Gerald Celente - Optimism Opium

[SAMSON123]

A PROPHECY or good forsight

Optimism Opium
By Gerald Celente
Trends Research Institute
4-3-9
 
KINGSTON, NY -- In an Op-Ed piece in The New York Times (October 16, 1998), Gerald Celente predicted that government intervention to rescue "private corporations deemed 'too big to fail'," would result in the demise of free-market capitalism.
 
Back then he called it "Capitalism for Cowards." (http://enews.trendsresearch.com/m/c11Gd7IjCZpvrtXX5dxJ
cA83nzAnrzmq-ue7SsNMOvN-XOQziw --- Op-Ed piece.)
 
Today it's called stimulus programs and rescue packages.
 
Back then, Celente warned the bailouts wouldn't work.
 
Today, Celente repeats the warning they still won't work.
 
Back then, the government warned that if Long Term Capital Management, a hedge fund, was not rescued, the global financial markets would implode.
 
Today, with the markets imploding, the government warns that if favored banks, brokerages, leverage buyout firms, insurance companies, etc. are not rescued, the global economy will collapse.
 
Back then, Gerald Celente accurately forecast, "The global contagion may be temporarily suppressed by doses of monetary amoxicillin, but when an outbreak recurs, it will be in a bailout-resistant and far more virulent strain."
 
The global contagion was suppressed, the outbreak has recurred, and the more virulent strain is upon us. And, as Celente predicted, it is proving bailout resistant.
 
Today, Celente forecasts that no amount of monetary amoxicillin can cure the spreading virus.
 
Trend Warning #1: What's being pitched today by the government has been tried before. It didn't work then, and it won't work now.
 
Following the Group of 20 summit, Barack Obama, while acknowledging there are no guarantees of success, declared, "I have no doubt, though, that the steps that have been taken are critical to preventing us sliding into a depression."
 
Given that President Obama cannot provide guarantees, how can he "have no doubt"? Moreover, all of the bailouts, rescue packages, stimulus plans that he has supported/and or initiated to date, have already failed. And since the new plans are but variations upon tried, tested and failed policies, they, too, are destined to fail. The G-20 will not be a "turning point" and while the steps taken may slow, they will not prevent us from "sliding into a depression."
 
Trend Warning #2: Don't be seduced by temporary equity market spikes or leading economic indicator upticks. Be especially wary of pitchmen claiming the markets have bottomed and headlines insinuating that the worst is over ("Car sales not as horrid in March" and "Investors jump on good financial news," USA Today, 2 April 2009).
 
What is being sold as "good financial news is, upon examination, news that is marginally less dismal than expected. Nevertheless, for insiders and professional gamblers, there will be opportunities to briefly ride the market waves.
 
There may also be ephemeral selling opportunities following accounting rule changes allowing banks to set their own prices for assets regardless of market values, and thus dramatically reduce their losses. This is not a step to recovery. This little reported Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) ruling is accounting flimflam, a capitulation that allows banks to set values to their own toxic assets.
 
Pessimism Porn
 
Back in 1998, Gerald Celente was virtually alone in forecasting both increased government intervention, its inevitable failure and its catastrophic consequences. In the midst of the dot.com euphoria, with markets flying high, fortunes being made and optimism pandemic, any negative vision was ignored or sloughed off as gloom and doom.
 
Today, with every element in that decade-old forecast a daily reality and making global headline news, derision has replaced neglect. No longer able to dismiss, they attack. First it was TV clowns, now it is equally unqualified commentators.
 
Unwilling to face inescapable realities themselves, they try to deflect the public's attention away from uncomfortable truths with unhappy endings. In his New York Times Op-Ed piece, Ben Schott, having cited Celente for correctly forecasting "The Asian Crisis and other calamities," sneers away his current predictions as "Pessimism Porn." (NYT, 26 March 2009.)
 
Presumably, Schott is more comfortable with the exhortations to Hope, Confidence and Optimism delivered by the Confidence-Man-in-Chief and his cadre of boosters. But if we are purveying "Pessimism Porn," Schott & Co. are peddling "Optimism Opium."
 
This pernicious panacea anesthetizes the public. "Optimism Opium" dulls the pain ­ lost jobs, foreclosure, financial ruin ­ relaxes anxiety, decreases alertness, impairs coordination, and is highly addictive. Repeated or chronic use results in mental deterioration. Overdoses can result in stupor, coma and death.
 
America is facing crises far beyond the financial. The implications are momentous. We are witnessing the decline of Empire America.
 

[headhuntersix]

Yeah advice from the Master of the Obvious himself....this guy is a fraud.

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.

[The True Adonis]

Great Bodybuilder back in the day that Gerard Dente.  I don`t think he works for Optimum Nutrition given the fact that he started MHP.