Celente: Revolution next for U.S.

Celente: Revolution next for U.S.

Gerald Celente - the most trusted name in trends - sits down for an exclusive interview with Russia Today's Anastasia Churkina to talk about what the future holds for America during and after the Great Recession. Celente gives advice to Obama and forecasts [for some] the unexpected.

[Text of video provided for the hearing impaired by me.]

Churkina: September marks the year since the financial and economic meltdown shook America. Since then, the country has basically been edging on free fall. Let's sum up the year. What were the highlights? What were the worst and scariest days for America?

Celente: In our Trends Journal, for everyone to see, actually it's on our website, we have posted the top trends for 2008, and we predicted an economic 9/11. We were a couple of days off. The big crash began to happen in September when AIG, when Lehman Brothers, when Merrill Lynch started going belly up. Of course, before that with the unwinding of Freddie and Fannie - Freddie Mac and Fannie May mortgage companies - unprecedented, in American history, where the federal government steps in to bail these people out - always under the guise that if they fail, the world economy will collapse, credit markets will cease up, and life, as we know it, will never exist again. Now, here we are, one year later, September of 2009, and they're talking about the possibilities of a recovery. There's no recovery.

Churkina: My next question is about that. It seems like some are already beginning to cheer for a happy ending. Is it way too soon?

Celente: Well, it is. Go back again, after they started pumping the money in, in early 2009. They said, "By the spring we'll see green shoots." What "green shoots"? Look at unemployment numbers. We have unemployment at 26-year highs. We have teenage unemployment at all-time records since they've been taking records. It's not a recovery. It's a cover up. They're papering over the damage with paper money. There is no recovery. It's a cover up. So, let's look over the facts. All of the stimulus program, at best, created 150,000 to 200,000 jobs. They're saying that the stimulus program is now working but, what's gonna happen when the stimulus runs out - when you can't use this paper money to create any more jobs? This is the likes of which no one has ever seen before. There will not be a recovery. We're going into the Greatest Depression. People better grow up about it. The jobs that have been lost have been lost forever.

Churkina: What can the common American do? What can the common American expect for the next couple of years if you're saying things are as bad [as this]?

Celente: What the common American has to understand is that their standard of living is going to continue to decline. It's on a downward spiral. Look where the United States ranks in poverty. Look where how low they rank in education. Look how low they rank in quality of life. At one time, America was number one in all of those fields and now we no longer win, place or show.

Churkina: Do you think the United States is going to learn anything from this experience? Will it transform into something else even better?

Celente: We're in the midst, right now, of a Second American Revolution. We're going to have to see how it plays out. We're in the early stages of a revolution. We could go into a revolution or we could go into a renaissance. Both opportunities are there. The direction we see it going in in the short term is revolution. From the revolution however, we can go back. A renaissance is a rebirth if we go back to the formula that worked the best in America - Main Street, not Wall Street. America went from the country that prided itself in "quality number one" to "bottom line" - how can we make the most money? - build it the cheapest - build it the biggest.

Churkina: Let me follow up on your point about a revolution. Were there to be a revolution, the majority of Americans it seems need to get really fed up. Meanwhile, however, we're seeing that many Americans are very much enticed with their President. What's your take on this?

Celente: America's a first, second and third-world country. Revolutions don't happen from the people that are going to be watching American Idol or waste their time away playing video games and their minds lost in celebrity culture - pop culture. It's going to come from a different area. You have people from both ends of the spectrum - on the far right and the far left - becoming anti-Obama. On the far right, it's the gun-toting, America-firsters and there's racism involved in it to. Let's not be blind to that. That's on one aspect. On the left, you have the core that Obama brought in, that are now pulling away from him. These are the people that were against more troops in Afghanistan - against strikes into Pakistan and into other sovereign countries. These were the people that wanted to see the military shrink, not grow by 4%. So, he's losing his core base on the left. So, the revolution [is] in many different areas, because Obama's backtracking on a lot of core issues that were very important to the left. So, he's losing the left and he's lost the right - never had it to begin with. So, the revolution is now being fought by a number of different factions with both the Republican and Democratic parties and that's what's going to make this revolution happen.

Churkina: Do you predict a second term for Barack Obama?

Celente: It's too early to tell now. As I was mentioning earlier, about President Bush being down in the polls 50% in September of 2001 and then all of a sudden 9/11 happened and people rallied behind him. So, from a President that people looked upon as somewhat incompetent, he became a President that led the country into two wars, by the way for fake reasons. [I never said that I agree 100% with what Celente says. - c] So, you can't tell whether it's a terrorist attack, whether it's an act of nature, or an act of man - you don't know what will happen by 2012, however, the way the trends are going now - I want to make that clear - the way they're going now - and nobody can predict the future, there are too many wild cards thrown on the deck - President Obama will not only be a one-term President but, will also see the emergence of a third party because many Americans, the Independents - which account for more than the party numbers of either the Republicans or the Democrats - want a third way. So, we may see a new third party emerge by 2012, which we're calling Progressive Libertarian. So, that's what we see more that a question of Obama versus the Republicans because who are the Republicans going to put up? Another nobody that no one wants. America is a country where people vote for a lesser of two evils. It's a two-headed, one-party system.

Churkina: There's been talk lately about the possibility of another stimulus package. Is it possible that the U.S. government will eventually just run out of money and won't be able to keep printing it?

Celente: Current events form future trends. Look where the dollar's going and look where gold is going. The more they talk about stimulus, the cheaper the dollar becomes and the higher prices of gold go. We have people in power, that if our forecasts were as wrong as theirs, we would have been laughed out of business thirty years ago when we began. Why would people believe Ben Bernanke? Why would they believe President Obama? Why would they believe Larry Summers and Timothy Geithner? - when Timothy Geithner, for example, when the markets began to unravel in 2007, in August, when the credit crisis first hit, he said everything was covered, no need to worry, plans were in place and the financial sector was sound. One after another, their forecasts have been wrong and they're wrong about the recovery. There is no recovery. It's a cover up and the cover up is cheap money and a stimulus package, a second one, will just be more cover up. They're putting the burden on the taxpayer to cover up what has been done by the financial sector.

Churkina: What is the best piece of advice you can give Barack Obama?

Celente: Let the "too big to fails" fail. This is America. You're taught to rise and fail on your own merits. There's nothing, nothing, nothing there that would have said that if General Motors failed that if Bear Stearns failed, that if Merrill Lynch failed... - the sun would still rise, the crops would still grow, it's just the big guys would lose money. That's all it is. Look at the facts. We bailed out the banks. What's the average salary of the banks and the financial institutions that we've bailed out the presidents of those banks? $14 million dollars. Who makes this kind of money per year? They're not "too big to fail." Now, I'm of Italian descent and all my life I've heard Mafia stories. I never want to hear another one because, if the names on Wall Street were named Celente, Caruso, Mondavi, Puccini, Rossini, Buttoni, Abatelli, Puchio, they'd call it the Mafia. But, you're not allowed to call the "white shoe boys" crooks and criminals. Oh, no. They don't do loan sharking or ponzi schemes. They don't do pyramid scams. They have different names for it. How about credit default swaps? Hey, you wanna try your luck at an auction rate security? I have a better one for you. How about a credit default swap? They make up names that are names for criminal games that have bankrupted this country.

Churkina: Gerald Celente, thank you very much for sitting down with us today.

Celente: Thank you.

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