Who is this man and why is he harshing Obamalot’s Mellow?

Gerald Celente is one of those folks paid to spot trends.  He correctly predicted the stock market crash of 1987 and the fall of the Soviet Union.  You’ll start a farm and buy a rifle if you watch this video and take his predictions seriously.  He says within four years there will be widespread food riots and tax rebellions in the US.  His major message is that we are on the path to becoming the world’s biggest undeveloped nation.

He believes that this year will be the year that Americans start seeing Christmas as something less than a shopping mall buying spree because they are tapped out. Celente suggests that homemade gifts will replace electronic gadgets and that the most pressing concern by Christmas 2012 will be putting food on the table.

“We’re going to see the end of the retail Christmas….we’re going to see a fundamental shift take place….putting food on the table is going to be more important that putting gifts under the Christmas tree,” said Celente, adding that the situation would be “worse than the great depression”.

“America’s going to go through a transition the likes of which no one is prepared for,” said Celente, noting that people’s refusal to acknowledge that America was even in a recession highlights how big a problem denial is in being ready for the true scale of the crisis.

I’d be one of those skeptics if Celente didn’t have such a successful record of predicting things.  This includes the 1997 Asian Currency Crisis, the subprime mortgage collapse and the massive devaluation of the U.S. dollar.  His prediction last November was also carried by the UPI and is amazingly spot on.   Celeste said that the year 2008 would be known as:

“The Panic of 2008,” adding that “giants (would) tumble to their deaths,” which is exactly what we have witnessed with the collapse of Lehman Brothers, Bear Stearns and others. He also said that the dollar would eventually be devalued by as much as 90 per cent.

The consequence of what we have seen unfold this year would lead to a lowering in living standards, Celente predicted a year ago, which is also being borne out by plummeting retail sales figures.

This is what he sees in our future:

“It’s going to be very bleak. Very sad. And there is going to be a lot of homeless, the likes of which we have never seen before. Tent cities are already sprouting up around the country and we’re going to see many more.”

“We’re going to start seeing huge areas of vacant real estate and squatters living in them as well. It’s going to be a picture the likes of which Americans are not going to be used to. It’s going to come as a shock and with it, there’s going to be a lot of crime. And the crime is going to be a lot worse than it was before because in the last 1929 Depression, people’s minds weren’t wrecked on all these modern drugs – over-the-counter drugs, or crystal meth or whatever it might be. So, you have a huge underclass of very desperate people with their minds chemically blown beyond anybody’s comprehension.”

The scary deal is that this is Gerald Celente.  He is not one of those folks that makes a living reading Tarot Cards in Jackson Square.  He’s considered an expert at spotting megatrends and does so for many huge corporations including CNN.  His Trends Research Institute consults for many of the Fortune 100.  Just do a google on him and you’ll find he has an incredible reputation for getting things right.

I quit doing the shopping mall holiday thing about 5 years ago and haven’t looked back.  I also recommend it highly.  My holidays consist of hanging out with the people I love and overeating whenever possible.  Any of you switched to that kind of ho ho ho yet besides me?

The thing about his interview that I find most relevant is that he points out the number of cities and states that will be raising taxes just to sustain their current level of services.  I’ve seen minitax revolts starting down here in Louisiana already.  They evaluated our properties at the peak of the housing bubble and right before Hurricane Katrina.  There is an incredible backup of folks complaining about their valuations right now.  There is also a push by the Mayor to increase the millage.  This was something that was supposed to be unnecessary for some time because of the increase in property values.  Additionally, last year, Ubergovenor Jindahl was talking about ending the income tax because there was such a huge surplus.  He came to power thinking that pool of funds was going to be used as some huge rebate to blanket the entire state–even though its source was mostly the sale taxes coming from folks rebuilding after Katrina and was going to be very short-lived.  There is now talk that the state will have to dip into its rainy day fund for next year.  This is less than a year after Jindahl was running barefoot in the surplus.

On a side note, Penny (mother of the current financial crisis) Pritzker is the thought to be in line for Secretary of Commerce.  Interestingly enough, the crash of Superior bank was probably the canary in the mine for this current crisis.  Look for a lot of drama around this nomination.  Her investment company was also a big, big player in creating the derivatives that continue to disturb the markets. 

I just get more and more optimistic all the time.  How about you?