Exclusive Interviews
Gerald Celente on the New Renaissance and Big Non-State Trends Changing the World
By Anthony Wile - May 12, 2013

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.

Anthony Wile: Hello, again. What's new with you? Give us a sense of new projects and publications.

Gerald Celente: What's new with me is I'm restoring three pre-Revolutionary War buildings in colonial Kingston, New York. Within the last year I bought the 1750s Franz Roggen house, the Academy, and the Dr. Jansen House. The Academy was built in 1774 and the Jansen House in 1763, and it's on the most historic corner in the United States, the only place where there's a stone building that pre-dates the Revolutionary War on each corner. The fourth corner has a museum, the 1660s Matthew Person House.

I'm doing this for two reasons. One is that, of course, I want to preserve them – and one of them is in really very, very bad shape – and the other reason is that this is where the first American Revolution had its roots. Kingston was the first capitol of New York State, burned down by the British in 1777 and then rebuilt from the foundations.

Now it's time for another revolution, this one, of course, not of bombs and bullets or armies but of the mind, the spirit and the heart. It's time for a revolution and that's why I'm doing it. So that's what's new.

Anthony Wile: At the end of this interview, we'll ask you for five big trends, since you are a famous trend forecaster. But now we want to ask some individual questions … First, when looking over the world do you see bright spots?

Gerald Celente: I think there are always bright spots. Some places are going to do better than others but generally the world is on a downward trend. Just look at the economic data. There's a slowdown in China. I love the language they use. They do this all the time. This is just out of Bloomberg: "EU lowers forecast as euro area heads for two-year slump." They're always "lowering forecasts." They con the people into believing there's a recovery and when it doesn't happen they "lower" their forecast.

So where's the recovery? The jobs that are being created are low-paying jobs. These are known facts in the States. But they brag about it. 'Dominos is doing great. They say they can hire 10,000 people right now.' What? Drivers to drive their old beat-up cars to deliver their franchise pizzas? They say this with a straight face. There is no real recovery and that's despite dumping in trillions of dollars worth of stimulus.

So what did they do yesterday? Two things. The Fed announced that they are going to continue buying $85 billion in bonds and mortgage-backed securities each month. It's absurd. How do they get away with this? They're rigging the market and they're doing it right in front of you. It's as if they actually said, "We're going to rig the market, and here's how." And then you see the ECB buying up bonds and lowering interest rates as well. Japan has also announced its own $1.4 trillion stimulus scheme and nations − Australia, South Korea, India and others − are lowing interest rates to stimulate their economies as well.

Anthony Wile: It seems like every economy is collapsing except the BRICS. What is your sense of all this?

Gerald Celente: You have to be realistic about the BRICS as well, Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa. If Europe and the United States don't buy their products, the Chinese stop producing them. And if the Chinese don't produce, the Brazilians, the Russians and, of course, the Indians, are not going to be doing much business. Brazil, Russia, South Africa and countries like them are exporters of natural resources. So if China and other industrialized countries aren't building or manufacturing, they're not selling. It affects everyone. You also see it happening in Canada. Things are slowing down there, particularly the real estate market. You just don't have the old level of growth.

But having said that, China's smart in that they're committed to building their domestic economy. They have 1.2 billion people. They only have to do business with themselves. And that's what we see them doing, whereas the stimulus in the West has all gone to the banks, the stimulus in China goes into the infrastructure and building their domestic economy. Totally different, so they'll do better in the long term.

Anthony Wile: Why is the West in such bad shape?

Gerald Celente: Because a lot of stupid people are running it and the corruption is flagrant, and in front of everybody's eyes. How many more times do they have to say, 'Insider Trading, High-frequency Trading' … one scam after another before the public wakes up to it? It's corruption everywhere, whether it's the King of Spain or you name the country. Another example is that clown in France who's the minister of I forget what, supposed to be in charge of making sure that people aren't scamming the system and taking their money offshore. They found out he has a couple of million offshore in Swiss banks. So it's corruption, it's immorality and stupidity. We have psychopaths running the show and everybody's afraid to call a spade a spade.

They want to start another war. Hey, how about going into Syria? What? Iraq wasn't good enough for you? You did a great job in Libya. Hey, how about Afghanistan? I've got it! Let's go into Mali. These are sick people. How could any self-respecting adult look up to these political clowns? So you ask me what's wrong? It's the people as well as the politicians. After this Boston thing, you look at the polls. More people want surveillance. They applauded the police going door-to-door without warrants, going into people's homes.

Anthony Wile: Given the extent of corruption, is it a matter of human nature?

Gerald Celente: Yes. But fish rot from the head down. That's why leadership is so important. You lead by example. Look, they just dedicated the George Bush library. Every suck-up president was there saying what a great guy this war criminal was. They're all war criminals, each one who was president. People forget.

Jimmy Carter – you want to talk about the Taliban? There's the guy that created it when he ran the proxy war against Russia in Afghanistan. He's the guy that funded bin Laden. He's the guy who created the mujahideen. Clinton? How many people did that SOB kill? He did a lovely job in Yugoslavia, didn't he? He used to bomb Baghdad on a daily basis. Oh, we've got that wonderful no-fly zone, 500,000 women, children and the elderly died from the sanctions, and his Secretary of State, Madeleine Albright said it was "worth the price." Then there's Bush, of course. Now there's "Bombs away" Obama. How about a drone strike here, a troop surge there, an invasion of Libya, or an attack on Syria? So, as I said, this is the example. You lead by example and the people blindly follow, asking no questions of their leaders and Commanders-in-Chief.

Look, if today I was still of the stupid "Bronx and Yonkers state of mind" I was in as a kid growing up there, and someone would say to his buddies, "Let's do a dirty deal." And if one of his friends would say, "What's wrong with you?" he'd say, "No! What's wrong with you? If it's OK for Goldman Sachs to do dirty deals, why isn't it OK for me?" That's the mentality.

Nothing will change until the people change. This is why you have the current resurgence in religion as a knee-jerk response to socioeconomic and political degeneration. When things get really, really bad some religious leader pops up spouting morality. I'm not talking about the 'my religion is the best religion' kind of stuff. I'm just saying when the vacuum is that enormous, something, such as a televangelical fake religion tends to moves in to fill it.

Anthony Wile: So by changing the people in charge will we change the system or does the system itself have to be changed?

Gerald Celente: Yes. The system. The whole so-called democratic system is rotten. You don't reform the Bonannos or the Gambinos. I'm a believer in direct democracy. Let the people vote. People say, "Oh, but that's mob rule!" What do you think you've got now? Or they say, "The people are too stupid to make decisions for themselves." Well, the people in charge now are too stupid to make decisions for us. It's a mob. It's a gang of 535 in the States, 535 congressmen and senators telling 315 million people how to shine their shoes. Who made this crap up? It's not a representative form of government. That's only for little school kids to believe in. The politicians represent the most powerful, the richest, and the ones that give them the most money. They call it "campaign contributions." I call it bribes and payoffs.

Anthony Wile: To what extent are the challenges that we currently face spiritual?

Gerald Celente: They are all spiritual in a way. They all have their foundation in spirituality – not in the usual religious sense but in the heart, mind and spirit of individuals. Look. An example: Take the tar sands. They want to push it through because "It'll create jobs." Where's the spiritual element? It may destroy the planet, or a piece of it. How about Fukushima? How about the wars? Those are all moral, actually spiritual, issues. If there's one single line that captures the whole situation it's, "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you." You want to bomb another country? Okay. But when they bomb you back, don't get uptight about it. It's payback. You want to destroy the planet to create jobs? Okay. That was a price that had to be paid. It's the Golden Rule in action.

Anthony Wile: Looking at those in Boston who clamor for more protection, it doesn't feel very hopeful that they're going to make a big spiritual shift.

Gerald Celente: It doesn't have to be that big. You're never going to get everyone. Look at the American Revolution. It began with just a couple of percent supporting it, and then at the height only 25 percent of the people were actively involved, and they had the support of maybe another 20 percent. You will always have masses of "Loyalists."

Anthony Wile: Do you think that shift needs to happen within the US, or it's got to be global?

Gerald Celente: It's happening. Look what's happened in Italy with the Five Star Movement. And by the way, that's the issue – It's a movement not a protest.

Of course, it was stalled temporarily but it's a big movement and that's where the real change must come from – the young people. For a non-aligned movement to succeed, it has to be free of corporate media entanglements. Look at Beppe Grillo's Five Star Movement. He wouldn't go on any TV shows. He did it all on the Internet and made personal campaign stops in scores of cities. But he did nothing with the mainstream media. He stayed out of it. Grillo's Five Star Movement is a model for movements around the world.

Throughout Italy, and around the world, there are all these educated young people, without jobs facing a futureless future. They're angry and they have the energy. That's part of the recipe for how a real movement starts.

Anthony Wile: Back to a more strictly financial perspective, is money printing the answer to any of this?

Gerald Celente: You know the answer to that.

Anthony Wile: Why are central banks so aggressive about easing when it obviously doesn't work?

Gerald Celente: Because they have nothing else to do. They have no other way of tackling this and I believe they know it is only a short-term fix. And, possibly, it's the only thing they know how to do. They don't want to deal with big issues and the biggest issue is globalization, and it's not working.

I do trends in the news every day as part of the subscription to The Trends Journal. I was following, of course, the tragedies going on in Bangladesh. Coach and other high-end manufacturers are moving out of China to even cheaper places like Vietnam. And I said, why don't they just invent a new country?

Build a new country and call it Slavelandia. We've got 7 billion people and all they have to do is take all the uneducated, the ones who don't have a future, and make them go to work in Slavelandia. You don't even have to feed them. There are so many people, you just work them until they die and then grind them up for fertilizer. Then we could keep corporate profits really high.

Here's the moral: Don't buy Coach; don't buy anything made in countries other than your own if at all possible. Most countries have enough people in them to do business mostly with each other and if they followed that model, they would do just fine. After all, before globalization, that's mostly the way it used to be, and mostly it worked.

Anthony Wile: What of the argument, made by labor organizers recently, that if companies pull out of Bangladesh they only hurt the workers who live there? Same effect from a movement to boycott, they maintain.

Gerald Celente: They have to readjust this kind of narrow thinking. What do they want to do, fight to keep the plantation going?

Great argument! Feed the slaves just enough so they can keep working? Except no one wants to call it a "plantation"; we'll call it a multinational! Will that make these labor organizers happy? What's their logic? Do they believe that the slave laborers are incapable of fending for themselves and too ignorant to survive in the world on their own? In essence, their argument that slave labor is better than no labor is both insulting and moronic.

Anthony Wile: It sounds like what you're saying is that the counter to globalization – and that's one example of it – is smaller communities, self-reliance?

Gerald Celente: Yes. What, we can't take care of ourselves or each other? We can't buy each other's products? We're too stupid to make them? We're too ignorant to make shirts or shoes?

It's only about the bottom line. Look, when was the United States at its height? When we had trade barriers, when we had laws in place like Glass-Steagall for the banking sector, or Robinson-Patman and Sherman Anti-Trust, Clayton Anti-Trust so that the "bigs" couldn't grab everything. Now they've deregulated those laws and statutes that made it something of a level playing field. What kind of future can you have working at Macy's or Walmart or Target or Staples or Home Depot or Rite Aid or CVS? That's a life?

Anthony Wile: Is part of all this because people can't see that there is an alternative, that they don't have the vision?

Gerald Celente: Sure. Vision's a big thing. Not a lot of people have it. And there is plenty of proof to make that case. For example, there are virtually no university courses in how to identify, track and forecast trends. Colleges are top heavy with history courses but nothing about having a vision of the future.

Anthony Wile: People aren't aware of many examples of this.

Gerald Celente: Exactly, and that's what I was saying: Fish rot from the head down. There is no vision at the top of government. So if you have no leaders showing the way, how can the people be led into a more civilized and advanced future? Again, leaders are incapable of showing the way in a corrupt system.

But I think, as I said, there are two models to follow: Obviously, Switzerland, with direct democracy, though nobody talks about it. They're rich, the food's good, everybody has guns but they don't shoot each other and they have the highest standard of living in the world. They vote on everything. You want to go to war? When was the last time Switzerland was at war? Around a century and a half ago?

Anthony Wile: Is this lack of awareness a function of most people's focus on mainstream media – if it's not shown there, if these sorts of examples aren't offered there, people are not getting them from anywhere else?

Gerald Celente: It's important – again, what you just said: "most people." Most people don't count. It's not a numbers game. You need a strong core. And I believe the core is there; it's just not unified. If it was all put together it would be a strong core. You see, once you have the movement going and you have a strong core, those same people who follow mainstream media, they'll follow along. They'll drink phosphorescent slurpees if they're made to think, "Hey, it's really cool to drink these." Thus, if they think it is really cool to be part of a new popular movement, they will simply join in to be part of the crowd.

Follow the example of Giuseppe Verdi! A model for people following a popular movement exists. It is known that what drove Verdi's passion to create some of the greatest music ever written was to unite the Italian people and overthrow their occupiers. If you go back to the 1800s, Hungary had a piece of Italy, Austria had a piece, the Germans, the French, the Spanish. The Neapolitans spoke a different language than the Calabrese … there was no single language in Italy.

Verdi used his music to unify the people and it worked. The model exists. When he died, it is said his funeral was the largest in recorded history.

Anthony Wile: So do you see a current or up-and-coming-something similar developing?

Gerald Celente: I don't see it now. I'm just saying that it can happen. It won't happen through the political realm or the corporate-ruled entertainment industry.

It has to hit the heart and the soul, not just the mind. It has to resonate at many different levels. The mind has to understand what the heart feels. But first it has to hit the heart and the soul and that's the model. It's there. The revolution that unified Italy was, in comparison to most, not a very bloody one.

Anthony Wile: Isn't that why the War on Terror propaganda is so effective, because it goes to the heart and thus bypasses the mind of most?

Gerald Celente: Not entirely. It's mostly a mind game, arousing primal emotions, and throughout the centuries it has been used effectively. Regimes (democratic, fascist, authoritarian, monarchic, etc.) have always used fear and hysteria to arouse and control the populace.

If you tap into the emotions to arouse fear and hysteria, you can use emotion to instill courage and independence. If you can use it one way you can use it in another way … and that's what people don't understand. It doesn't have to be negative to be effective. But the people who are in power today are sociopaths and psychopaths. All they know is negation and they use it to manipulate the public.

Anthony Wile: Why is there so much misinformation about the economy in particular in the mainstream press?

Gerald Celente: Because of who's running the press. It's in their best interests. Do they want to say the economy stinks, it will only get worse and you're better off not going to go out to their crummy chain stores to buy a lot of cheap crap and eat junk food? Look who their advertisers are? With a message like that, they wouldn't have any.

Anthony Wile: What about alternative media?

Gerald Celente: The alternative media is a powerful growing trend. Again, look at the Five Star Movement in Italy. It was all done on alternative media. It totally avoided the mainstream media. In fact, Beppe Grillo and all those running on the Movement's platform refused to appear on mainstream media.

There's a story that just came out in The Independent that "Top economist Jeffrey Sachs says Wall Street is full of crooks and hasn't changed since the financial crash. The IMF advisor also blamed a docile president, a docile White House and a docile regulatory system."

Jeez, no kidding? Wow! Blow me away! Hey, but if Jeffrey Sachs, one of the guys from The White Shoe Boys Club says it, then it must be true.

But when Gerald Celente says it, and has been saying it for years, Celente is just a gloom-and-doomer, he's a malcontent. But when a club member speaks, the media listens.

Anthony Wile: What do you think about the current gold market?

Gerald Celente: It's being manipulated. Why do I say that? Because when you look at physical demand, you see what's really happening. There were lines half a mile long waiting to buy gold in Australia, they're running out of gold jewelry in China and India and premiums are going through the roof on all solid product. Meanwhile it's being shorted on the paper end by speculators, some of whom may be fronting for central banks and other government interests.

They're devaluing the currencies in front of our eyes – the Bank of Japan with their stimulus and their bond buying, with the European endless bond buying, record low interest rates, and the same in the US. So it's an across-the-board devaluation. If the people realized that because they keep printing this crappy money, it's not worth the paper it's not printed on they'd all be bailing out of these fiat currencies and buying gold. There'd be a panic.

It is not in the best interests of central banks, Wall Street, or the City of London, so they will do everything they can to not let that happen – or they'll try to hold down gold prices as best they can.

I'm still a firm believer in gold. It costs about $1200 an ounce to take it out of the ground so it's not going to go below that. And then people brag about the stock market. Look at the stock market! I say, yeah, what is that, 15,000-something? Yeah. What was it in 2007? Well, 14,000. Six years later and accounting for inflation it's actually lower. But what was gold at then? Around $740 an ounce. And even now at the price, who got the better deal now? It's not even close.

They're manipulating the bond market in front of our eyes. We now know they've been manipulating Libor rates – my god! How transparent does it have to get before people see it? A $500 to $700 trillion dollar market rigged through Libor … the people should be screaming for justice, but no justice has been done.

Anthony Wile: Well, the Pentagon announced they'd lost $2.7 trillion the day before 9/11 and nobody said anything, so why not up the ante?

Gerald Celente: Exactly. You know our saying. The word "justice" is being misspelled. It should be "just us." A slap on the wrist for the big-time criminals and punishment to the fullest extent of the law for the rest of the public.

Anthony Wile: Why is there such a differentiation between physical gold and paper gold? Is that a manipulation, as well?

Gerald Celente: Well, of course it's a manipulation. As I said, the paper markets are easily rigged, as we keep finding out. The silver markets are rigged. Recently they did a story in Canada on the rigging of the silver market and this Canadian guy going out to meet with the head of the Security and Exchange Commission. You see this guy in the SEC with his long, white hair sitting in his tiny little office talking with the Canadian who furnished proof of the manipulated silver market maintaining that the SEC resources were too limited to pursue all the offenders.

As I keep saying, the game is rigged. It's like bringing in an ethics department to keep the mafia honest. That's what the SEC is equivalent to: an ethics committee preaching honesty and integrity to the Wall Street Gang.

Have you seen one head roll on Wall Street? No. Not one. So yeah, it's rigged. That's my conviction. And I'm not a conspiracy theorist because Libor is not a conspiracy and neither is the rigging of the bond market. It's in front of everybody's eyes and there's enough information to show how the silver market is rigged and how the stock markets are rigged. My god, high frequency trading, trading in milliseconds … it's all gambling. But for the reasons stated, I'm still bullish on gold.

Anthony Wile: Will we end up with a neo-state gold standard?

Gerald Celente: Could be. I could see gold being part of a new reserve currency – not a gold standard but part of the new reserve currency in years to come. Look what's going on with the euro. It's only 12 years old and the problems facing it seem insurmountable.

Sooner or later, when the bond buying, low interest rate, austerity measure and quantitative easing schemes are no longer options, I envision a new reserve currency with gold as a part of it.

Anthony Wile: As that's happening with the paper, is it possible that central banks are being thoroughly discredited?

Gerald Celente: Again, discredited by whom? When that's all there is, most people can't see through it. Not yet. Besides, the people don't take to the streets until it hits them in their stomachs. And even in depression-wracked countries of Europe (Spain, Ireland, Portugal and Greece), the will to fight austerity measures that keep robbing the people to pay off the banks, has not reached a revolutionary pitch.

For example, the big news on May Day was that labor unions and other protestors literally stopped business in Greece. Big deal. The next day it was back to business as usual.

Yet, the model for successful peaceful revolution exists.

I call it "The Berlin Wall Model." Finally, after decades of repression, the people went out to the Wall and into the streets and for days and weeks didn't go home until the Berlin Wall came down.

But again, even that was only a protest. One government was replaced by another. It was much better than what it had replaced, but still far from fulfilling the ideals and ideas of the Berlin Wall protestors.

It has to more than a protest. There has to be a "movement" with defined goals and objectives.

Anthony Wile: Does austerity work?

Gerald Celente: Yeah, it works great. It's a proven success. It drives the people into poverty and makes the bankers richer. It works perfectly, exactly as planned. The banks made bad bets and the public was forced to pay for them.

The governments essentially robbed money from the people, the people's standard of living declined, they lost their homes and their jobs. This is called "democracy."

With no roof over their heads, many have been forced to live out on the streets. They have no future. Governments have cut workers pensions and benefits, raised the retirement age until after you're dead but the banks have done just fine. They're thriving and the 1% keeps getting richer. So it worked just the way they intended it to work.

There was an article in yesterday's Financial Times, a big story about Ireland, and how this Irish woman who's with the European Parliament, through the Freedom of Information law got the minutes that revealed how hedge funds and bankers met with Irish politicians as the banking crisis unfolded.

As proven by the minutes, the financiers got everything that they wanted. Politicians are no more than wise guys for the money changers. It's a mafia.

There are two mafias. There's the military mafia and the money changing mafia. All politicians are "wise guys," the front men, and they do what they're told.

By the way, I was the assistant to the secretary of the New York Senate at 23 years old. I was a chief government affairs specialist for the chemical industry in the '70s in DC. One of my chief writers for the Trends Journal is Dr. Paul Craig Roberts, former Assistant Treasury Secretary under Reagan.

It's not like we don't know what's going on or haven't been there. When I was up in Albany it was the worst job I ever had. All day long I was watching grown men and women suck their way up to get to the top, a disgusting spectacle. I didn't last long. I hated it. That's all these people are. They're little boys and little girls who do what they're told. As I said, we don't have a representative government. The politicians represent only the most powerful and the ones with the most money.

Anthony Wile: Are libertarians correct that what economies around the world need is more freedom and less management?

Gerald Celente: You mean more freedom to build unsafe factories in Bangladesh that collapsed and killed over a thousand workers or fertilizer plants in Texas that blow up and wipe out a town?

No, we need stoplights and stop signs. I'm a believer in regulation when the lack of it leads to unmitigated disaster. I am not in favor of legislation that has the government intruding in private lives.

For example, Glass-Steagall worked perfectly. When it was taken away, look what happened. It reined in rampant bank corruption, speculation and monopolies.

With Robinson-Patman, Sherman Anti-Trust, Clayton Anti-Trust there were no Walmarts when those laws and regulations were in place. They were put in place for a purpose; to prevent the robber barons from robbing everything. Now they've all been deregulated and look what happened. We've all become corporate slaves to a new class of robber barons.

Anthony Wile: Do you see globalization continuing or is there anything slowing it down or stopping it?

Gerald Celente: Nothing in the short term.

Anthony Wile: What would you do as an investor today?

Gerald Celente: Exactly what I'm doing. I'm hedging my investments. I buy gold and I'm buying historic properties. That's for me. I don't give financial advice and I'm not a speculator. I don't play markets or anything like that. I've been buying gold since 1978. My first buy was at $187.50 an ounce. I also bought it at the highest point ($875) the day it collapsed, on January 20, 1980!

But what's going on now is very different from back then. Back then there was no Russia; it was the Soviet Union. There was Communist China, not the industrial giant it is today.

Everything east of Berlin was behind the Iron Curtain. China, India, they weren't buying gold like crazy; they had no money. So it was a very different time. The gold panic was real back then. This is a very different feeling. And again, people around the globe weren't buying gold as a safe-haven asset as they are today. So it's very different.

Gold and historic real estate, that's for me. One goes up, the other goes down. If gold goes down my real estate value goes up. And again, I'm not a real estate speculator; I'm buying antiquities. It's the "Antiques Road Show" and I'm buying beautiful, 18th century stone buildings in Colonial Kingston, New York.

Anthony Wile: Will you speak more to the plight of the US, please? In particular, will Obamacare pull down the economy further?

Gerald Celente: Yes. Obamacare is pulling down the economy further. It's really hurting businesses. It's an ill-conceived program and it's really not Obamacare; it's Fascistcare. It's the merger of state and corporate powers. We the people are being forced to buy insurance from private corporations that in turn buy off politicians with campaign contributions.

Anthony Wile: Is the EU going to break up? What about the euro?

Gerald Celente: I can see the eurozone breaking up and I can see the euro breaking up in years to come. Yeah, and it keeps returning to the precipice. What's going to fix the unemployment in France and in Italy? How's it going to change? What are they going to do? I'll tell you what they're going to do. They say it's the workers' fault. They are making too much money and have too many benefits. They say we've got to compete with the Chinese, Vietnamese, Bangladeshis, etc. That's their only solution. No, it's not going to get any better.

Anthony Wile: What does the next ten years hold for the US, as it's becoming increasingly warlike and authoritarian, in our view? Can this be stopped?

Gerald Celente: Of course, it can be stopped. It's up to the people. But right now with the fear and hysteria being generated by the government – you saw what happened in Boston… If you go to my Gerald Celente YouTube channel, there's a video called "State of Siege" from April 22nd. You can see where the future is heading.

I did a Trends in the News segment on what happened in Boston and what an affront it was to our Constitutional Rights. And you should see the hate mail that I got … there's no cure for stupid. Many people willingly submit to government power and a number praised the Boston police and the military for protecting them. But that said, the positive replies I received were a hundred to one in favor of the video.

Anthony Wile: It goes back to the propaganda we were talking about, people acting from pure emotion, entirely bypassing the brain because propaganda from the mainstream media totally set in.

Gerald Celente: You're right. Ask Goebbels. It works perfectly. When people say to me, "If you don't like it here, leave," I turn the tables on them and say, "No, no. You've got it the wrong way. You leave! You're the ones who are destroying the principles upon which this country was founded. You don't like the way the Founding Fathers set it up? You leave. Move to North Korea."

Anthony Wile: What are the next big trends you see, one to five?

Gerald Celente: There is a Renaissance. It's already happening, there is a food Renaissance going on that cannot be denied. There is a nationwide "buy local" movement, anti-GMO, anti-factory farming, no pesticides or additives … the food trend is clear, the shift is underway. Just turn on the TV. Look at all the popular food and cooking shows. Buy local, grow your own, eat healthy to stay healthy, if you can afford to eat out, try to eat organic, grass fed, hormone free.

At the other extreme, unfortunately, war is another trend. The worse things get, the louder the war drums beat.

But, there are other positive developments, as well. The whole New Millennium Education trend. I wrote about this back in 1996 in my book Trends 2000. What's being called Massive Online Open Course (MOOC) today, I called Interactive-U, and we've been charting its evolution in successive Trends Journals.

You're going to start seeing a whole new educational model develop. The one we have now is an Industrial Age model that is both outmoded and by any standard inadequate.

New Millennium Education will be a crucial element in fostering an Era of Enlightenment. You'll have superstar teachers, the best in the field, teaching literally millions of people at one time. From kindergarten up to the Ph.D., a whole new system of teaching and learning is a major positive trend.

I also believe a big game changer will be in alternative energy. Something far greater than wind, solar, geothermal, bio-fuel. And once it is brought to market, it will have a more profound effect on society than even the dot-com digital revolution.

Not only will the alternative energy trend be a game changer, it will be a game saver. It's the next big thing and it will change Middle East policy. Does anyone really think that the West's involvement in the region is to promote freedom and democracy? Once the world is no longer dependent upon Middle East oil, military intervention into their internal affairs will cease abruptly.

Also, a new, clean, infinite energy will boost economic growth worldwide. We've written about these positive implications extensively in past and current Trends Journals.

I also believe in the need for a "Verdi Factor." It is impossible for a true Renaissance to blossom without the recognition and appreciation of the role of art and beauty.

I truly believe that art is the way of finding the true meaning of the human spirit. If you don't believe me, then you don't believe in the European Renaissance of the 15th to 18th centuries, or the great civilizations that preceded it. And beauty, to me, is the antidote to fear. That's why I surround myself with beauty.

What can also kick start the New Millennium Renaissance is the return to a fundamental appreciation of craftsmanship. Art and architecture reveal the soul of any given civilization. History books are almost unnecessary. Walmart, Home Depot, Staples, McDonalds, Trump Tower, the shopping mall, the strip mall and on down to faceless low-income housing development … all bear mute, irrevocable witness to what we of the 21st century have become … and why we must change before we perish beneath an avalanche of ugliness.

Anthony Wile: Thanks again for your time.

Gerald Celente: Thank you.

After Thoughts

Gerald Celente has been writing about real social and economic trends for decades. It's great to speak to him and get his perspectives because you don't have the feeling that you are dealing with someone who is providing "canned" answers.

Speak to someone on Wall Street about trends and you'll get the perspective that another part of the business cycle is in the offing. The cycle of capitalism is, of course, the Austrian business cycle in which central banks print too much money, causing first a boom and then a bust.

The current point of the cycle is said to be in the range of recovery. We're coming out of the Great Recession. Gerald Celente has a much bigger vision than that.

It is not so simple or neat.

The idea being sold by the powers-that-be is that after five long years, the US and even the West is gradually clawing its way out of the downturn. In fact, Celente's trend analysis is all about a much larger trend that overlays the simplistic vision of boom, bust … recovery.

But Celente's vision is rightfully one of empire … both its rise and now its decline.

The US empire is the biggest the world has ever known, and though Celente does not verbalize it directly, we understand that the nomenclature "US" is actually a description of a much larger and more shadowy empire that does not reveal its face.

It is an empire of globalism that grinds relentlessly along but at the same time is running into extreme difficulty thanks to what we call the Internet Reformation.

Celente's trends speak to this difficulty. Whether it is the slow foods movement, a new educational model or the Neo-Renaissance itself – what we call the Internet Reformation in part – is challenging the expansion of empire and its inevitable repression.

This is adult stuff. It has little to with fads or the facile trends that the mainstream media likes to identify. Instead, the trends Celente isolates are the expression of people who are beginning to find their own ways of living despite the attacks they undergo every day by Leviathan.

The trends Celente identifies are part of a narration of this slow, inexorable change. How far it will go, and how fast, are difficult to analyze. But it is occurring.

In a Time of Universal Deceit, Telling the Truth is a Revolutionary Act …

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