhere else is we look at over 300 different categories on a global basis. So we’re looking at economics, we’re looking at politics, we’re looking at changes in the family, we’re looking at geopolitics. We’re making connections between different fields continually.

RT: How can America get out of the situation?

G.C.: All you have to do is to look back to the 1990s when America entered into a recession. We had 7.2 unemployment rate in 1993. What got the U.S. out of the 1990s recession was something called the ‘internet revolution’ that had a productive capacity. Products were invented, designed, manufactured, marketed and serviced. So you’re asking about new jobs, ask about alternative energies. Anything that’s going to advance the U.S. into the 21st century in an intelligent way. That’s where the job opportunities are going to be.

RT: Gerald Celente, founder of the Trends Research Institute, thank you very much for taking time to speak with us.

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Re: Russia Today Interview with Gerald Celente
« Reply #1 on: February 13, 2009, 08:08:15 AM »
Gerald Celente, Futurist Fraud
Written by Edward Champion

Posted on November 13, 2008
Filed Under Celente, Gerald, Futurism, PHonies

The crazed doom-and-gloom prophets of our world have this troubling ability to occupy the airwaves, becoming strangely confused with qualified experts. Gerald Celente is the latest soothsayer operating on his hunches — now being celebrated on Digg, Reddit, and just about every damn aggregator imaginable.

His predictions sound suspiciously similar to the storyline for Brian Francis Slattery’s excellent new novel, Liberation, but Gerald Celente, the CEO of Trends Research Institute, is determined to deliver. By 2012, Celente forecasts revolution in America, food riots, and tax rebellions. In four years, America will become an undeveloped nation. Holidays will be about food rather than gifts. Mass hysteria, dogs and cats living together. Doom and gloom.

The media — or, rather, FOX News and conservative websites — is listening to Celente because he “predicted” the 1997 currency crisis in Asia, the subprime mortgage disaster, and the dollar dipping south. But Infowars, a website run by paleoconservative radio show host Alex Jones, is basking in this dystopic news like an AIG executive riding high on Uncle Sam’s dime. What’s particularly strange is that Infowars hasn’t bothered to quibble with Celente’s statements, much less point to any of his inaccurate predictions.

How does Celente do it? From Invest in Yourself by Mark Eisenson, Gerri Detweiler, and Nancy Castleman:

According to Gerald Celente, Director of the Trends Research Institute and author of Trends 2000, the key to tracking trends is to read two newspapers every day with a purpose — either The Wall Street Journal or The Financial Times, plus The New York Times or USA Today. Look for stories with social, economic, and political significance, be it about the difficulties older suburbs face or the current currency crisis. (You’ll know by the headline or the first paragraph.) Skip the stories that are purely human interest or that are about something that hasn’t happened yet (for example, a jury resuming deliberation on a sensational trial).

When a crisis does occur, tune in to the extra in-depth analyses that you’ll find in accompanying background pieces probably in more than one of the newspapers. Read them as though you’re a “political atheist,” Celente recommends — not for what you want or hope, but for what is really going on, not only in your own profession or industry, but for trends that may directly or indirectly shape the future.

Aside from the Dale Carnegie-style language here, much of Celente’s “suggestions” seem more like a series of guidelines on how to become a successful “futurist” predicting a good deal of generalist nonsense that scares the shit out of people, using language lifted from a newspaper story’s barebones and riding on a few hunches. Of course, it also helps to have an aesthetic touch — something along the lines of a desktop covered with 12 globes, just so you can impress a New York Times reporter who comes by to write a small profile.

Since Infowars could not be bothered to perform even the most rudimentary act of journalism, the time has come to see if Celente’s record truly cuts the mustard.

* In May 1993, in a story about fiftysomethings losing their jobs written for the Orange County Register, Celente was quoted. He was advising IBM at the time during a period of downsizing. What was Celente’s golden advice? He informed displaced executives to “go for some kind of counseling.” Asked to comment on this situation, Celente offered the same doom and gloom boilerplate that he’s telling us today: “The Industrial Age is ending. All the systems are breaking down and that means disappointment and disillusionment for the people who grew up in the ’50’s.” He elaborated, “These people believed in the Ozzie and Harriet way of life. That concept is dead. So is the concept of retiring at 65.” These were hardly prescient or specific thoughts, but they were certainly dramatic enough to make it into an Orange County newspaper.

* Why not get topical? Let’s take Celente on a more specialized subject like restaurants. In 1993, Celente predicted “growing demands for take-out food, high- and low-end restaurants, and restaurants that offer live entertainment. Middle-range restaurants with mainstream fare will suffer.” Aside from the fact that Celente’s prediction accounts for about 90% of restaurants, doesn’t the fact that human beings need to eat remain a comfy ledge to launch a prediction?

* In 1998, Celente told Money Magazine that, as the population grows older, “Americans will be spending more time at home than ever before both for pleasure and business.” Imagine that. You grow old, retire, and then you suddenly have more time. How the hell did Celente know?

* In the September 21, 2000 edition of Newsweek, the great futurist weighed in on mindless chores. Why are they called mindless? “Your mind can’t be going all the time.” And when any problem becomes bigger, it becomes bigger than burnout. “It’s road rage, it’s air rage, it’s Columbine, it’s stress — and people don’t get it.” I’m wondering if it’s also the kind of impulse that will cause you to make impetuous predictions about the United States’s future.

* Asked by CBS News in May 2005 to comment upon where Dillard’s planned to go, Celente had this to say: “There is nothing Dillard’s has that you can’t find in 1,000 other places. America is vastly overstored.” Take out “Dillard’s” and sub it in with another department store chain name, and you begin to see what little Celente’s remarks say.

* But if we’re in for a future of doom and gloom, Celente has been sending us some mixed messages. He told the Associated Press in May 2005, “The bottom of the luxury market is not going to fall out.”

* Talking with the Associated Press in September 2005, Celente suggested that Wal-Mart could deflect its negative image with its philanthropy. That’s hardly a stunning insight. Any positive action has the probability of causing a company to look good. This is rudimentary probability. But what profound thoughts did our great seer tell the AP? “We try to refrain from making value judgments — what the motive is. But the fact is that [Wal-Mart was] there with trailer trucks being turned away. Amazing, isn’t it?” Amazing indeed. Presumably, the AP reporter who talked with Celente did so because the reporter needed somebody to describe the situation as “amazing” or “magnificent.” Some casual modifier that might be confused for profound thought.

* Celente was asked to weigh in on Internet trends by the San Francisco Chronicle’s Patricia Yollin in December 2006. “People are more electronically connected and less humanly connected,” opined our great psychic. And if that general piece of advice wasn’t enough, Celente also took the time to badmouth public displays of affection, pointing out how unacceptable it was to put PDA in “techno jargon.” Perhaps Celente confused PDA with another type of PDA, but what he didn’t seem to tell the reporter was that acronyms have existed long before the Internet.

Here you have a history of a man who not only makes his living spouting this generalist nonsense at corporations, but who is listened to by the media. If we weren’t all scared shitless, this wingnut would be chased out of boardrooms and newsrooms with pitchforks.

But who needs rational thinking when you have the comforts of defeatism? If you really want to get your dose of passive-aggressive dystopia, just call up Gerald Celente. He’s on Line 2 and he’ll take your money when you have no faith in humanity or when you don’t have a clue about how to do your job. Have him rant in your newspaper. Give him money to advise your corporation. Above all, don’t look at history, science, or specific statistics. Because Celente will boil them all down for you with one of his seemingly pithy and mysterious predictions. And he’ll be right. Because like a trusted astrology columnist or a two-bit faith healer, Celente leaves just enough room in his answer to wiggle out. And you swallow it every time. Because you’re too scared to think for yourself, or do a background check on the guy in the lobby waving his arms

http://www.edrants.com/gerald-celente-futurist-fraud/
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Re: Russia Today Interview with Gerald Celente
« Reply #2 on: February 13, 2009, 09:24:47 AM »
Well, lets see his predictions and how they panned out vs. Celente's???

As far as I can tell, all these "trusted economists" and "voices of reason" got it all wrong and di not even see anything coming.

I will put far more faith in what he has to say than any of these fraudulent Harvard and Yale MBA's that are basically worthless POS who dont know squat.

Anyone with a brain who looks around on the street knows that Celente is 100% correct.