Gerald Celente on Trend Forecasting and the Crisis of Western Civilization

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Gerald Celente: Oh, it's very simple. I was married for 23 years. I'm divorced now, since the mid-90s. Everybody I love is dead. My parents, may they rest in peace, aunts and uncles, everybody. I have no kids. Again, I don't tell anybody what to think. My motto is, "Think for yourself." My definition of hell is taking that last breath of life and knowing that you lied to yourself and you weren't the person you claim to be. So for me, it's about speaking about who I believe I am. I don't call it courage; I call it being true to myself.

http://lewrockwell.com/celente/celente93.1.html

Daily Bell: Give us some background on yourself and how you have come to your current success.

Gerald Celente: My background is such that after graduate school and I got my Masters in Public Administration, I started running political campaigns in Westchester County in New York, which is a very affluent area. I was very successful at it so they sent me up to Albany, where I became the assistant to the secretary of the New York State Senate; Albany, of course, is the capital of New York State. It was there that I really started learning about the political game. It was probably the worst job I ever had because it was watching grown men suck up and bow down all day to get to the top.

So from there I taught at St. John's University and it was the nation's first course in American politics and campaign technology – how to run a political campaign. From there I moved to Chicago and was a government affairs specialist for the chemical industry. I used to put together, when they were just being formed, political action committees. So I would hire the people, do the work to get legislation overturned or get different legislation passed. So I have been around the political scene long enough to have a good feel of it.

Then in the late 1970s it was that lightbulb moment, and Jimmy Carter had just come back from Iran. The Iranian conflict was heating up and, ironically, it is just heating up as we are speaking now. Not much has changed; only the names and players. So Carter comes back from spending New Year's Eve with the Shah and his wife and announces that the Shah is the "Island of Stability" in the Middle East. At that moment I became a political atheist. I'd been following this thing for years. I knew how the United States government and the MI5 in the UK overthrew the democratically elected government of Mossaddegh in Iran, in 1953, because he had the NERVE to nationalize the oil fields, take it away from Anglo-Iranian oil – better known today as BP and Standard Oil, better known today as Exxon. So I knew also what a brutal dictator the Shah was and how he had imprisoned and slaughtered and tortured tens of thousands of people. So when a revolution broke out, I knew it was real and I knew that Carter was lying to the American people and the world.

So then when I got over all of that I wondered what would be the implications of all of this and I realized that current events form future trends, and that is the foundation of my work. You look at things for the way they are, not the way you want them to be. It's not what you like, dislike, hope for, wish for, believe in – that has nothing to do with it. So what will be the implications? And the implications were that gold and oil prices would go up as this situation worsened. So then, not knowing what I was doing, I started playing the gold and oil futures market. And I made enough money to quit my job (laughing) and I began the Trends Research Institute, with the understanding that if you look at things as they occur on a global basis and try to assess their implications, you can get a pretty good idea where things are going to go.

Nobody can predict the future – there's too many wild cards. But you can get a good idea by seeing the face of the future, just like you're doing what you're doing and I'm doing what I'm doing because of decisions that we have made. So that's the foundation of my work. But also, what I do differently than everyone else in the field, is that our stream of consciousness is beyond just one category of information. For example, economists will continue to study the economy but what do they know about what's going on socially, changes in the family, geopolitics, environment, health care, entertainment? Are they looking at all the other integrating trends? Because all things are connected. So that's what we do differently, with the understanding that too many people see the view of the world through the eyes of their profession. I call it 'desk vision' – they see the world from behind their desk.

So our concept and our 'globalnomic' system is to take in as much information as we can on a global basis, always making connections between different fields. I believe this is really the key to our success as well as being political atheists; we don't have any so-called skin invested in this. When you turn on CNBC or CNN or anything else and you listen to the political analysts or financial analysts, they are either selling something or selling their agenda. My motto is what I learned from my dear father, may his soul rest in peace – think for yourself; don't repeat what everybody else is saying.

Daily Bell: You mentioned earlier you call yourself a political atheist. Would you elaborate?

Gerald Celente: I don't believe in anybody's political religion. Knock yourself out. You want to believe in your fairytale, that's okay with me but don't lay it on me. Don't tell me I have to believe in your political garb because I REALLY GET ANGRY! Who are you to tell me I have to believe in your line of crap? Have you been there? Do you know what it looks like? I've been there.

I used to be standing inside the Senate chambers, a new guy, standing talking to my pal, talking about what guys talk about. And all of a sudden a senator would walk in and he'd have some flunky over there, opening the door so the guy could walk in. And my buddy would leave me and follow the senator like a little puppy dog and pull out the chair so the senator could sit down. Then my friend would come back and I would say, "What's the matter, man? The cat can't sit down by himself? He needs some help?"

That's all politics is. You know what politicians are? When are people going to grow up? Politicians are the same jerks you hated in high school and college that wanted to be class president and head of the student council. The brown-nosers, suck-ups, overly-ambitious, insincere – and now they are telling you what to do and you are paying attention to them and you are bowing down?

I have a line: "Conservatives believe and liberals lie."

Arch rightwing conservatives, they actually believe their line of baloney. They say things like, "The only way we are going to make this country safe is to kill all them Muslims around the world." They actually believe that.

The liberals, on the other hand, you point out one transgression of freedom after another that Obama has committed and they will come up with a line of excuses a mile long. They're intellectually intelligent enough to know that they are lying but they don't have the courage or the self-respect to admit it.

For example, when Obama gets elected he says, the first day, 'I'm going to close Guantanamo in a year.' Guantanamo's still going on. 'Well, you know, he's not getting cooperation from Congress... Hey, listen. There's only so much he can do.' Obama just increased the war in Afghanistan when he put 100,000 more troops in there than Bush did. 'Well, you know, Obama, you know ... the military is very strong and he's trying his best.' Hey, listen. Obama said he wasn't going to continue the Bush tax cuts that benefit the very, very rich. 'Well, you know, he has to do some deals to make things happen.' Hey, wait a minute! Obama just signed into law the National Defense Authorization Act that makes a belligerent – I guess they can accuse me of being belligerent because I think they are a bunch of people I don't respect. I can have the military now come over, crash down my doors, grab me with no charges, no judge, no jury and no trial. They can blow my brains out or send me to one of their favorite countries for torture or they can even torture me at home. How come he did that? 'Well, you know, it's the Congress.' In other words, they have invested so much in it emotionally that they don't want to admit they've been conned. And the intellectually intelligent enough know they are lying to themselves but they lack the self-respect and courage to admit it.

I find in my research that the biggest offenders as Obama apologists are women because they all tell me, "You know, I like him," just like they like Clinton, the guy who sold out the government before Obama did. If Bush was pulling off what Obama is pulling off all the liberals would be screaming bloody murder. But by their blind aversion to this two-bit song and dance man they lose all credibility for themselves and what they believe. To me, they are the ones holding back positive change because they are invested in a fraud and a liar.

Daily Bell: Tell us about your firm and its predictive ability. What is your methodology? Why have you been successful?

Gerald Celente: As we discussed, we call a trend for what it is, rather than investing in a belief. You asked me why I'm a political atheist; this is the reason why. I don't care if you like this guy. I don't care if you're in a bad relationship and you're making up excuses for it. That's what people keep getting hung up on. Whether it's in economics, whether it's in politics, whether it's in social behavior, it's what they believe, what they like, what they want, rather than assessing the implications.

Daily Bell: You are a leading spokesperson for what we call alternative media. What gives you the courage to speak out?

Gerald Celente: Oh, it's very simple. I was married for 23 years. I'm divorced now, since the mid-90s. Everybody I love is dead. My parents, may they rest in peace, aunts and uncles, everybody. I have no kids. Again, I don't tell anybody what to think. My motto is, "Think for yourself." My definition of hell is taking that last breath of life and knowing that you lied to yourself and you weren't the person you claim to be. So for me, it's about speaking about who I believe I am. I don't call it courage; I call it being true to myself.

Daily Bell: Would you share some examples of your predictions?

Gerald Celente: I think my biggest one that really started to set the stage was in January of 1987, when I sent out a press release saying that the stock market would collapse in 1987, and it did.

Then I had a number of smaller predictions, though no less significant, talking about a whole different range of issues such as alternative healthcare. I was talking about vitamins and acupuncture and chiropractic when you were a heretic to talk about it. As a matter of fact, the first book I worked on, in 1986, was called Natural Healing, by Dr. Jack Soltanoff. So I started learning about organic foods and diets, and started making forecasts in those areas. In those days there was no such thing as Whole Foods or big health food stores. So then I came out with organic foods and gourmet coffees and that started making more headlines in the mainstream media.

Then in one of my books, Trend Tracking, that I wrote in the late '80s – I had forecast that there was a climb in the United States for a new third party and I mentioned Ross Perot as the type of maverick. Now, remember, this is in '88 and George Bush Sr. was president and he was very high in the popularity ratings. Then subsequent forecasts throughout the decades kept putting me ahead of the pack.

Here's one that almost killed me, almost destroyed my career and you can look it up. December 14, 2000, USA Today, the headline read, "2001 Won't be our year, Trend Seer says." And I warned that a wave of anti-Americanism was sweeping the globe and Americans wouldn't be safe at home or abroad. A number of years earlier in one of my other books, Trends 2000, I coined the term "Crusades 2000" and said there would be major terror strikes against the United States because of their foreign policy and how they were supporting dictators around the world, these monarchs and autocrats and on and on in these Muslim worlds. So this forecast comes out in December 2000, and of course, September becomes 9/11. Now I am getting flooded by the media. "How did you predict this? How did you know this was going to happen?" I said, "Are you kidding me? I have been writing about this. It has to do with foreign policy." That was the kiss of death! "NO IT WASN'T! It was because they hate our freedom and liberty! I just heard George Bush say that," they said. (Laughing)

Daily Bell: Okay. Here are some more trends questions ... some subjects, in no particular order. Give us some trends feedback, please. In other words, put them into economic and sociopolitical context for our readers. First one, the West – where are we headed?

Gerald Celente: The West is headed to dictatorship. It's already happening. The merger of state and corporate power is by definition called fascism. I just mentioned the Defense Authorization Act. Before you had that you had the abrogation of the Constitution under Bush, with the Patriot Act, which Obama reinstated and made even tougher by signing this bill. When I say the merger of state and corporate powers, look at the $16.1 trillion that the Federal Reserve has funneled into businesses around the world. Whatever happened to that thing called capitalism? This is not capitalism; it's fascism! The more societies break down and the bigger the screw-ups at the top, the harder they clamp down on the bottom. You see it going on around the world; they call it austerity measures. How about calling it enslavement?

Daily Bell: European Union and the euro ...

Gerald Celente: Same thing... It's fascism. They came up with a great little word – they call it Technocrats. How about bankers? Bankers have taken over Italy. Bankers have taken over Greece. You may have heard me say this but I'll say it again and I'll continue to say it again.

Here we have just gotten over this holiday season, the celebration of Jesus Christ, It's more about going to Walmart or crashing down doors on Black Friday to get a loss-leader item or buying a bunch of crap that you don't need to put under an artificial Christmas tree. When you think about the Prince of Peace, when's the only time he became violent? It was when he picked up a whip and drove the moneychangers out of the temple? The moneychangers have taken over the temples – the temples of Athens, the temples of Rome, the temples of Berlin and the City of London. They've taken over Washington. They've taken over every capital of every major city in the world. So where's it going? It's very simple to see where it's going. It's called class warfare.

Daily Bell: The China Miracle ...

Gerald Celente: China only does as well as Europe and the United States does. As goes the US and Europe, so goes China. As goes China, so goes Australia, Brazil, Chili and other natural resource producing countries. China has 1.3 billion people and a million problems. Already they have people rebelling – the pollution... When you don't have people working As much as people talk about the Chinese Miracle, their per capita income ranks around Iraq's. So the people are not making a lot of money. There's another great gap between the rich and the poor. If you have 500 million doing well and a billion doing really lousy you have class warfare, and a lot of problems with the government.

Daily Bell: The United States and the dollar ...

Gerald Celente: Temporarily, the dollar is being looked upon as a safe haven. For me, looking at the dollar as a safe haven is like jumping out of the Titanic and looking to the Lusitania as a safe haven. Not a good idea. In the long run, I am bullish on gold; my savings are primarily in gold and a bit of silver. All the governments are doing – whether it's the Chinese government or the US government, all they have been doing since the panic of '08 is printing digital money, not worth the paper it's not printed on, to keep the Ponzi scheme going. And that's all it is – one big Ponzi scheme.

Daily Bell: Upcoming US presidential election ....

Gerald Celente: Well, as it stands now – and we made this forecast a few months ago – it's Obama. And the dark horse, as you know, is Ron Paul. If you look at Ron Paul and what he stands for, every liberal out there should be voting for him, but they point out things that they don't agree with and highlight those and, of course, the big issues.

Daily Bell: Do you think Ron Paul can win?

Gerald Celente: It would be very difficult, particularly with the media. When you read the words – and this is not my language; this is the language of the so-called paper of record, the New York Times. They call what he says, in their editorials, "Claptrap Ideas"! Claptrap? Who are you? Don't talk to me like that! Because I believe in his ideas, they're claptrap, and I don't believe in your crap? When you hear an arrogant jerk like Newt Gingrich saying that no decent American would support Ron Paul's foreign policies – come over to me, fat boy, and call me an indecent American. Say that to my face – let me show you how tough you are. And then we have a guy running The Manchester Union, Joe McQuaid. He said the only people that support Ron Paul are the lunatic fringe. Hey, McQuaid, don't call me lunatic fringe; I don't believe in your crap. Can you handle that? This takes us back to the beginning of our conversation about people believing in their political religions and then calling anyone that doesn't believe in their religion a name.

Daily Bell: Is the mainstream media controlled? By whom?

Gerald Celente: By the corporations. I mean, who owns ABC? Who owns NBC? Who owns CBS, CNN and FOX? Again, the merger of state and corporate powers is called fascism. I've been on every show virtually in the mainstream media, and if you go on my trends and the news feature, I announced that I am not going on anymore. I turned down interview requests for the new year. I don't like hanging out with these people. I don't believe in who they are and I don't want to give support to what they are doing so I don't go on them. So it goes back to your question about courage, I don't want to lie to myself. Why am I going to do it – to make money? It's not worth it for me. If they want to come to me and interview me in my place, we can begin a conversation.

Daily Bell: Are corporations and corporatism to blame for the current system?

Gerald Celente: No, it's everybody – from the top to the bottom - from the corporate rip-off to the welfare cheat. It's the person in the bureaucracy who's not doing their job, or the person in the corporation who's trying to game the system. It's about morality and until morality is restored – and it's not only America; it's worldwide you have people taking pokes at America, you name the country. It's not all of them but a lot of them. So it comes back to morality, and until morality changes, nothing will change.

People ask me how it's going to change and I always go back to that wonderful Hindu saying, "When the student is ready the teacher appears." Anybody who has really practiced anything, and really wanted to be great at it knows you need a great teacher, and you only find those great teachers when you're dedicated. So my belief is that the leadership will appear when the people are ready, and to me the people are not ready. They're not ready emotionally, spiritually or physically. So until the people change and regain that self-respect, dignity and courage, nothing will change.

Daily Bell: It appears that you have a very divided nation right now – you have the welfare state on one hand and the warfare state on the other. How do you propose any change under these conditions?

Gerald Celente: Again, it comes with the individual. When individuals find the greatness within themselves, when they reach the highest levels that they can do and keep going higher, then they don't tolerate abusiveness, whether it's in a personal relationship or a governmental relationship. Right now it's not in their DNA! When you're doing great and creating great, you don't accept that kind of behavior from others and that's when the system changes. I believe in the 20% solution. If 20% of the people would start working at trying to improve their own well-being at those levels, then everything changes.

Daily Bell: Is there an American empire?

Gerald Celente: There used to be. Now it looks like the other faded empires – fighting in foreign conflicts as you're depleting your treasury. For example, they will laugh at Ron Paul, they will laugh him off the stage, when he said he doesn't want to give foreign aide to other countries. He said how could you give foreign aide to other countries when we are bankrupt here? It makes perfect sense. But they'll laugh at him. And you know who the media is? Remember the people who used to be in the high school newspaper and college newspaper? Just follow their career paths. It's high school and college and they haven't graduated yet.

The sickness of it all is that they are telling everybody else what to do. And the other solution that I keep coming up with – and the Daily Bell misinterpreted what I said about it – is direct democracy. They keep going back to 'This is what Gaddafi wrote about' – no, it's not! This is not what Gaddafi was talking about when he wrote about direct democracy. Direct democracy is what they are doing in Switzerland. Let the people vote. I don't need some guy like Obama hitting the stage and saying that we are going to attack Libya – and then getting on a jet plane with his wife, his kids and his mother-in-law and having a vacation in Rio. Let me vote on it. You want the war on drugs to go on? Good. I don't. Let's vote on it.

And then I hear, OH – WE COULD HAVE MOB RULE! The 51%! Mob rule – tyranny. Well, guess what you've got now? You've got the mob ruling. Take all the Republicans and the Democrats, all 535 of them, telling 312 million people how to tie their shoes. You want to talk about mob rule?

So direct democracy is the only way out at this point in our evolution. We either evolve or we dissolve. Right now we are in dissolve mode. Look at New Year's Eve – whoop-de-doo. Bloomberg with an American flag shirt on and Lady Gaga. Oh, wonderful.

Daily Bell: How would you fix the American financial system?

Gerald Celente: Same thing I recommend to everyone. It comes back to what I said before. It starts with the individual. Buy local. First you have to improve yourself on an individual basis and then on a national level. It begins with the local level. Bring production back home – repatriate, repatriate, repatriate. It's one of our top trends for 2012. Bring production back home. You want Chinese and Indonesian or Vietnamese to make you stuff so that multi-nationals can ship it back to you and you can buy it at a low price and low quality and with that low quality and low price comes everyday paying low quality jobs? Keep doing that or go back to the model when you were making more money and you could really live a comfortable middle class life when you were making products at home, when quality, not bottom line, counted, when style mattered.

So that's the way to do it. You start at the local level. I buy at the local butcher. I do everything I can. You do that at every level. You build at the domestic level. It comes back again to the individual. There is a website, Google "derelict Detroit" or "disintegrating Detroit" and you will see these pictures of Detroit, in it's heyday and when it was being built. When you look at the architecture, look at the quality. And now what do you have? Big box stores, ugly buildings. I mean, going into one of these big box stores has all the elegance of walking into a self-storage unit to go do your shopping. Elegance and grace, quality and style. Alle romana et alla antica, they said during the Renaissance, in the manner of the Romans and the ancients, to describe the quality of their work. I don't need some jerk telling me that only the bottom line counts. I am not a bottom-line feeder. If you shoot for the bottom line that's where you end up – the bottom of the barrel. You've got money junkies out there – all they care about is money and the bottom line. Look how they have brought down not only the country but also the world.

Daily Bell: Are there some who are promoting a New World Order? What are your thoughts?

Gerald Celente: It's not a new world order; it's the bankers order. As I said, the new world order is nothing more than the moneychangers. And they are just throwing other labels on it – it's the moneychangers, capisce? It's about money – it's always about money. Hey, Obama, where are you now that the Sudan is going to pieces? There's not enough oil over there? Not enough sweet crude?

Daily Bell: What about the Federal Reserve? Should it be audited?

Gerald Celente: It needs to be dismantled. It was the major issue of this country since it's founding up until 1913. You keep the moneychangers from running the country. That's all they are. You know how they change names, they go from moneychangers to bankers – excuse me, I missed a step in there – moneychangers to loan sharks to bankers. They're moneychangers and loan sharks. Get rid of them.

Daily Bell: What is your position on fiat currency?

Gerald Celente: If you are going to put paper out there back it up with something, but certainly more than your BS.

Daily Bell: Would unrestricted fiat currency managed by the state be better than what we have now?

Gerald Celente: No. I think we should have gold as part of any currency. Even Zoellick from the World Bank said gold should be part of any currency. The thing is to slow down. There's no such thing as continued growth. Only money junkies and sick people think of continued growth. It's winter; do the crops grow in the winter? You need a time for retraction, slowing down, reorganization. It's running out of control and they keep feeding it with these steroids. I don't disagree with what he's saying. If that's what he believes, that's fine. I don't know enough about his stance to say one thing or another about it – I want to make that really clear.

For me, and only speaking for myself, I think gold should be part of any currency. Gold has been around since hieroglyphics and it's intrinsic; there's something higher than the monetary system where gold fits in. When the three wise men came, they came with gold, frankincense and myrrh; they didn't come with pork bellies and greenbacks. There's something more about it, and that's why it's still around. If it was good enough for Christ it should be good enough for us.

Daily Bell: Where do you stand on Austrian economics?

Gerald Celente: Again, it's one of those concepts where nothing is everything and some of it's great. It's the same as religion. There are pieces of it that you take and other pieces of it that you don't. I am not a libertarian, by the way. I want regulations. You need regulations because there would be no minimum wage. People would be paid nothing. The banks would be robbing us even more than they are. So I'm in favor of some but it's not black and white.

Daily Bell: Is some sort of lawless cabal running the US? In other words, do laws apply to some and not others?

Gerald Celente: The word justice is being misspelled. It's J-U-S-T – U-S. The white-shoe boys, as I call them, there's no justice for them. Like this guy, Corzine. 'I can't find 1.2 billion dollars'? Who can get away with that crap? You see him at these hearings with the other flunkies asking him questions. Did you see the plaque in front of his name? "The Honorable Jon Corzine." Honorable, my ass!

Daily Bell: We were going to ask what you thought of Jon Corzine of Goldman Sachs. Tell us what happened with the MF Global bankruptcy. How are your finances?

Gerald Celente: It's emblematic of what's going on. All I was doing – and you have all these trolls out there writing this stupid crap... I buy gold in many different forms. One of the ways is – I believe the price is going up so in April I took contracts to take delivery in gold. So I bought gold at $1443.00 an ounce in April, to take delivery in December, and kept putting money into my account and building my account to take delivery. That's all I was doing. They went in and raided my account. It's criminal activity if anyone else does it. When are people going to grow up? They become slaves to their corporate and political masters. So again, going back to what you said about courage, to me it's about dying in dignity. That's all you have.

Daily Bell: How about the CFTC? Are they doing their job of protection and prosecution?

Gerald Celente: Well who's the head of the CFTC, Gary Gensler? He was one of the lieutenants for Jon 'the Don' Corzine when Corzine was head of the Goldman Sachs gang, before he became senator of New Jersey. You get it?

Who's Obama's Chief of Staff? Bill Daley, from that wonderful Daley machine in Chicago. Where did he come from? Oh, vice chairman of Morgan Chase. Who was Bush's treasury secretary? Oh, Henry 'Frankenstein' Paulson. Where was he from? He began as the CEO of Goldman Sachs after Jon 'the Don' Corzine left. This is the guy who created TAARP and came up with the BS line of 'too big to fail.' Him? Yeah, that's right.

And who's the guy under Clinton that was treasury aecretary who put into process the deregulation of the financial industry and the ultimate killing of the Glass-Steagall Act, which prevented commercial banks becoming investment banks? Investment banks! What a bunch of baloney that is. Casinos that gamble, and we have to pay them now when they make bad bets. That couldn't be Robert Rubin, could it, the former co-chair of Goldman Sachs? And who's the guy now that they just put on the head of the European Central Bank, Mario Draghi? Where was he from? Didn't he run the European division of Goldman Sachs? And wait a minute now ... what's this guy in Italy now, Mario 'Three-card Monte'? Wasn't he an international advisor for Goldman Sachs?

The moneychangers are taking over the temple; you don't have to go very far to look. It's right there in front of everybody's eyes and no one will call a spade a spade. The Rothschilds would be jealous to see what the Goldman Sachs gang, the JP Morgan Chase criminal operation, the Citigroup crooks, the Deutsche Bank bandits and the rest have pulled off.

Daily Bell: We believe that the Internet has spawned a kind of "Internet Reformation" and have been preaching this paradigm for about a decade. Where do you stand on this?

Gerald Celente: Oh, I believe it is, sure. But then again, we are writing about this in our top trends for 2012, about how we are about to lose that freedom as the fascist states keep taking over and using fear and hysteria to control us.

Daily Bell: Any final thoughts? Can you give us a few more predictions for 2012?

Gerald Celente: I believe that we have to watch out for something along the lines of an economic martial law. The European system is in collapse. The financial system in the United States is just as tenuous, if not more, and I believe they will not admit there will be a financial crash but rather they will use a geo-political issue to get the people in a state of fear and hysteria whereby they'll then call a bank holiday or devaluation of the currency, or a hyperinflation of the currency, and blame it on somebody else. Right now the prime scapegoat seems to be Iran.

The United States and the European Union have declared war on Iran. Let's call it what it is. They are making it impossible for Iran to sell oil. It's a form of warfare. Just as history has been re-engineered as with WWII, when you look back, it's a reverse situation of what the Americans did to the Japanese by cutting them off from oil. Now they are cutting the Iranians off from selling oil. Oil accounts for more than half of their GDP. They're the third largest oil supplier in the world. And US senators in Washington voted a hundred to zero to impose sanctions on Iran in the Senate. So I believe that Iran is going to be the flashpoint war that's going to be used as the cause to call martial law – economic martial law. And now, of course, that Obama has signed it into law on December 31 – Happy New Year, everyone – the National Defense Authorization Act will have the military in place to take care of any belligerent out there!

Daily Bell: Thanks for your courageous work and for speaking out. It's been a pleasure.

Gerald Celente: All the best. Here's hoping the new year that will bring enlightenment in a civilization that is far greater than the one we have now.

Daily Bell After Thoughts

This is an easy After Thought to write as we agree with much of what Gerald Celente has to say. We certainly endorse his ideas about "buying local" and individual human action.

One of the big troubles with the current world scene is that it exists as a kind of "mimic" of village life. Hillary Clinton even wrote a book about it entitled, "It Takes a Village." And then there are concepts such as "The Elders" that we've written about in articles such as "Do Mandela's Elders Violate Human Rights?"

TheElders.org website explains the group is drawn from eminent global leaders, brought together by Nelson Mandela. These eminent individuals "offer their collective influence and experience to support peace building, help address major causes of human suffering and promote the shared interests of humanity."

The trouble with such concepts is that it is simply not feasible to graft local traditions onto an international environment. Living in a tribal village, one could visit an elder in his or her hut to receive counsel. But THESE Elders are supposed to be counseling several billion people. Their Elder-ministrations are purveyed via private jet amidst high-tech security arrangements. Their prescriptions for social justice are offered within the context of palaces, limousines and exclusive banquets. It's not the same.

Living in the village is not the same as living among several billion people. But people do tend to think about things the same way. The unfortunate fact that we can only relate to about 150 people at a time is not part of most people's thinking. The powers-that-be take advantage of people's instincts in this matter by ritualizing village practices within the context of globalization. But there is no such thing as a global village.

What works locally does NOT work globally. Whether it be money, politics or basic human relationships themselves, the accountability inherent in a village environment is dissipated by size. Only the rhetoric and the construction remain familiar. But the animating local-ness of the village itself is rendered useless.

People have to be able to have individual impacts on their environment, or at least the ability to make direct inputs. What's going on now as times worsen is that people are discovering the elaborate sociopolitical and economic systems that govern their lives have no realistic application. These rituals have been cleverly conceived of by the power elite to give people the feeling they are in charge of their own destinies, at least to some extent, when in fact they have little or no control at all.

In a way, it does take a village, as Gerald Celente understands. Power must be exercised locally, within the context of small groups. Power must flow up, not down. This is the animating feature of all successful republics, by the way. But inevitably as time goes by, the power polarity reverses. And power begins to flow from the top down.

This is the real crisis Western civilization now faces. And continued globalization will only make matters worse. Gerald Celente will likely have numerous topics about which to write in the coming years, and unless the trend toward bigness is reversed, he won't particularly enjoy what he sees.

But we'll look forward to his forecasts, nonetheless. He certainly understands the Way the World Works and no doubt will continue to inform us of its ups and downs. We hope there are more ups than downs. Gerald Celente, we have a feeling, is not so optimistic. Time will tell.

Reprinted with permission from The Daily Bell.