Introduction: Forecasting trends since 1980, Mr. Gerald Celente is publisher of the Trends Journal®, Founder/Director of the Trends Research Institute® and author of the highly acclaimed and best selling books, Trend Tracking and Trends 2000 (Warner Books). Using his unique perspectives on current events forming future trends, Gerald Celente developed the Globalnomic® methodology, which is used to identify, track, forecast and manage trends. His on-time trend forecasts, vibrant style, articulate delivery and vivid public presence makes him a favorite of major media. The Trends Research Institute has earned its reputation as "today's most trusted name in trends" for accurate and timely predictions. On the geopolitical and economic fronts, Celente and The Trends Research Institute are credited with predicting the collapse of the Soviet Union, the last two economic recessions, the dot-com meltdown, the 1997 Asian currency crisis, the 1987 world stock market crash, increased terrorism against America, "Crusades 2000," the quagmire in Iraq … before war began and much more.
Daily Bell: Hello, again. During our last interview you mentioned you're restoring three pre-Revolutionary War buildings in Kingston, NY. How are your restoration projects going?
Gerald Celente: They're going great. It gives me a lot of joy to create beauty and to restore the grandness of colonial Kingston. It's a true pleasure – costly and very time consuming but a great, great pleasure. The 1774 Academy, which was the first accredited school in Ulster County, where Governor DeWitt Clinton went and other famous people, in its last incarnation was a very bad Mexican restaurant, from a design aspect, and they really destroyed it, as well as a lot of people before them, like Sears Roebuck at one time. So we're trying to restore it back to its grandness and it's a lot of pleasure.
Daily Bell: It reminds you of where the US came from in terms of freedom and personal liberty. But things have changed. The US seems mostly run along the lines of bigness and mercantilism these days. Are there countervailing trends? What do you see?
Gerald Celente: It's not only the US; it's the entire world. In the next Trends Journal in the "Epiphany" piece that I'm doing I've come up with the epiphany that this is not globalization; it's multinationalization. What we're looking at is a corporate takeover of such great size and reach that I don't think anyone has really reflected upon how it impacts so much of society. For example, Walmart's push and the US government's pressure on India to allow the mega multinationals to exploit its retail market sector, which, in effect, will eliminate many of the independent retailers, just as it has done in the United States, Mexico and many other nations.
You probably could not count the hundreds of thousands of mom-and-pop businesses and entrepreneurs that have been wiped out because of Walmarts. You couldn't count how many hardware stores, stationary stores, pharmacists, small farms have been put out of business because of the ConAgras of the world and the CVSs and Home Depots and Staples and Office Depots and Lowes.
You ask about countervailing trends. A good example for everyone to look at to show how it can be changed is Amazon. Amazon keeps growing bigger and bigger and bigger, keeps taking away more and more businesses that used to do business, but look at their profit line. It doesn't show up much because their margins are so thin. Look at McDonald's. It's showing very, very moderate and declining growth in different parts of the world. If people would realize that if they'd break the chains, stop supporting them and literally break the chains, that's the countervailing force. The "Bigs" are top heavy. When their thin profit margins that are barely holding them up are further weakened, they will topple.
The second part of the countervailing force is to put back the laws and acts that were passed that prohibited the multinationals from taking over the world, particularly the United States, laws such as the Sherman Antitrust Act, the Clayton Antitrust Act, the Robinson-Patman Act and, of course, in the banking sector, the Glass-Steagall Act. It can be reversed but right now it's very difficult because no matter what nation you name, it's controlled by a mafia. The mafia's in control, the crime syndicates. They have proper names for them; they call them Democrats and Republicans, socialists, whatever name they give the party, but they're nothing more than corrupt gangs that are robbing the lives and livelihoods of their citizens and turning it over to the bank/financial interests and the multinationals.
Daily Bell: How are efforts going by the US to end this long-term economic slump?
Gerald Celente: They're going nowhere. Look at the latest economic data showing job growth. It was much lower than anyone expected. That's always the line they use, "lower than expected." Lower than expected by whom? Not by me because I know what jobs they're creating. Here's the deal. They lost about 8 million jobs since the great recession hit and they created 7 million, but that doesn't account for all of the new people entering into the workforce. They're at zero; they're still down 7, 8 million jobs, and the jobs that were lost – this is a fact, not speculation – the jobs that were lost during the recession were middle-income paying jobs. The jobs that have been created are low-income paying jobs – waiters and waitresses, health services, bartenders, people who work for Amazon and Walmart stocking shelves and shipping orders. Those are the majority of the jobs; 95% of the jobs created in the last year are part-time jobs. That's how the economy's going. And it's only even going at this level because interest rates are at record lows and mortgage rates, as soon as they go up the real estate market goes down so it's a fake correction, as we said, there's no recovery. I wrote this back in 2008: It's a coverup. So when the tapering ends the decline begins.
Daily Bell: Didn't you recently predict quantitative easing was headed up not down and could go a lot higher? How high, and why?
Gerald Celente: I did, but there's a catch 22 in that nothing goes in a straight line. What's going to happen is they're going to have to taper at some point. They're going to have to pull back because of the devaluation. The dollar's under pressure already. But what I've been saying is they're going to wait until after the holidays and then they're going to have to do something to stop the devaluation of the dollar. They cannot keep printing all of this money. If you've noticed, they postponed working on the debt ceiling and the government shutdown until 2014, so they're postponing the future.
They're going to have to do something and interest rates are going to go up. When interest rates go up the economy goes back down. That's when I believe there's going to be another round of quantitative easing.
Daily Bell: Aren't policymakers in a trap? They can't keep printing money, as you said, and they can't tighten without turning a recession into a depression. Or is it already a depression?
Gerald Celente: As I said, they're in a trap and it's a tapering trap, the quantitative easing trap. They can't keep printing more money because it's going to devalue the currency. And by the way, this is complicated, because it's not only the United States that's doing it; most of the central banks are doing it. China, the Europeans – they're all pumping money into their systems to keep them afloat. They're all in a trap. A time comes when you just can't keep doing it anymore. You can only take heroin so much before it kills you. This is monetary methadone and it's not going to cure the problem so they're going to have to stop. When it stops, that's when we go back into a recession and/or a depression.
Is it a depression? Is it a depression if you live in Greece or Spain or Portugal? Is it a depression if you're among the over 12% unemployed in Italy? When you look at John Williams's ShadowStats, in the US we're looking at about 22% unemployment. So yes, it's a depression for a lot of people. And then again, median household income in the US, accounting for inflation, is 10% below 1999 levels. That's a fact. So if you're earning 10 percent less for your family than you were in 1999 and the costs have skyrocketed since then, particularly in healthcare, food, rent, property, gas and other costs, do you think you're living in a depression?
Daily Bell: Is central banking an art, a science or just a fraud?
Gerald Celente: Neither. It's a criminal operation. Throughout the 1800s, one of the major issues of every presidential election was whether or not to have a central bank. They fought it successfully not to have one until 1913. These are private banks that are running our country and many others. This goes back to the scriptures; it's Christ chasing the moneychangers out of the temple. The moneychangers have just got new names – Deutsche Bank, Societe Generale, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, and, of course, JPMorgan Chase got that name because you're going to have to chase them to get your money because they just put a limit on how much you can withdraw or deposit each month in certain accounts, with a limit of $50,000.
Daily Bell: It seems like people don't believe in central banking anymore so why does it continue? What holds it up in a so-called democracy where people have a vote?
Gerald Celente: Most people don't even know what a central bank is and they still believe the lie that the Federal Reserve is a quasi-government institution when it's not. It's a totally private bank. Most people don't even know that. So most people are uninformed and like in all countries, they follow their leaders. Very few people rebel.
There was an incident that happened in late October in the States. Hillary Clinton was speaking in Buffalo, delivering her model for what is required to solve complex problems. There was a heckler in the crowd who she admonished by saying, "… which doesn't include yelling. It includes sitting down and talking."
What patronizing bullshit. You know what happened? The audience of 6,500 stood up and gave her a standing ovation that extended on and on. So it's the people. The people can blame the politicians all they want, but as I see it, it's the people's responsibility for the state of their nation.
Daily Bell: Will Janet Yellen make a difference? She's collegial. Does being collegial help Fed analyses?
Gerald Celente: It doesn't mean anything. It's more of the same. Different face, different name and a different gender.
Daily Bell: What's the employment picture like going forward in the US?
Gerald Celente: Lower paying jobs, less benefits, more temporary jobs and I think the question at the end is rather than going forward in the US it should be what's going forward in Slavelandia, because that's what it's become. You get out of college and you're an indentured servant. For the rest of your life you have to pay off your debt for your degree in worthlessness, for the most part. There are degrees that are worth something but not a lot of them. Where are you going to work? Name the company – Macy's? Starbucks? You can become a barista. Are they going to start teaching Shipping & Handling 101 in college? What are they going to do? Who are you going to work for? What are you going to do – stock shelves? This is better than slavery because when they had the plantation you had to take care of the slaves. Now you can just use them up and send them home. It's kind of like Bangladesh right here in the good 'ol USA.
Daily Bell: How about the rest of the world? Give us a global summary.
Gerald Celente: The global summary is this: Everybody can see what happened when the Federal Reserve talked about tapering several months ago. All of a sudden you saw the emerging markets start to crash; they dropped about 11% in a year before the Fed reversed its policy because all the hot, low-interest rate money that was leaving the US was flowing into the emerging markets, where you could borrow the money cheaply. So when they started to talk about tapering the hot money started flowing out of these countries, such as India, Brazil. They were really suffering from it and so were their stock markets.
So without the cheap money flowing from the central banks, the entire global economy goes on stall and then it turns negative. You can see what's going on in China now; they're facing a banking crisis. Real estate prices in cities like Shanghai and Beijing have gone up over 20% in a year and no matter how the government tries to deflate it, the housing bubble keeps growing. The banks also have a lot of bad loans they're carrying. Now the Chinese government is trying to restrain that free-flow of cheap money, and what happens to their stock market when they do? It dives and the contagion spreads to other Asian equity markets. They all start dropping. It's all tied to cheap money and when the cheap money spigot begins to tighten up the global economy goes down. As I've made very clear, when the interest rates go up the economies go down – it's as simple as that. They've run out of this game. Compare this with the Great Depression, when it began essentially in 1930. This recession begin in 2008. It's now 2013 – we're only in 1935.
Daily Bell: China and the BRICS seem to be making noises about setting up their own monetary infrastructure without the dollar. Will that happen?
Gerald Celente: Yes, they are making noise, but reality is another issue, and the currency issue is complicated. The dollar goes down but where are you going to go, the euro? We were talking briefly about what's going on in Europe. There's financial market propaganda boasting that the worst of the eurozone crisis is over. They're bragging that The GDP of Spain was just reported to have gone up 0.1% and they made a big deal out of it. "The recession's over" is the B.S. message. No, the recession is not over! They're cooking the numbers to make a rotten situation look less rotten. In countries like Greece and Spain, youth unemployment is running above 50% and overall unemployment around 30%. The recession continues unabated, and there's absolutely no way out of this and they can't print their way out.
Portugal, Italy, Greece, Spain, Ireland are doing terrible – what would anyone substitute euros for dollars? And what other currency choices are there, the yuan? As I mentioned, China has plenty of its own problems. They've been dumping a lot of cash into that society to keep it going.
You know what China's greatest fear is? It's not the Spratly Islands or the South and China Sea territorial problems that are going on between them, the Philippines, Vietnam or the Japanese. China's greatest fear is its people. They've got 1.2 billion of them and if they're hungry or not happy there's going to be a lot of problems.
Again, what do you substitute the dollar for, Brazil's real or the Indian rupee? Remember, we saw what happened when the hot money started leaving the emerging market countries. The South African rand is also under pressure.
The BRIC nations can speak as much as they want and they may have the greatest intention to create another reserve currency, but the fact is their economies are not robust or independent enough to create one at this time. As I said, talk is one thing, facts are another and although the world is less dependent on the dollar it is still by far the major reserve currency of the world and I don't see that rapidly changing unless there's a catastrophe that would cause it to happen. However, over the years, I do expect a new reserve model to develop.
Daily Bell: Let's talk about military action, particularly in Syria where Al Qaeda types have been fighting on the side of the US and NATO. Why does the US want to destabilize Syria and what country will be next – Iran? Russia?
Gerald Celente: We wrote about this in the Trends Journal going back to 2011. After Libya fell, Syria was the only port that the Chinese and the Russians had in the Mediterranean – the Port of Tartus. And also, Syria's only real ally in that area is Iran and, of course, Hezbollah in Lebanon. So with Syria out of the way there's nothing in the Middle East other than Iran to stop the continued spread of US influence and control in that area. It's really more about that than anything we see – again, having more control over that area for the US to do as it wants, with Iran really being the main target.
Of course, keeping the Russians and the Chinese out of the area completely is another reason. I have to say there are positive developing trends as well. Remember when President Obama was talking about drawing that red line Syria couldn't cross, if it used chemical warfare, and remember that cartoon character analogy that Benjamin Netanyahu first used with the United Nations when he had a toy bomb on a drawing and drew a red line across with a crayon saying that Iran couldn't cross it?
When President Obama backed off his red line threat and didn't attack Syria that was a tipping point. And, as important, the vast majority of Americans opposed the attack plan. That was a significant statement. The country said it was tired of war – and so are a lot of other nations.
And again, when you continue to hear US Secretary of State, John Kerry, say, "Assad has to step down," you can see that the administration is not giving up on this and that the reason there was any kind of slowdown in the march to war was because of Russia. Anyone who underestimates Russia should just open a history book and read about Napoleon and Hitler, most recently. The Russians aren't going anywhere and they're not going to take anything from anybody. I think they showed that with their unwillingness and pushback on the United States, France and the UK in attempting to increase military action against Syria. While there can be peace in Syria, and it was peaceful before the Arab League, the US, UK and France fomented civil war, the near-term trend is more war. We're just going to have more destabilization and from everything that I'm reading, the so-called rebels are mostly al Qaeda, al Nusra and the Iraqi-aligned al Qaeda forces are losing at every front. Without a lot of military aid coming from the Arab League, which is Sunni, against the Syrians, which are Alawite and Shia and Christian, there's not going to be a victory for the rebels that the United States and its allies are supporting. And overall, there's going to be much more destabilization. As a matter of fact, the people in Turkey – and Turkey, of course, Syria's neighbor, is supporting the rebel factions – even they're losing interest in continuing to fight this war. It may die down for the same reason that other wars die down – they lose the will to fight, spend money and lose lives.
Daily Bell: You made points about the decline of morality last time we interviewed you. At The Daily Bell we've been more strongly emphasizing utilizing one's moral compass in investing, as well as the rest of one's life. Will you speak to that a bit more, please?
Gerald Celente: Again, talk about morality and the recent Amnesty International report that said the United States was breaking international law in its use of drones to kill people that were convicted of nothing in addition to innocent people. How much more immoral could you get?
I can tell you how much immoral. How about starting wars in Afghanistan and Iraq – in Iraq with the proof that a war was started that killed at least a half a million people that was started under fake reasons; lies that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction and ties to al Qaeda. An Afghan war that's the longest war in American history, the war in Libya that they called a time-limed, scope-limited kinetic action that's destroyed the entire nation. You want to talk about immorality? How about the "too big to fail"? The government mandated immoral act of stealing money from the American people to give it to the banks, financiers and favored corporations?
They say the fish rots from the head down and that's it; the fish has rotted in America for a long time. It didn't start with Obama. It goes back to Bush, Clinton, and keeps going back. Society gets the message from the top and, as I see it, they're simply following their leaders. For example, if their leader can start wars, rob people, take their money, why shouldn't I? Why should I operate on a moral level when immorality is condoned at the top?
Most recently, the United States government, in virtually every fashion of behavior, has been fascist. I don't say that by throwing the word out loosely. It's called the merger of corporate state and powers. It goes back to "too big to fail." Under capitalism there's no such thing. You're not too big to fail; you fail. Big, small, medium, you fail – it's capitalism. Not anymore. You have your money taken from you by government order and it's transferred to the people who are the most favored by those in power. That's the only reason why the stock market keeps going up and why the multinationals are doing so well. That's where the $85 billion a month that the Federal Reserve is using in their quantitative easing is going. Then when you look at the other levels of immorality, as I mentioned, why shouldn't people feel as though they can do anything the government is doing? That's why it just keeps getting worse and worse. It's reflected in the music, the politics, every element of culture – both pop culture and political culture.
Daily Bell: We're seeing an increase in people's interest in movements like the Tea Party in the US, UKIP in England, the Front in France and Five Star in Italy. Is this an evolving trend?
Gerald Celente: They're calling it populism in other countries. What's populism, when you really think about it? Let's say I'm an Italian and I'm against the euro. How about pro-Italy? How about pro-Greece? Under the dictates of the eurozone and globalization, the love of one's culture and pride of nation is denounced as "populism."
Look what the Greek government just did to Golden Dawn. They're calling it a neo-fascist organization. It's not neo-fascist; it may be neo-Nazi but the neo-fascists are Samaras's government that have taken the money away from the people and given it to the banks and big corporations. The neo-fascists are Samaras's government that has, under the name of "privatization," taken valuable public assets and sold it to their friends at bargain basement prices.
What they've done with Golden Dawn, in the meantime, was to use one isolated murder incident committed by a party member to do away with a popular political party that was gaining a lot of popular support. Again, I'm not saying I'm for or against Golden Dawn. I don't have enough facts or know enough about the inner workings of the party and what is going on to make an informed judgment. I'm only mentioning "what is." The what is, is that you had over 14 percent of the Greek people that were in favor of this movement. But now they've banned it, and what you're going to start seeing more and more throughout Europe and around the world is, as economies decline and civil unrest grows, ruling parties doing whatever it takes to ban any opposition that threatens their rule.
Again, we are witnessing social breakdown in many nations around the world. This is not an exaggeration. Look what happened when the US government shut down and people couldn't get their food stamps. They ransacked Walmart. Let them eat burritos! Now, as part of the deal to re-open the government, the wizards of Washington have cut back on how much people can get each month in stamps.
Daily Bell: What's happening with this trend, then?
Gerald Celente: So what's happening is that this is going to continue. As the economies go down these populist movements are going to increase. They use anti-immigration as though it's a negative. I'm of Italian descent and I remember when members of my family couldn't come to America. There were quotas. Many of the quotas were put in place during the Great Depression when America couldn't take care of its own. So the mentality today is that we need to bring more people in from countries where they can't take care of their own? It makes no sense.
You know who's in favor of more immigration? Wonderful companies like Microsoft, Facebook and the National Association of Manufacturers, where we have these multibillionaires who want to bring in cheap labor to undercut the workforce. These are the ones in favor of it so they can keep bringing in cheap labor when the country is not creating enough jobs to support the people we have now.
I'm in favor of bringing in all the people we need but when you can't take care of your own, you want to bring in more? Bring them into your family – the Obamas, the Clintons. Why don't they adopt 700 kids? They want to shoot off their mouths? Bring them in – all you billionaires – Gates, Zuckerberg – all of them. Keep extending those families making $148 million a year or $2 billion a year, like these guys are making. Extend your family to hundreds of millions of people. Keep wearing out your pocketbook until you can't bring in another person. Would they do it?
What they're doing is using this as an issue to turn people against people. That's all it is. It has nothing to do with the legitimacy of the issue. Consider the last couple of weeks' news – first the big news was Baby Hope. Somebody killed this little girl 22 years ago. Now they think they've got the murderer. Then there's the story in Greece, where a gypsy family has a blond-haired little girl. Did they abduct her? What about the news story in France about deporting this young gypsy girl? All of a sudden little girls who have been killed, abducted or deported is big news.
You know what's not in the news? How about all those Syrian kids who are refugees or have been killed in the civil war? How about all those drone strikes launched by the United States that killed innocent children? How about the 500,000-plus people who were killed by the Americans and the Coalition of the Willing and all the children who are poisoned with the depleted uranium? How about those Palestinian kids who are thrown in jail as little children? They don't count? How about all those Africans? Hey, don't talk about them – they're a different color. They don't count at all.
So you see, they use these issues as though they're wonderful humanitarians who care about every little child walking the Earth. They use it to their political means in spite of the hypocrisies of it.
Daily Bell: Let's talk hard money. Can you give us an update on the price action of gold and silver? How about equity? Where is the stock market headed? We think the big boys are trying to rev it up and go for one last killing. Your thoughts?
Gerald Celente: The stock market will continue to rise as long as interest rates stay low. That's the best estimate you could give. They keep all of this quantitative easing that, for example, benefits the big private equity firms. Look what's going on in the United States with Blackstone Group. They own 40,000 homes. Where are they getting the money? Deutsche Bank is loaning them tons of money because they're getting money with overnight rates near zero, and they in turn loan it to the "bigs" really cheaply so it is just another example of what's keeping the whole stock market scam going.
As long as the money stays cheap the stock market keeps going up. As the money stays cheap gold and silver go up, and you're seeing gold making a bit of a rebound lately because of, again going back to the employment numbers in the States – there is no recovery, the jobs stink, they're not creating enough jobs. The tapering keeps going on, which is a devaluation of the currency, and quantitative easing continues. As long as money stays cheap gold goes up. Now, gold may go down when quantitative easing and tapering slow down. However, that's only going to be temporary because when that happens the bond market's going to explode, when interest rates go up, there's going to be another financial crisis. My best analysis at this time is the second quarter of 2014.
The 'experts' are saying the stock market is booming. It has gone from a 14,000 high in 2007 to mid-15,000 now. Accounting for inflation, the stock market has to be about 15,750 just to be back at the 2007 level.
Again, this is all artificially boosted with low interest rates and cheap money so the markets trend upward, and when the money tightens up the economy goes down. And, as long as money's loose real estate will continue to slowly pick up. But again, as soon as interest rates go up, new applications for mortgages go down and then you start seeing more and more and more layoffs happening, as well, in the home mortgage industry. Again, it's all tied to how much cheap money could they pump into the system and really, that's the entire story.
By the way, this story just came out while we've been talking: "Bank of America to Eliminate 3,000 Mortgage Jobs."
Daily Bell: There are other trends, of course, ones you often mention. You spoke to us last time about the New Millennium Renaissance. Can you expand?
Gerald Celente: Back to the renaissance… To me, that's the only thing that's going to change the future. We need a cultural, artistic and moral redevelopment, a restoration. Every issue that we've been talking about so far is based on human behavior and the human spirit – morality or immorality. Until morality is restored and the human spirit rises, nothing's going to change. As I was mentioning before, the fish rots from the head down. If you see the people at the head acting immorally, and from the head all the way down, why shouldn't you or I act immorally? What license do they have to steal that we don't? What license do they have to kill that we shouldn't?
So as I see it, only speaking for myself, there has to be an appreciation that art is the way of finding the true meaning of the human spirit. It happened after the Black Plague in Europe where some 60% of the people were wiped out. Then there was a rebirth, a rediscovery, a Renaissance. At the height of the Renaissance, Italians would say, alle romana et alla antica – in the manner of the Romans and the Ancients – to explain the quality of their work. That's what we need. It has to be something of that magnitude. Without art and beauty, I just don't see it happening.
The cultural void is so huge. Look at the way people dress, the way they talk, the way they act, what they eat, what they buy, what they call art – it's kiddy-crap.
Listen to the music. I rarely watch TV for entertainment, though I have to watch the ugly news for my work, but last night I was so exhausted, I turned on Turner Classic Movies. There was a corny show on with Jimmy Durante and one of the classic actresses and Harry James, the great trumpet player. I watched the talent and compare these women singing to a Miley Cyrus or something and watch Jimmy Durante – this guy played the piano, too, and was a really talented guy and funny as could be. Compare him to Jay Z. Are you kidding me or what? What I'm saying is look at the dress, look at the style, look at the behavior – we have gone to the lowest common denominator. It's difficult to think it could go lower, though it can, of course. To me, the reversal has to begin at a cultural, moral, intellectual and artistic basis. Until that happens, nothing's going to happen.
And it goes back to the individual. Let me give you an example. We're at the foot of the Catskill Mountains here, one of the most beautiful places on Earth. Just read Washington Irving and all the wonderful tales about this glorious Hudson Valley. They want to rip up the last rail line, which the local people here are trying to restore and re-purpose as rail tourism. But no, the political powers want to rip up the last rail to make it a walking trail. Now, remember, we're in the Catskill Mountains. There must be 150 trails. There are trails everywhere. But the political jerks want to rip up the last rail to make it easy for people to walk on. People can't walk up a mountain because America's the most obese country in the world so you've go to give it to them flat to walk and bike on. So they want to rip up the last rail. But a short segment of the rails are still running now, maybe 20 miles of rail total, and the local people here just had a pumpkin ride through the Catskills. The rail cars are packed with tourists viewing the magnificent foliage.
Now, here's the example of what I'm talking about, that it goes back to the individual. We have a young man working at the Trends Journal, Ryan Lennox, our video editor, who's about 23 or 24 years old. This young man goes out every weekend and often before coming to work, to clear brush and debris from the rail. He whacks weeds so the trains can run. It's people doing those things, everybody doing their part to make a difference. And for Ryan, his doing his part has made a difference. October in the Hudson Valley showcases one the most beautiful fall seasons in the world and now people are lining up to ride these open trains through the Catskill Mountains to look at the foliage.
It's one young man who's decided to take action. He started out doing it himself; now there is a volunteer crew that's joined in to help save the rail. So the question becomes: What are you doing? Instead of just bitching and moaning about something, what are you doing? When people take care of themselves then they can take care of others. That's where it begins and that's where it ends.
Daily Bell: Thanks for your time.
Gerald Celente: My pleasure. All the best.
This is a really good interview, from our humble perspective. It seems to us cogent and precise in lots of ways. You can really see Gerald Celente's philosophy here – one of patriotic self-reliance – enunciated from answer to answer.
It's true, as he says, there's a sophisticated mafia at work in the US and the West generally made up of politicians, tycoons and bankers; they increasingly dominate the world. Their word is law, unfair as it is, and it should be clear by now that they have not created this system for purposes of fairness or to benefit the general mass of humanity.
It is THEIR system; it enables them. They print money to extend their sociopolitical and economic control, start wars for monetary power and eliminate legitimate marketplace advantages via endless industrial expansion for personal gain using the might of the corporate entity.
How do you fight back? Just as Celente said: one individual at a time. One education at a time. It's easy to talk about violence and rebellion, but real change comes from each individual creating a life of self-reliance (as much as possible) within a communal context. This takes individual enlightenment. That's how the Renaissance progressed.
The Enemy emphasizes bigness, but judicially enforced bigness is disastrous. That's what globalization is all about. We're supposed to think it's inevitable but it's not. It's a calculated tapestry of court decisions and negotiations put in place by force and threats of incarceration. Little of the free market resides in a 5,000-page trade treaty.
You know, people can only recognize or relate to about 100-200 others at a time. People just don't do well in big groups. The optimal society emphasizes inter-communal relationships within moderate communal environments. Thomas Jefferson had the model right. The Swiss do, too, or did.
Republics work best when individuals relate to each other within an ambit of self-sufficiency and mutual respect. Almost every single trend of the modern day militates against this. Leviathan is a profitable business for those at the top.
Speaking of profit, we agree with Mr. Celente regarding his investment prognostications. Assets will likely continue to progress – on paper anyway – until the central bankers hit an interest rate wall.
For sure, there's a party going on now, as we've pointed out. How long it lasts is anyone's guess. We'll deal with that timeline on an ongoing basis. Our service to you.