632: What Does The Future Have in Store with Gerald Celente

Welcome to the Holistic Survival show with Jason Hartman. The economic storm brewing around the world is set to spill into all aspects of our lives. Are you prepared? Where are you going to turn for the critical life skills necessary to survive and prosper? The Holistic Survival show is your family's insurance for a better life. Jason will teach you to think independently, to understand threats and how to create the ultimate action plan. Sudden change or worst case scenario, you'll be ready. Welcome to holistic survival, your key resource for protecting the people, places and profits you care about in uncertain times. Ladies and gentlemen, your host, Jason Hartman.

Welcome to holistic Survival show number eight. I'm your host, Jason Hartman. Thanks for joining us. Today we are going to do something a little different today. We're going to have a prediction person on and he's quite well known, quite famous. His name is Jerry Harold Celente. You've probably heard of him. And what makes this interview kind of interesting is that we recorded it quite a few months ago, actually. I think it's about eight or nine months old. So you're going to have a chance to gauge some of the accuracy of some of his predictions. We'll let you listen into that. I also want to mention the show, of course, is all about protecting people, places and profits. And if you want to know more about the profit side of life, our other show, our sister show, the Creating wealth podcast, is very, very famous show. And you can find out more about that@jason hartman.com and get involved in some of the coaching programs, the live events that my other company, Platinum Properties Investor Network offers. And we have one of our signature events coming up on October 10th and 11th, which is called the Masters Weekend. We only do that twice a year and we'd love to have you join us for that. Or if you require any coaching as far as the financial side of things, inquire about our coaching program, our property investments, so on and so forth. And that's the Creating wealth podcast. You, you can find it by looking up my name, Jason Hartman, at the itunes store or going to Jason hartman.com and that's all completely free, so join us for that if you're interested in protecting the profits, the money side of life. Okay, let's go to the interview with Gerald Celente. And again, this is a little bit older, so it'll be kind of more interesting that way. And he's going to talk to you about commercial real estate, which we are very bearish on, by the way. Still pretty bullish on housing as long as it's in the right markets, but commercial real estate is just going into its tough time. And Gerald will talk about that on this show and many other predictions as well. So let's listen into the interview with trends research forecaster Gerald Celente. It's my pleasure to welcome gerald celente of trendsresearch.com Gerald, welcome to the show.

Hey, thanks for having me.

Good to have you on. Tell us what you're forecasting for the economy. I love your work and just want to hear more.

Well, in 2007, we had predicted the panic of 08. As a matter of fact, we took the domain name out on November 7, 2007 of the panicof08.com and now we're saying that we're going to go into the greatest depression and it's just beginning. So 2009 is going to be the awakening. Reality is going to set in really, really strong. You go back during 2008 for over half a year, it was a question among the major media and between the two presidential candidates whether or not we were going into recession. And now it's very clear that we are.

They kept focusing on the ridiculous academic definition, which isn't adjusted for inflation. And of course we're in a recession. I mean, we've been in one for about a year and a half if you ask me.

I agree. As a matter of fact, we said we were in a recession in 2007 by the second half. And you know, we look at the real world and in the real world, as you well know, median household income is below 1999 levels. Wages are not keeping up with inflation. People are working longer and harder and having more difficulty making ends meet. So, yeah, we're in a recessionary cycle that we believe is going to devolve into a depressionary cycle. And I'll tell you why we're saying this is the greatest depression and why it will be worst than the one that everyone refers to the 1930s. Back then most people, as you well know, didn't own homes. And those that did didn't have what they call home equity loans. And back then they called second mortgages. If you had a second mortgage back then, you were considered a loser. Back then people didn't have credit cards. Those are a relatively new invention over the last 40, 50 years. And back then people weren't holding $14 trillion plus worth of private debt. Personal debt.

Debt has certainly become fashionable, hasn't it?

Yeah. And back then we had trade surpluses. We had a $700 billion about trade deficit this year. And it's been registering that continually in those numbers. Back then we had budget surpluses. Now we're $11.5 trillion in the hole. And it might get worse because they've taken on the debt of Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, aig, and who knows how many other banks that they won't tell us who they're giving money to and who they're buying. And back then, we weren't fighting two wars that have cost over $2 trillion and keep dumping money into them. And back then, people didn't see their life savings evaporate with their IRAs and 401ks.

And back then, people probably actually had more savings as a percentage of income, I would assume, than today.

Oh, much higher. I would venture to say it was probably in the seventh percentile. That's just a guess, but I mean, that's what it was even during the 70s. So we're going into this downturn at a very, very difficult time. And there's no amount of fiscal or monetary stimulus or packages that anybody's going to invent that's going to get us out of it.

So you mean Bernanke, Paulson and Obama can't save us?

Well, you know, it's interesting how we needed that $700 billion bailout bill because if we didn't, the world would come to an end. And now they're saying, as the treasury czar, Paulson is saying, well, we're not going to use that $700 billion the way we said we were. We're going to use it differently. Well, wait a minute. If you're going to use it differently than the way you said you were going to use it to save us, that was a lie or you were wrong.

Of course it was a lie. That's what they do there, you know.

Well, look, I look at both the Democrats and Republicans. I'm a political atheist. I don't believe in fairy tales. And I look at both of them as criminal organizations. And I'll tell you why. It's not an inflammatory statement. It's a moral one. We're fighting wars in foreign countries for fake reasons. And the reasons that we're in Iraq, Saddam Hussein was supposed to have had weapons of mass destruction and ties to Al Qaeda, and both of those are false. Whether or not they were intentionally false or manipulated false makes no difference. They're false. So fighting those wars and killing innocent people, to me is an immoral act. And robbing us blind in broad daylight with these bailouts, rescue plans, and giving money to their friends, that's thievery. So I'm against these acts. They find them, you know, they're against my moral principles. So that's why I say that they're criminal organizations.

Yeah. And don't forget to include Wall street in there as a criminal organization.

Well, it's the Wall street mob that's running DC Right. And yeah, and you have the different members of the families you have now you have the Goldman Sachs mob in D.C. you have the Morgan Stanley mobs in New York and you go around the country, you know, so that's all it is. This is, you know, the mob is in control.

Hey, you know, before we leave, the whole subject of Bernanke and Paulson and Wall street, everybody is accusing Paulson and I don't disagree with it, but I just wanted to know if there's a specific of lining the pockets of his old buddies that he worked with at Goldman Sachs. How is he enriching himself from this bailout? Certainly he's a powerful. If he's got, you know, he's like a financial czar if he's got all that money to dole out. But.

Well, I think there have been reports out on what his stake in Goldman is or was. And I'm sure that, you know, it's like saying, you know, I loved it from, you know how the liberals and of course I'm no Bush fan either, as I mentioned, I'm a political atheist. You know how they went after Cheney for having ties with Halliburton. I mean, what's the difference here? And then we look at the Obama team that he went to for the first advice following his election. And who did he bring in? Robert Rubin and Larry Summers, you know, the chief architects along with Graham from the Republican end of the destruction of the Glass Steagall act which was put in place, it was a depression era piece of legislation to prevent the banks from becoming banksters.

And that's what formed the fdic Glass Steagall. Right?

I'm not sure.

Yeah, I think, I think the FDIC was like a big part of that act if I'm not mistaken. But could be. Anyway, go ahead.

So anyway, so you know, so when they talk about change, how about no change? You know, so it's the same group in there and you know, as we know as Robert Rubin left the Clinton administration, he then got a plump position with Citigroup which was created as a result of the breaking up of the Glass Steagall act that allowed banks to get into the brokerage and Insurance business and other businesses that they were previously not allowed to get into. So this whole thing really started unraveling under the Carter administration because if most people remember, if they're old enough, you know, banks only did. There was only intrastate banking, there was no interstate banking. And that's what kept the banks from expanding to become too big to fail. And as we see it now, with the government now in control of the world's largest insurance company, in control of the largest mortgage companies, buying up banks and now talking about buying up a good chunk or loaning money to the biggest auto companies, you know, you could call this communism in the sense of the state controlled monopolies, or you could call it fascism, or you could call it socialism. But the one thing you cannot call it is free enterprise. And you can't call it democracy because the people had no say in it. And the majority of the polls are showing the people being against it. And particularly in the congressional districts where people had registered 500 to 1 complaints about the bailouts.

So what do we do about it? I mean, obviously Washington is completely detached from the citizens. I mean, there are so many things of concern with the government. You know, these national id and, you know, I saw Bill Gross last week at Pimco, okay, and asked him about this consolidation that's going on in the banks. And he actually was saying that, you know, we'll probably consolidate down to really 50 or so large banks. You know, what do we have, like 8,000 now? They say there will be about 3,000 in just a couple of years as failures and consolidations continue. And what the regulars want to do is consolidate it even more, which to me is disconcerting. I mean, you've got less choice, you've got more control of the money supply by the Federal Reserve and the government and all of this stuff. I mean, the government is just becoming too intrusive. It's a concern.

I think disconcerting is too mild a word.

Yeah, okay, fair.

As I said, you could call it socialism, fascism or communism. You can't call it free enterprise. And what they're doing is they're creating giants that are too big to fall. And so we all become servants of the giants. And that's what's going on over here right in front of our eyes. The levels of hypocrisy are beyond anything that anyone's ever seen before. And again, the general public is against it. They don't understand it in totality, but they feel it's not right. And so as it continues to Go. I agree. We're going to see less and less banks. Look, there was the New York Times report of listening in on a JP Morgan on a JPMorgan Chase conference call following the gift of $25 billion to them of our taxpayer money. And it was ostensibly going to be used to buy up toxic debt, and it didn't. They said in the conference call that they were going to use it to buy up weaker financial institutions. So they're telling us it's in black and white and anyone that wants to listen to it could hear it. So that's what's going on here.

And now you've got the big three of from Detroit on Capitol Hill today and they've got their hand out. I mean, the bailouts, just the government. What are they going to do be in every business now, you know.

Well, that's what we're saying is that, you know, we're looking at something here, you know, that is entirely out of context with the basic fundamentals of who we are as a country. And more than that, the levels of hypocrisy, because these are the same people out there that lecture each one of us little people to be responsible and slap us down and beat us around when we're not. Yet they do what they want to do to bail out their buddies. Here's a trend. We're looking at a revolution in this country because what's going on now is that they're forcing the little people to pay for the too big to fails at every. For example, here in New York, Mayor Bloomberg, they want to raise property taxes 7%. Oh, brilliant. As people are earning less and losing their job, keep raising property taxes so these bureaucrats could keep working. Oh, oh. And then on top of that, we're going to put more enforcement officers on the beat. So if you drive your car and you start and you go over that little white line, you know that pedestrians have to walk through the box over there, you're blocking the light. Then you get a ticket. And then they're sending more sales tax agents out and shaking down the pizza parlors and every little store, grocery store, whatever, the green grocers for more tax receipts.

I think, Gerald, for years the government has really gone into business against the citizens. All this over controlled parking and, you know, is your dog on a leash. And you know, all of this stuff is seemingly logical and good and, you know, we needed for a cooperative society. But every time they pass a new law, all they do is find a way to raise revenue. It's really a tax Increase. You know, the parking meters used to in most cities not be patrolled after 5pm and now it's 7, 8, 9pm and it's just more revenue to raise. Give out more parking tickets.

Exactly. More revenue to raise. Keep shaking down the little people. This is a Titanic situation. You have Obama on the bow saying, yes, we can. And you know who the we's are? The we's are the people that wrote first class. You know, the first class passage on the Titanic, they're too big to save or the too big to drown. And the rest of the people, they locked down into steerage and wouldn't let them out. It's a metaphor for exactly what's happening today.

So what do we do about it?

Well, you know, personally, what I've done is I don't have any money in the banks anymore. We only keep the Trends Research Institute's operating expenses. And I take everything out because I believe a great probability, since they're painting Obama as the next fdr, that they probably will call a bank holiday following his inauguration or coronation.

So what does the bank holiday mean?

Well, the bank holiday means that. And I love the word they use, holiday. You know, let's have a holiday. You know, we'll take your money is what it means. Yeah, you'll be able to get your money out. Don't worry. It's FDIC insured. You just can't get it out all at once.

Well, and the thing you know, I interviewed Peter Schiff a couple shows ago on my show, and I love what he said. He said, yeah, the FDIC ensures that you'll get your money back, but they just don't ensure what it'll actually be worth, in other words, in real dollars. So they'll definitely, like they do in.

Argentina, another underdeveloping nation. So that's part of it. And also they may confiscate gold. There's a lot of talk coming out and they're just putting the trial balloons out about reestablishing some type of a Bretton woods agreement and putting people back on. Putting standards back on gold. In which case gold would then have to be worth, you know, several thousand dollars an ounce.

Didn't, didn't they meet last weekend? I think November 15th, there was a meeting on that. The G20 meeting or something.

That's correct, yeah.

Tell us about that. What happened there?

Well, they don't know. They're not putting out much information on it and they're really downplaying it as though nothing happened. And we're convinced here at the Institute that something did happen and they're not telling us what it is.

But it's so interesting. I can't imagine that they would want to put us back on the gold standard. I mean, fiat money is. Every central banker in the world, that's their dream, is fiat.

Here's the thing, why we're still bullish on gold. What are all the countries doing to battle this credit crisis and downward spiral?

Printing more fiat money.

How much can you print? When does it become worthless?

Well, when the people finally figure out the smoke and mirrors scam, the chicken comes home to rooster. They figure out that their money's worthless when. I guess it's really like the Weimar Republic when you take a wheelbarrow of money to go buy a loaf of bread and the wheelbarrow won't fit through the door. You leave it outside to go in and get your bread and someone dumps the money out to run off with the wheelbarrow, you know, there you go. That's when you know that the scams.

Yeah, right, that's a good one. Yep. Running down the street with the wheelbarrow.

Right.

And that's what we're, that's, that's why we're bullish on gold. Because here's another fact that's happening. And as you well know, central banks and other banks are shorting gold, selling gold, particularly on the comex. There's reports of, you know, banks selling tens and tens of thousands, 20,000, 40, hundreds of thousands of shorting gold futures to drive down the price.

Right, right. So I wanted to get to that with you as we talked before we started recording. Gerald, the gold price is manipulated. See, I agree, as I mentioned before, with the premise of the gold bugs in the sense that fiat money, inflation, blah blah, blah, all of that is totally accurate and completely true in my opinion. However, you can't finance it for 30 years. The interest isn't tax deductible. If you could, you can't rent it to anybody. And it's manipulated by these central bankers.

You know, there's no question. Yeah, but here's the difference. When hyperinflation happens, and we think it's going to happen if they continue, the only response that they could ever give is to print more money. A stimulus package, a work project, administration package, whatever it might be, it comes out to printing more money. And at some point that money is going to be less, less, have less and less value. The other part of what I wanted to say about gold, you could go to any of the Major websites that sell gold. And you'll see the same thing on all of them. Due to the high demand and shortage of product, it will take several weeks before we can send you the physical product.

Well, it's not just that the premiums are so much higher. The spot price may be seven hundred ten bucks or whatever it. But the premium went a year ago from like $30 an ounce to $110 an ounce.

And this is what. There's a shortage of product, which makes.

Me think Comex is going to start defaulting because you want to talk about.

That as well, that Comex is saying that they won't deliver unless it's an economic necessity. And you're. This is what I've heard. I don't know. It is a fact, right?

Yeah, I've heard that, too. I talked to a commodities broker yesterday in Chicago who was on another show. I heard him talking, so I called him up and he knows how you can take delivery from Comex. And they make it very difficult. They make it rather easy, though, to take delivery and leave it in their warehouse. How convenient. But see, if you really want to see that stuff and get your hands on it, it is really difficult to do. You know, unless you live in New York right near the exchange, then it's probably fairly easy. But if you're like me in California, you can't get it.

Well, years ago I had taken delivery and it was very easy. And now, of course, the game has changed.

Right.

So what we're saying is there's a shortage of product out there. And particularly people around the world who have gone through these kind of scenarios before know that gold is golden when paper money isn't worth anything. Now, to address the other issue about interest and not getting. Right now, the strategy is not risk, it's capital preservation. And gold is looked upon by many as preserving capital, not necessarily looking at it as an investment to make money, but to keep the value of what you have as the value of what you have continues to decline dramatically. So we don't give investment advice. But I can tell you what people that I know what they're doing. They're putting assets in gold, they're putting assets in Euros even though the dollar is beating it. Now they're putting assets in Swiss francs. And what they're doing is they're hedging that if one goes up, the other goes down. At least they have some type of a parity. And that's what the game is now, wealth preservation.

Yeah, it's a defensive posture. No Question about that. I agree with you. But talk to me about the gold price manipulation. See, I agree that you can't manipulate anything forever. But you know, I interviewed Ellen Brown on a prior author of Web of Debt, you probably know her and she talked about how the 300 year Ponzi scheme of central banking is coming to an end. And it seems like it is. But you know, it's like the people on Wall street that say buy a stupid mutual fund and invest for the long term. Well, I agree with value investing. I mean I agree with sort of the Buffett style of investing, you know, long term, not instant gratification type thing. But the question is how long can we all wait? Can they manipulate the price of those precious metals for another 10, 20, 30, 40, 50?

I think the string is running out. And that's why we're saying there's going to be the greatest depression in 2009. It's going to be really, people are going to start to feel it. Of course they're not going to call it that. Just like they're not calling the recession a recession.

Well, they'll probably call it a correction.

Yeah. How many times does the market bottom out as well? That's a good, the market's capitulated. It's a good time to buy. How many times have I heard that one?

Oh, I've been hearing that like forever. You know, I heard that when The Dow was 79 or 9,700.

So in talking about the long term investment, let's put some reality onto the picture. Remember when the dot com bubble burst in 2000 and by the way, we had predicted in our Trends journal in October of 1999 that the dot com bubble would burst by the second quarter of 2000.

Right on the money.

And we knew it because of all of the talk about, you know, E commerce. And we looked at Christmas sales receipts and saw how minimal they were regarding Internet purchasing. So we knew the thing was going to end. That was going to be the wake up call. Although you know, the reality had set in before. The wake up call has to hit people hard in the head before they realize it. So let's now go back to 2000. The NASDAQ was the Dow of the 1920s. It was the 1929 Dow in the 1920s. It was the, you know what it was? It was railroads and radio and, and real estate. In 2000 it was technology. The Dow, when it peaked, it peaked at 5,000. What's the, excuse me, the NASDAQ. What's the NASDAQ Worth today?

Well, the NASDAQ today. Let me see. I got the Dow up here. I don't have NASDAQ. Dow's 8424. Oh, there's the NASDAQ 1483.

Yeah. Long haul investing.

Yeah. Right.

Yeah. For how long? How many lifetimes? This. How many. Really, how many lifetimes? This would be great from people. When the people that believe in reincarnation, you know, I remember in his own lifetime. Come on, this thing isn't happening. So the whole system is breaking down. And what people need to realize, we believe in our forecast, this is very. That what's going on in the financial markets is a symptom of a much greater trend, which is the decline of empire America.

Yes. The empire is trying to set up a territory in the Middle east right now and it seems to be a rather bit of a struggle, I'd say.

You know, I do a lot of media and I was on a station in the UK yesterday and I said to the fellow, basically, you know, the same thing, but I pray I went with an opening with it. I said, you'll be able to understand what I'm saying very clearly. I said, just like what happened to England, the same thing is happening in America. It's the end of the empire. And for the same reasons that you guys went under, we're going under. It's called imperial overreach. And imperial overreach doesn't only mean in a military sense. There are many other factors that make it happen.

Yeah. At home, too. I mean, we're overreaching at home. The fire is getting into everything here.

Exactly.

And abroad. We've got military bases in 130 countries. I mean, they ought to just call Earth America. You know, it's. It's unbelievable, the reach of this country. And it needs to become a little more isolationist, in my view. It's just.

I wouldn't call it isolationist. I would go. Go back to. Let's go back to the fundamentals of what the country was built upon. You know, how about. Let's listen to Washington about not getting involved in foreign.

Entanglements. Yeah.

Can't be clearer than that.

Right?

I mean, if Washington knew what they did to his name by calling it Washington, he'd be turning in his grave, that's for sure.

All of those founding fathers would.

Washington is a far cry from what Washington believed in. So anyway, no, this is, you know, I'm joking in one sense, but another, I'm really not. This is the end of the empire and it's only beginning.

Well, tell us number one, how 2009 is going to look. You say that we'll have a depression. There's no academic definition for depression like there is recession. Do you have a definition?

Well, you know the academic definitions, you know, it's like going to college to learn how to learn about economics.

Sure.

When in the real world, you know, economics is what you face every day and learn about it on a day to day basis. So yeah, we're gonna see violent crime to levels that we've never seen before. It's gonna look a lot like Mexico City and New York City, but that's really violent.

Property crime for the, for the gain of property.

Right, Property crime and violent crime. Robberies, muggings. You know, it's a lot worse than the. Now you have people whacked out on crystal meth and a variety of prescription drugs that never existed before. So you get somebody that's out of their mind and desperate. I practice close combat martial arts and have been for over 25 years. And one of the first things my teacher taught Me, John Perkins, attackproof.com is his website. If anybody wants to see what this stuff is about is don't go into redneck bars. That's the first line of self defense. In other words, you stay away from people who you know you're going to have a problem with trying to talk reason to. So you don't talk reason to anybody that's whacked out in their minds to begin with and now they're drugged out on top of it. And we're going to see more and more of that. We're going to see violence to levels that we've never seen before. By the way, in 2009 the next shoe to drop is going to be the commercial real estate sector. Now you're a real estate expert.

Yeah, and we do commercial as well. Now when you say that though, I want you to define it. What type of commercial do you mean? Office space, Apartment buildings, retail centers. I think retail and office have huge problems, but I'm still fairly bullish on housing as long as it's in the right market.

Well, I wouldn't consider apartments in the commercial sector.

Okay, good. That's residential in your mind.

That's residential. And you're going to see more rentals as less people can afford to buy. True in theory, but if things get so bad, you know, maybe people that are. You won't be able to afford to rent. And by the way, one of the trends that we're looking at in 2009 is that McMansion become McBoarding houses.

Oh, I agree with that, by the way. We've built so many McMansions. And part of the Harry Dent thought is that by 2010, 2012, there's going to be just a huge glut of McMansions. And that was before his current thinking on the Great Depression ahead. I agree with you. Yeah, those will be.

So now what we're going to look at in the commercial sector again, current events form, future trends. What did Citigroup announce yesterday? Going to lay off 53,000 people.

That's a big layoff. By the way, Gerald, do you know how many employees they have in total?

I think three hundred and something thousand.

So that's a good portion of their workforce.

I think about 8% of their workforce is being laid off. Now. We're looking at. We just saw Circuit City go bankrupt. We saw linen and linens and things is going out of business.

And there's no new big box retailers starting up, are there?

No. And so now we're going to start seeing ghost malls start to pop up because a lot of new Bolton malls have been built. You know the deal, the developer goes to the bank and said, listen, I.

Have these lease agreements and the leases are broken. I have friends that are in that sector.

The leases are broken.

Yeah, they're pulling out of the deals left and right. Target. Exactly. You know, they just overbuilt. There's a total over capacity.

And how long, I ask you, has this overcapacity been going on for a good.

Well, you could say 40 years, but you could for sure say eight years.

For sure. Eight years. So now you have this dramatic overcapacity of we're overstored, as they used to say. And now you're going, you see seeing people going bankrupt, breaking lease agreements and also closing stores. So the next level is the commercial real estate sector. 41% of the growth in New York, by the way, over the last eight years was in the financial sector.

And now we're seeing the big downsizing of that sector.

Exactly. So that's the next shoe to fall. And as you well know, the commercial sector, and you could please correct me if I'm wrong, because this is my thinking and I can be wrong. The commercial sector in terms of dollar volume is much greater than the subprime mortgage area, which is what, estimated at a trillion or so.

Right. And so you've got a much larger. Well, I don't know if, you know, there's fewer commercial properties. So I really don't know the answer to that. I'm not sure.

Well, when you look at all the malls and all the commercial building being put up, I would guesstimate well over a trillion dollars. Office towers and on and on and on. We're talking big numbers. Now. Having said that, I want to talk about some of the positive things that we see developing. What's bad for Wall street is wonderful for Main street in the sense that it was Wall street that created the too big to fails. It was Wall street that allowed this development process to take place, of big box stores and ugly malls that destroyed all the small towns and little cities. Now the trend is changing because the model that development is built upon among the major stores is growth and expansion of which neither is happening now. It's retraction. So now they're losing shareholders, their stocks are declining after the Christmas vacation. The scenario that we're building from 2009 is that's when you're going to start seeing the feeling the real pain. You're going to start seeing a lot of major retailers start to go belly up because Christmas sales are going to be a disaster this year.

I thought you were giving us some good news.

The good news is they're going to be leaving a lot of gaps. As the big guys fail, gaps are created. And this is going to be a wonderful time for nimble, quick thinking, visionary entrepreneurs to fill in the gaps left behind by the too big to fail.

And that's mostly on the retail side of. I mean, you're talking retail stores or retail stores.

Retail. The retail business, the local businesses buy local is going to become a mantra. The real estate that I happen to like and that I'm in is in the old fashioned small towns that thrived for a lot of years. Not so much because of only the business and industry around them, but because of their location and that they had not been destroyed during the urban development madness that happened about the mid-1960s up until just recently. And I'm up here in Kingston, New York, which was the capital of New York State during the Revolution. And we're placed right off the most historic corner in the United States. The only place where on each corner there's a stone building from the 1700s and the town is virtually intact in the area that we're in a couple of, you know, mistakes that been made in ripping down beautiful old buildings. But by and large it's a walking community. You could walk to work, you could walk to shops, and you live where.

You work and it doesn't matter if the gas price goes through the roof too much.

Precisely. And then we have mass transportation all around us. So if you want to go to New York City, if you want to go to Albany, anywhere you want to go, you have a good shot at getting there. So those are the kind of investment opportunities that we see, and we continue to see those being very profitable in the future. Another thing that this area has around it, it's perfectly located because there's an agricultural base near it, very strong academic base. We have Vassar, New Paul's, Marist College, Bard College, all within, you know, 20, 30 minutes of the area. And so you also have high tech in here as well. Not as much as it used to be. It used to be a big IBM bastion, but still a lot of high tech in the area. So when you put it all together, those are the kind of investment opportunities that we like.

Well, give us some specific predictions on some stuff. And, and let's talk about population growth as well. Population and immigration, actually. I mean, the experts say within the next, you know, 31 to 34 years, we're going to add another hundred million people in this country. And some say we're going to see. And we're really already seeing a little slowdown on Mexican immigration due to the job market being not so hot here. What are some of your predictions as far as the impact of, of the demographic trends?

The demographic trend is going to be a tricky one to predict because as the economy declines to the levels that we're looking at, you're going to start seeing more, much greater levels of plagues, viruses, food scares. There may be a thinning of the population.

Really?

Yeah. A new black plague.

Well, what is the plague? The bird flu. I mean, that's.

We don't know what it will be. But, you know, when you look at the great plagues that have happened in the past, many of them were sanitation based. As a matter of fact, the great fallacy that people live with and continue to take with them is that the modern medicine has increased our longevity. The reason why people lived longer during the 20th century, 80% of it came from sanitation and food handling. And that's a fact.

Interesting.

Okay, and so now you're going to start seeing both sanitation and food handling worsen as safety concerns cannot be enforced.

In other words, the government doesn't have the money to run health departments and.

They'Re doing a lousy job at it now.

But you know, back to our prior thought, though, Gerald, if the government is looking for more tax revenue, won't they Be continuing to attack the pizza shop and the sub shop down the street and the restaurant.

But that's not where the plague will come from.

Yeah, okay.

The big scares come from. Look what happened in China with what they, you know, with all the food scares. Look what happens in the US when we get a. What's that, what's that term? Not listeria. What's the other one that happens? Salmonella is one of them. And there's another one that happens too from eating unsafe E. Coli. Thank you. Yeah, E. Coli bacteria.

Right. But that doesn't really kill the.

Well, but that kind of a thing. What I'm saying is when it happens, it happens in mass. And these recalls happen in the hundreds and hundreds of thousands of tons of different stuff is being recalled. So because the distribution is so centralized, if the poison enters into the system, whatever that new one may be, whatever that new killer bug may be, it'll wipe out a lot. And the other one too that we're going to be writing about in the next top trends of 2009 is the possibility, the very real possibility of increased brain damage from all of the wireless communication, particularly cell phones. And the studies are out there and they keep coming out over and over again and again. We have to look at the short amount of time that most people have been using cell phones. You know, go back to 2000. Most people weren't using them back then. And everybody used to say, no, I'm not going to get one. I'm only going to get one for an emergency. And of course now we've become an addicted nation. Matter of fact, Obama, they say he's going to have withdrawal symptoms, not using his BlackBerry. So there are loads of studies out there, Swedish studies, Danish studies, Israeli studies, French studies that are showing very high probabilities of brain damage, brain cancers. So we can see a great thinning of the population coming down the line. And while we also agree that overpopulation would be disastrous, another hundred million people in the country when we can't take care of the 300 million plus that we have now. That's why we're saying these are tricky numbers to project forward on a straight line without accounting for variable wild cards.

Okay, so the question really there is, look, population is like multi level marketing. I told two friends and they told two friends, you know, people reproduce and if they live 80 years instead of 40 years, population increases. I mean around the world. The experts say we're going to have nine and a half billion people, a 50% increase by 2050. So the question is number one, is that number will be reduced below the 6.5 billion we have today. Or they'll just not be in the US they'll be elsewhere. Because I think it's an issue of relativity. You know, the US may not be as good as it used to be, which I don't think it will be. I think Americans have been had a false sense of wealth propped up by the Alan Greenspan credit bubble, but it's still going to be better than a lot of other countries. So where is that population reduction coming from that it's really like people are dying? I mean, in mass. Exactly.

What we're saying is these are probabilities as trend forecasters that we look to. We don't know which one it will be, but the cards are being played that are setting it up. And when you look at the Black plague, you know, it was a sanitation issue as well as many other plagues since. So with conditions deteriorating, with costs being cut, with food supplies being centralized, you're going to see more and more probabilities of these kind of things happening. So on the flip side of it, the buy local trend, the organic trend, the clean food trend, those are the people, the whole health healing people, those are the people that have a better chance of making money, seizing opportunity and staying healthy in an increasingly poisoned world. You know, no one's talking about hardly anymore about all the cancer deaths. I mean, everybody knows somebody or many somebodies that are dying at very young ages. I mean, we're getting poisoned 100 different ways backwards. I mean, you can name it, you know, whether it's mercury in the air, whether it's, you know, PCB's in the water, whatever it might be. And it's no slowdown. I mean, what did they just come out with the, with one of the studies about the plastic bottles, you know, and then they go, oh, well, we didn't really do the research that we should have done on it. No, I mean, this thing is a wild card that's ready. That's Pandora's box of probabilities for a black plague.

I call that the difference between the virtual economy and the real economy. The virtual economy is the smoke and mirrors, Wall Street, Washington, Federal Reserve game. And that economy is extremely unhealthy because the house of cards is collapsing. You know, we know that the emperor has no clothes. The real economy is not so great, but it's not nearly as bad as that. And when you talk about doing business in local communities, and that's what I call the real economy, And I think that is just a refreshing trend. I'm actually looking forward to that to some extent.

And that's what, you know, that's what we're looking at. And the other thing, too, is that a major part of what's going to happen, you know, things don't just die and die off completely. You know, it's like a branch of a tree that falls to the ground. It decomposes, it creates a new fertilizer, and something else grows from it. We can see the birth of a Renaissance rebirth in the sense that people will look back to the past to pick out the best of the past and retrofit it for the future. And we see that possibility coming once, you know, again, you know, I travel the world, and regardless of the bad press the US Gets, the general population around the world still looks to the United States as the epicenter of inventiveness and innovation, even though we're not anymore. And the people that live here know differently. But what we do have is flexibility. And I always say this also, that if I'm Italian descent, if I was born in Italy, I would never be the trend forecaster I am today, because I would have been restricted by the culture there. To think like them, right in America, you get to really think the way you want to. You can really break out of the mold. But we become so corporatized, homogenized, and federalized that we're losing that individuality. There's an opportunity now for that individuality to come to the surface. The motto at the Trends Research Institute is think for yourself. I don't have any leaders. I want to make this really clear. I have no leaders. Obama's not my leader. McCain's not my leader. George Bush isn't my leader. Hillary Clinton's not my leader. Bill Clinton's not my leader. Sarkozy, Bush, Berlusconi, Brown. They're not my leaders. If they said they were standing on one side of the street and said, gerald, come over here, I want to talk to you. I said, come over here if you want to talk to me. They're not my leaders. And people should understand this. These people are not more intelligent than they are. They certainly by their deeds and actions, are living lower moral standards than many. And when people free themselves up to find the greatness within themselves, because we all have that spark of uniqueness that makes us individual. And then we develop that, then we become masters of what we do, then we have a renaissance, and we believe the ground is being fertilized with the decay of this system for a renaissance to sprout forth.

How specific do you get in your predictions? I mean, where's the Dow going to be in a year? What's the price of oil going to be in a year? What's the price of gold going to be in a year? What's the real estate market going to be doing in a year? You know, that kind of stuff. What will the hyperinflation rate be and when are we going to see this?

It's very difficult to tell because of all the manipulation.

I agree.

So nobody could really say that. But what we do do is trend forecast is, is that as conditions continue to change, we keep readjusting the when. By the way, in trend forecasting, the when is the most difficult time. Timing is again, you don't know, for example, they're going to change the game and do things like, okay, no more short selling. You only could say stocks are good and buy into them. You can't sell them short. You don't know when they're going to do this kind of stuff. And that changes the game, but it changes the hand. But it doesn't change the game. It may stall things for a while. We're looking at Gold 2000 and we think it could happen next year. We look at the real estate market continuously. So a deflationary cycle accompanied by hyperinflation. So that means that, yeah, prices of houses are going to go down, but you're going to need more money to buy them because your money is going to be worth less.

And that means your debt is going to be worth a lot less too. Right?

Exactly. So those, by the way, when they, when that can't afford it. Borrowing money may be a very smart thing. As a matter of fact, I plan on doing it myself.

You know, Gerald, I totally agree with you. I say now invest in debt that stock up on cheap money. It's on sale, it's below the rate of inflation already and it's good.

And I think it's going to get.

Lower and we're going to have a much higher inflation. So when you talk about inflation, I mean, I know you can't say exactly when because that is a hard part with all the manipulation. I think all of this bailout money. And you look at the adjusted monetary base published by the Fed recently and you know, you see it's, it's through the roof. It's a hockey stick. You look at the graph and all this money, I think is going to trickle down through Wall street and all of that in about A year and a half, two years, we're going to see some very significant inflation. But I don't know exactly what that number is going to be. I don't know if that means 15% annually or 25% annually. I mean, think of it. If you have 25% inflation, which is very possible, it's been much higher in other places throughout history. Your debt is wiped out in four years.

Exactly. I'm on board with. You invest in debt. Yeah, but only for the people that can afford it and really afford it, not to speculate in it.

Yeah, I agree. And you know that when you say speculate, I absolutely agree with you. Debt is a powerful tool, but it's got to be used with respect, okay? With prudence. And so make sure you're not paying your own debts, your renters are. As long as you can keep them in there, they can keep their jobs. They can pay your debt for you. But the issue is, I mean, what number do you think we're going to see in our future? Inflation?

I think 25% is a very real one. I mean, I grew up during the Carter years. You know, I was in, you know, and I remember what was. What were mortgages back then? 22%.

Oh, yeah. 21%. 19%.

21%. So, yeah, you can see that kind of inflation. And now it's going to be much worse. And by the way, just to give you a little bit about my background, I began my career. I was running the mayoral campaign in Yonkers, New York, out of graduate school. In 1971, I worked in the New York State Senate as the assistant to the secretary of the Senate. And that was the worst job I ever had. And that set the foundation for my becoming a political atheist. I was a kid in my early 20s and BSing with my buddies in the back of the Senate chamber, and a senator would walk in, and all of a sudden my buddy would leave me to go pull out a chair to help the senator sit down. And my friend would come back. And being a kid that grew up in the Bronx, you know, I'd say to him, what's the matter? The cat can't sit down by himself? He needs some help. So to watch grown men grovel is a disgusting spectacle. But you get inside the government, you can see that everyone there sucks their way up to the top. From there, I went to St. John's University. In 1972, I taught the nation's first course, ostensibly in American politics and campaign technology, how to run campaigns. I was a pro at it then I went. I was a government affairs specialist and living in Chicago and commuting between Chicago and D.C. quite frequently. And so I was in D.C. during the first energy crisis in 1973. Jimmy Carter later on becomes president and the Iranian conflict starts breaking out. I had been following it for years, knew how the CIA overthrew the democratically elected government of Iran, on and on. And so when the conflict started really heating up, I knew the revolution was real and that the Shah would be overthrown. He had this thing called the savak, the secret police. They were brutal. And so it was a revolution waiting to happen. Jimmy Carter goes, spends New Year's Eve with the Shah and his wife, and he comes back and he announces to the American people upon his return that the Shah is the island of stability in the Middle East. At that moment, I became a political atheist. I no longer believed anything.

So why do you say that about the Shah, though? I'm not sure I connected that whole thing.

So Shah, Shah was this brutal dictator.

He was brutal, okay.

Oh, my God, the savak, the secret police.

But wasn't Khomeini worse, though? I mean, I told again, you know.

It'S not a question of. That's like when I used to tell when I say to people, I wouldn't vote for Obama, here's why. And I run down the list. You know, he wants to send more troops to Afghanistan, wants more nuclear, he wants more coal, he's for the bailout. I go run down the whole list. They say, oh, so you're going to vote for McCain? No, I'm not going to vote for him either. You know, I don't like him either. So not liking one doesn't mean the other one's better. He's saying the seeds to the revolution was sown from the brutality of the Shah's regime. And when you have excessive levels of brutality, then anything can happen after that. So the Savak, as I was saying, that was second to none only to the secret to the ss. And if you had been following this over the years and reading what was going on in Iran when they overthrew the Mossadegh government in 1953, persecuted all the. Not all of them, persecuted the intellectuals, the artists and the opposition and know about the brutality of what transpired from then until, you know what the Shah's name was, they used to call him the head of the Peacock Throne, something like the Emperor for life in this one and for many more beyond. I mean, this was a setup waiting to happen. So anyway, when it happened, I pulled myself away from the rhetoric. I didn't take an ideological position on it. And I said to myself, what will be the implications of the overthrow of the Shah? And I started investing in gold and oil. I knew both of them would go.

Up, but they didn't. I mean, gold.

Oh no, gold took off. Well, gold didn't decline until I could tell you the date, I believe.

I mean, but Gerald, we know it went up, but you had an 18 year bear market and Seattle.

No, no, no, I'm saying we're talking about a speculative strategy in invest current events forming future trends. So I rode the spike and gold didn't decline until I think it was January 20, 1980. It peaked out at 875 and then.

It went down to like 280 for about 18 years.

Yeah, no, it fluctuated back and forth. Right. But what I'm saying is you could watch how current events form future trends. And that was the genesis of how I learned how to forecast trends. I pulled myself back from the emotions of what people wanted, liked, believed or thought rather than looking at the facts. And that's what we do at the Trends Research Institute. It's current events form future trends. We look at things for the way they are and not the way they want them to be. And so that was the history of how I got into the business.

Oh, good, interesting. Well, listen, we're running out of time here. Anything you want to say in closing? Give our listeners some advice on what's coming. Has been an interesting discussion.

Yes. What I would say to them is prepare for the worst and we're going to enter into a very difficult winter. Don't spend an extra dime that you don't need to spend. Practice that Yankee frugality that made this country what it was. Buy local as much as you can. Become involved in local issues. The first thing, call up your city council, wherever you live and tell them to shut the lights off at night. They're burning electricity needlessly, like my father. There were seven of us, may so rest in peace. He used to say to us, shut the lights. What do you think? I have a poll with Edison. Even when we left a room, we have to conserve. Wear it out, use it up, do it out. You know that old kind of proverbs, fix it, repair it, be very frugal. This is a time not. And if you have a child in college and you're spending an inordinate amount of money for the kid to get a degree in business administration, economics, social studies, art history, psychology, if they're not going for one of the hard sciences or practical return on investment education, consider sending them to a community college and stop wasting your money and throwing it into the corporate college industrial complex.

I have time to save the college industrial complex. You know, I want to do a show about that one because that's another big scam. You know, they just. Education.

Oh, what a. What a joke.

Yeah, it really is. You know, Peter Schiff said how will people be able to afford college we were talking about on my show. And he says, well, maybe colleges will finally get price reasonably and become efficient in life. Let it instead of these over bloated bureaucracies. I mean it's just ridiculous academia, you know. Anyway, another oh listen, I'm with you.

I'm lucky I survived.

I know, I know. Well listen, check out Gerald Celente's website at trends research.com Gerald, thank you so much for sharing your wisdom with us. We appreciate having you on the show.

Hey, thank you for having me.

Thank you for joining. Joining us today for the Holistic Survival show protecting the people, places and profits you care about in uncertain times. Be sure to listen to our Creating wealth show, which focuses on exploiting the financial and wealth creation opportunities in today's economy. Learn more at www.jasonhartman.com or search Jason Hartman on itunes. This show is produced by the Hart Media Company, offering very general guidelines and information. Opinions of guests are their own and none of the content should be considered individual advice. If you require personalized advice, please consult an appropriate professional information deemed reliable but not guaranteed.