Worst Market Crash, New Military Conflict, and a Gold Spike

Listen to the Podcast Audio: Click Here

Mike Gleason, Money Metals Exchange: It is my privilege now to be joined by Gerald Celente, publisher of the renowned Trends Journal. Mr Celente is a highly sought-after guest on these programs throughout the world and has been forecasting some of the biggest and most important trends before they happen for more than 30 years now. And it’s a real honour to have him on with us today. Mr Celente, welcome back and thank you so much for joining us again.

Gerald Celente, Trends Journal: Well thank you, Mike.

Mike Gleason: I want to start out by asking you about this massive disconnect between what the economic data is telling us versus what the stock market is saying to the investment world. For instance, we have the lowest rate of expansion in the U.S. economy since the 1940s. China is slumping, as are many other major global economies… not to mention the economic issues over there in Europe. Yet the equities markets continue to make new highs nearly every week with the S&P and the DOW continuing upward into uncharted territories. So what’s going on here? Are the economic numbers really better than what we’re being told, or is the stock market being propped up?

Mike Gleason: It does seem like the longer this goes on, the less control they do have over it. Obviously, we’ve seen a pretty big rise in the gold price this year, but you think that once it takes out some overhead resistance levels, it could be just off to the races and they could completely lose control. Is that what you’re saying?

Gerald Celente: Yes, because this next crash that happens will be the worst crash in modern financial history because of all the reasons I began with, all of this cheap money pumping up equity markets, pumping up mergers and acquisition activity, and one I forgot, pumping again up the housing bubble worldwide. So when this bubble bursts, it’s going to be one that we’ve never seen before.

Look, here’s the numbers, for example. Take China, go back 20 years to 1996. What was China’s total debt? About $500 billion. Now it’s over $30 trillion. Look what’s going on with Europe, with the ECB. What a bunch of slime with their negative interest rates and buying back not only government but corporate bonds at the tune of, what, 80 billion Euros a month. Take a look what’s going on with the Bank of England. What did they lower interest rates to? Oh, only 322-year lows and now buying corporate and government debt.

So this bubble, when it bursts, we’re going to see gold prices hit levels they’ve never hit through before. And remember, even when gold hit its high back in the autumn of 2011, it still didn’t reach the high it left back when it hit the high in 1980 when you adjust it for inflation.

Mike Gleason: Switching gears here a bit. I want to get your thoughts on the social unrest that we’ve been seeing here lately. Certainly, the last few years here in the U.S., and especially the last few months have been very emotionally charged. This past week we saw some disturbing images coming out of Milwaukee, the latest location to grab headlines in the growing and apparent war between minorities and police. What do you make of all of this and what are some of the repercussions of these kinds of events, because we have some very polarising issues emerging here?

Gerald Celente: You said the word, polarising issues. And I began by saying the polarising wealth effect. Is that all of it? No, of course, it’s not, but that’s a big part of it. There’s no middle class, the middle class is shrinking out. When people lose everything and have nothing left to lose, they lose it. This is what we thought would have happened back when the markets crashed, when the panic of ’08 hit when we saw all those disturbances going on. What they’ve been doing is you don’t have bread lines anymore, so they keep shooting the people to keep them off the bread lines. Now, they’re going to levels where they can’t pop up at all.

Then you have huge drug issues on top of that. America is consuming, 80% of the world’s opiates and we’re only 5% of the world’s population. Look at all the prescription drugs people are on. Again, you have no future. It’s a futureless future. Then you have a militarised society. The fish rots from the head down. Look at the wars America is waging overseas. Look at how we glorify militarization, and we have a militarised police. The whole system is rotting out at all the levels.

This may be the last time you ever have me on your show because I may say this word and it may offend people, morality. It doesn’t exist anymore. Look what’s going on in this presidential election. I call it we’re getting “Crumped” between Clinton and Trump; 320 million people, this is it? This is the best we can do? And it’s a reflection of who America is and what it’s become, as we see it, as trends forecasts, as political atheists. I’m an American. My blood is Italian; my heart’s American. I launched Occupy Peace here from the most historic four corners in the United States at Kingston, New York, last September, and we own 3 of the most historic buildings in America. So when I say this, I say it because of my love of America and my heart breaking to see what’s going on.

There’re ways out of this, and Trump hits on some of them, but he goes off on a deep end on others. Of course, one of them is a trade. They sold us out with NAFTA, and it keeps going on and on. There’re other ways out, too. It was one of our Top Trends and you saw it with the Brexit. The people voted for it. It’s direct democracy. Let the people vote for what they want. Now, what can they do? How about Made in the U.K. with Pride? How about Made in America? How about a self-sustaining economy of 320 million people? Are we too stupid to make our own shirts, shoes, computers, and anything else?

There’re ways out of it, but we have a corrupt political system and how much more proof do people need? They start wars based on lies and they steal all our money, in the names of “Too big to fail” and any other words that they can make up. So there’re ways out, but not under the current system.

Mike Gleason: You touched on it there. The presidential election cycle is about to enter the home stretch here. It’s certainly provided with a lot of entertaining theatre so far and the best entertainment may be yet to come. Of course, we’re dealing with some really serious challenges as a country, and I don’t want to trivialise it, but give us your thoughts on Trump versus Hillary and what you’re expecting to see there this fall.

Gerald Celente: Well the cover of our Trends Journal in the spring of 2015 was “Cowards, Liars, Freaks and Fools: Welcome to the Presidential Reality Show.” That was two months before Trump got into the race. At that time, we picked Clinton. Then we went back and we picked Trump, and we picked Trump because of the issues, as what I talked about, it’s the bottom line. Most people care about jobs. You look at the polls. They care about income. They care about the future. Trump was trumping Clinton on that, and Clinton has no ground to stand on that, considering that Bill Clinton gave us NAFTA and these trade agreements. Trump was winning on that issue until he put his foot in his mouth a number of times and is destroying his own candidacy.

Running political elections is not rocket science. I began my career out of graduate school. I ran a mayoral campaign. I was the campaign coordinator, number-2 guy at graduate school. And Yonkers is a city like what, 300,000 people. I ran political campaigns in Westchester County. I was the assistant to the secretary of the New York State Senate and designed and instructed American Politics and Campaign Technology at St. John’s University. Just to give you a little bit of my background. This isn’t rocket science. You stick to the script. When you need to change the script, you change it. Trump can’t do it.

So we believe that Trump should have been beating Clinton, and their campaign is not over yet. We believe that the debates are going to really be the turning key of this whole election, and they’ll be the most watched events probably of any TV event in history. So we’re going to wait until that happens, but the election was Trump’s to win or lose, again, based on the numbers. Go back to 1992. There was a campaign slogan they used to have in Clinton campaign offices around the country, “It’s the economy, stupid.” And that’s all it is. These other issues, the wedge issues, they’re side issues. It’s the economy, stupid.

Mike Gleason: Well as we begin to close here, tell our listeners what other developments you’re watching for in the months ahead. Your firm’s stock and trade are in identifying trends before everyone else becomes aware of them and helping your subscribers position themselves to take advantage. What are you expecting to see? What are you expecting to see in this coming 6 to 12 months? What will the headlines be looking like that people aren’t talking about yet?

Gerald Celente: Well two of the big ones, we still believe there’s an imminent market crash to happen. Then we’re also concerned about terrorism and war. People keep talking about terrorism, but nobody wants to talk about the cause and effect. So let’s say a foreign country came to the United States and hated our president and said they didn’t trust him with the nuclear button, and they invaded our country and killed everybody that you loved and destroyed the place. You think you’d want to get even with the people that did it?

So now, let’s take a trip to Iraq and Afghanistan. How about Libya and Syria? Look what’s going on with Yemen, the United States supplying all the weaponry, $20 billion last year under Obama, the Nobel Peace Prize winner. They should call that thing a piece of crap, the Nobel Piece of Crap. Twenty billion dollars’ worth of armaments to bomb the innocent people of Yemen given to the Saudis and America is part of the coalition.

We believe there’s going to be something that’s going to take the people’s mind off the economy, because when all else fails, they take you to war. We keep hearing the war drums beating louder, whether they’re against Russia or China, and they’re growing louder in the Middle East. So those are the 2 things we’re looking at, a market panic like we’ve never seen before and something, either a terrorist attack, false flag or real, that gets the people’s minds off the money.

And I say that… go back to 2001. America was in a severe recession. People forgot that. George Bush’s popularity rating was going below 50% and he had only been in office for several months. All of a sudden 9/11, poof, shot right back up and what did they do? Began lowering interest rates to 46-year lows. Juiced up the economy with a false infusion of cheap dough. That’s the kind of things we’re looking at.

On the technological end, boy, look for advances in robotization, virtual reality, and artificial intelligence. We’re really going into a new age and we don’t think in this level it’s going to be a dot-com bust. We think it’s going to be real and there’s going to be a lot of profit opportunities in it.

Mike Gleason: Well Mr Celente, thank you so much for joining us again. I always love having you on and appreciate your candid insights as usual. Now before we let you go, as we always ask you to do, please let folks know how they can get their hands on the tremendous information you put out, both online and with the Trends Journal magazine as well as anything else that’s going on there at the Trends Research Institute that you want to mention.

Gerald Celente: We have the Trends Journal. We do a nightly broadcast, weekday broadcast, Trends in the News. We put out Trend Alerts each week and next week, our Trends Monthly. So it’s the only place we believe where you’re going to be able to read history before it happens. And we know people are having difficulties, so we have a discount request page, but even at that, the Trends Journal is only $99.00 a year for the digital edition. And it’s at TrendsResearch.com.

Mike Gleason: Well excellent stuff. Once again, have a great weekend, and I hope we can catch up with you again real soon. Appreciate your time, Mr Celente.

Gerald Celente: Thank you. And thanks so much for having me on.

Originally posted on Money Metals Exchange.

Reprinted with permission from Affluent Christian Investor.

The post Worst Market Crash, New Military Conflict, and a Gold Spike appeared first on LewRockwell.