After a tumultuous 2011 in which many of the trends we had forecast became headline news around the world, we are now forewarning of an even more tumultuous year to come.

While it would give us great pleasure to forecast a 2012 of joy and prosperity – all brought about by the wisdom and benevolence of our fearless leaders – since we are not running for office or looking to profit by gulling the people, we tell it as we see it in our 12 Top Trends 2012.

One megatrend looms on the near horizon. And we forecast that when it strikes, it will be a shock felt around the world. Hyperbole it’s not! Our research has revealed that at the very highest levels of government this megatrend has been seriously discussed. Read on:

1. Economic Martial Law: Given the current economic and geopolitical conditions, the central banks and world governments already have plans in place to declare economic martial law … with the possibility of military martial law to follow.

2. Battlefield America: With a stroke of the Presidential pen, language was removed from an earlier version of the National Defense Authorization Act, granting the President authority to act as judge, jury and executioner. Citizens, welcome to “Battlefield America.”

3. Invasion of the “Occtupy”: 15 years ago, Gerald Celente predicted in his book Trends 2000 that prolonged protests would hit Wall Street in the early years of the new millennium and would spread nationwide. The “Occtupy” is now upon us, and it is like nothing history has ever witnessed.

4. Climax Time: The financial house of cards is collapsing, and in 2012 many of the long-simmering socioeconomic and geopolitical trends that Celente has accurately forecast will come to a climax. Some will arrive with a big bang and others less dramatically … but no less consequentially. Are you prepared? And what’s next for the world?

5. Technocrat Takeover: “Democracy is Dead; Long Live the Technocrat!” A pair of lightning-quick financial coup d’états in Greece and Italy have installed two unelected figures as head of state. No one yet in the mainstream media is calling this merger of state and corporate powers by its proper name: Fascism, nor are they calling these “technocrats” by their proper name: Bankers! Can a rudderless ship be saved because technocrat is at the helm?

6. Repatriate! Repatriate!: It took a small, but financially and politically powerful group to sell the world on globalization, and it will take a large, committed and coordinated citizens’ movement to “un-sell” it. “Repatriate! Repatriate!” will pit the creative instincts of a multitude of individuals against the repressive monopoly of the multinationals.

7. Secession Obsession: Winds of political change are blowing from Tunisia to Russia and everywhere in between, opening a window of opportunity through which previously unimaginable political options may now be considered: radical decentralization, Internet-based direct democracy, secession, and even the peaceful dissolution of nations, offering the possibility for a new world “disorder.”

8. Safe Havens: As the signs of imminent economic and social collapse become more pronounced, legions of New Millennium survivalists are, or will be, thinking about looking for methods and ways to escape the resulting turmoil. Those “on-trend” have already taken measure to implement Gerald Celente’s 3 G’s: Gold, Guns and a Getaway plan. Where to go? What to do? Top Trends 2012 will guide the way.

9. Big Brother Internet: The coming year will be the beginning of the end of Internet Freedom: A battle between the governments and the people. Governments will propose legislation for a new “authentication technology,” requiring Internet users to present the equivalent of a driver’s license and/or bill of health to navigate cyberspace. For the general population it will represent yet another curtailing of freedom and level of governmental control.

10. Direct vs. Faux Democracy: In every corner of the world, a restive populace has made it clear that it’s disgusted with “politics as usual” and is looking for change. Government, in all its forms – democracy, autocracy, monarchy, socialism, communism – just isn’’t working. The only viable solution is to take the vote out of the hands of party politicians and institute Direct Democracy. If the Swiss can do it, why can’t anyone else?

11. Alternative Energy 2012: Even under the cloud of Fukushima, the harnessing of nuclear power is being reinvigorated by a fuel that is significantly safer than uranium and by the introduction of small, modular, portable reactors that reduce costs and construction time. In addition, there are dozens of projects underway that explore the possibility of creating cleaner, competitively priced liquid fuels distilled from natural sources. Plan to start saying goodbye to conventional liquid fuels!

12. Going Out in Style: In the bleak terrain of 2012 and beyond, “Affordable sophistication” will direct and inspire products, fashion, music, the fine arts and entertainment at all levels. US businesses would be wise to wake up and tap into the dormant desire for old time quality and the America that was.

Regards,

Gerald Celente
for The Daily Reckoning

[Editor's Note: The above Trend Alert is available as part of a subscription to The Trends Journal, which is published by Gerald Celente. The Trends Journal distills the ongoing research of The Trends Research Institute into a concise, readily accessible form. Click here to learn more about and subscribe to The Trends Journal.]

Climax Time: The Top 12 Trends for 2012 originally appeared in the Daily Reckoning. The Daily Reckoning, published by Agora Financial provides over 400,000 global readers economic news, market analysis, and contrarian investment ideas.

Instead, with real estate home prices plunging more sharply than they did during the Great Depression, with unemployment intractable and rising, retail sales softening, consumer confidence sinking and the equity markets falling, Ben “He of Short Sight” Bernanke finally saw what we and a few others had been screaming about for over four years:

Economic Trouble Puzzles Fed Chief Too

The economy’s continuing struggles aren’t just confounding ordinary Americans. They’ve also stumped the head of the Federal Reserve. Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke told reporters Wednesday that the central bank had been caught off guard by recent signs of deterioration in the economy. And he said the troubles could continue into next year.

“We don’t have a precise read on why this slower pace of growth is persisting,” Bernanke said. He said the weak housing market and problems in the banking system might be “more persistent than we thought.”

It was the Fed chief’s most explicit warning yet that the economy will face serious challenges next year. For several months, he had said the factors working against economic growth appeared to be “transitory.”

The Fed’s statement Wednesday stood in contrast to the Fed’s more upbeat view when officials last met, eight weeks ago. At that time, the central bank said the job market was gradually improving. (AP, 22 June 2011)

But instead of headlines blaring, “Fed Chief Batting Zero Fails Again” or “Bumbling Bernanke Baffled by Bad News” or “Wrong Again Ben – Only an Imbecile Would Still Take You Seriously,” the media played it with a straight face.

A Presstitute is a Presstitute is a Presstitute. ABC, CBS, CNN, AP, BBC, PBS; reporters and journalists massage the egos of the rich, powerful and famous, while reducing the rest of the population to a mass of lower beings barely capable of tying their shoes, incapable of having an original thought, and lost without direction from higher authorities.

It made perfect media sense that the “economy’s continuing struggles” would confound “ordinary Americans,” but that the non-recovery had also stumped the head of the Federal Reserve … that was newsworthy. After all, if Bernanke was “caught off guard by recent signs of deterioration in the economy” how could lesser beings expect to be unstumped?

The bland journalistic language conceals a shrieking message: “troubles could continue into next year … We don’t have a precise read on why this slower pace of growth is persisting … more persistent than we thought … factors working against economic growth appeared to be transitory … economy will face serious challenges next year … in contrast to the Fed’s more upbeat view when officials last met, eight weeks ago.”

What this story is saying, without saying it, is that the Chairman of the Federal Reserve is clueless and, by extension, so is everyone else in charge. The real story should have read, “Fed & White House Fail Again… they didn’t see it coming, and once it came the measures they took to fix it didn’t work.”

When we said that the Fed’s financial policies and Washington’s fiscal policies would serve only to devalue the dollar and do next to nothing to regenerate the economy, some, such as Fox’s phony-liberal, Wimpocrat, Obamapologist Alan Colmes, dismissed us as “alarmists,” and others ignored us.

But when Alan Greenspan, the cheap money chief engineer and mastermind behind the ruinous policies that would culminate in the Great Recession, belatedly acknowledged what we had been saying for years, the media minions treated his proclamation with the respect due a Papal encyclical:

Fed’s Massive Stimulus Had Little Impact: Greenspan

The Federal Reserve’s massive stimulus program had little impact on the U.S. economy besides weakening the dollar and helping US exports, Federal Reserve Governor Alan Greenspan told CNBC Thursday.

In a blunt critique of his successor, Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke, Greenspan said the $2 trillion in quantitative easing over the past two years had done little to loosen credit and boost the economy.

“There is no evidence that huge inflow of money into the system basically worked,” Greenspan said in a live interview.

Greenspan said he “would be surprised if there was a QE3” because it would “continue erosion of the dollar.” (CNBC, 30 June 2011)

The unholy alliance between Washington and Wall Street proved how fixed the game was, and how far it extended; and when the layers of fraud and corruption were peeled back, why and how those four simple words, “too big to fail” destroyed the American dream. Monumental failures were rewarded with bonanzas of billions while the rest of the nation was left to make it on their own.

Regards,

Gerald Celente
for The Daily Reckoning

[Editor's Note: The above essay is excerpted from The Trends Journal, which is published by Gerald Celente. The Trends Journal distills the ongoing research of The Trends Research Institute into a concise, readily accessible form. Click here to learn more about and subscribe to The Trends Journal.]

The Chairman of the Federal Reserve is Clueless originally appeared in the Daily Reckoning. The Daily Reckoning, published by Agora Financial provides over 400,000 global readers economic news, market analysis, and contrarian investment ideas.

Yes, there was some concern, but, as The New York Times reported on June 25th, “Two years into the official recovery, the economy is still behaving like a plane taxiing indefinitely on the runway. Few economists are predicting an out-and-out return to recession … analysts generally expect the economy to pick up in the second half.”

The economists were forecasting strong job growth for June. But two weeks later, when the numbers came in, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that only 18,000 jobs had been created – not the 125,000 jobs projected … by those same economists who were also not “predicting an out-and-out return to recession.”

Accordingly, without missing a beat, the Times changed its tune – writing new words to replace the old words they would never be forced to eat:

Feeble Job Numbers Show
Recovery Starting to Stall

Defying Economists Forecast for Hiring,
Unemployment Creeps Up to 9.2%

For the second consecutive month, employers added scarcely any jobs in June, startling evidence that the economic recovery is stumbling … The government also revised downward the small gain for the previous month to 25,000 new jobs, less than half the original estimate. (The New York Times, 9 July 2011)

“Dismal Jobs Data Rock US Recovery” and “Worries Grow Over Jobs,” read the respective headlines in the Financial Times and Wall Street Journal on July 9th, dissipating the air of optimism that had recently rallied equity markets.

“Employment!” More than factory orders, GDP, corporate profits, retail sales, durable goods … employment was the one big number that counted. There was no way to spin the consequences of 18,000 mostly low paying health care and hospitality jobs into the hopeful message implied by the 125,000 jobs forecast by most economists.

The equation was simple; the more people out of work, the less they consume. And in the United States, where consumer spending accounts for an estimated 70 percent of the GDP, without increased consumer spending, the economy was again recession bound.

Virtually overnight, one dire employment report unraveled two years’ worth of government spin and media complicity. In April 2010, Vice President Joseph Biden promised, “we’re going to be creating between 250,000 jobs a month and 500,000 jobs a month.” And in August 2010, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner declared that the “actions we took at its height [of the crisis] to stimulate the economy helped arrest the freefall, preventing an even deeper collapse and putting the economy on the road to recovery.”

But almost a year later, talking on “Meet the Press,” two days after the devastating employment data was released, the new, revised Geithner forecast was, “Oh, I think it’s [the recovery] going to take a long time still. This is a very tough economy. And I think for a lot of people it’s going to be – it’s going to feel very hard, harder than anything they’ve experienced in their lifetime now, for some time to come.”

Like the Biden boast long-buried and un-exhumed, the Geithner statement, a direct contradiction of his former projection went unchallenged, given the usual free pass by the “Meet the Press” Presstitutes.

There was, and is, no “return to recession.” As The Trends Research Institute had been forecasting since the onset of the Great Recession and the “Panic of ’08,” all those “bold actions” proudly cited by Geithner were no more than financial Prozac–multi-trillion-dollar band aids, palliatives, placebos and cover-ups packaged as TARP, American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, QE2, and so on. At best, the “bold actions” merely guided the Great Recession into a brief remission, and that is all.

Global Ponzi

It was a cover-up, not a recovery. And while the US may have been the first, it was not the only nation to try to fraudulently finagle its way out of a crisis and into prosperity. Like the US bailouts, the Greek survival package – praised as an important stopgap success only last week – has neither guaranteed keeping the Greek banking system afloat nor guaranteed it won’t default.

Now Italy has caught the contagion. Fattest of the PIIGS (acronym for Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Greece and Spain) – the eurozone’s third largest economy – with its 120 percent public debt to GDP ratio, Italy is bleeding red ink all over its balance sheet. Borrowing more to service its debt load and imposing draconian austerity measures to reign in government spending will, at best, provide a respite from the financial crisis … or, at worst, foment a revolution.

Then there’s China, who panicked when the “Panic of 08” blew out their export driven economy, and, like the West, used cheap credit and huge stimulus packages to prevent a major economic contraction. While China’s crisis differs from the West’s in that it has large currency reserves and its debt is homegrown and home-loaned, it’s still debt and has to be repaid.

And unlike the West, which pumped trillions into just keeping its economies afloat, the Chinese multi-trillion yuan infusions have created an immense, ready-to-pop property bubble. But this time, like the West, there will be no available fiscal or monetary government policies to re-inflate their faltering economy.

And as goes the US, Europe and China – so goes the rest of the world. From India to Israel, Brazil to Bangladesh, Chile to Russia, no nation will escape the economic fallout and few will escape the political consequences.

Yet, despite the widely available economic facts and the ample evidence of faulty forecasts and failed government policies, the mainstream media continues to sell the public the big lie. By providing cover for the politicians and financiers, the Presstitutes of the world – with their stable of “well respected” pundits – are accomplices in promoting the egregiously transparent cover-up as a “recovery.”

Trendpost: After descending to $1,480 less than two weeks ago, as this is written, gold is flirting with $1,600. We see this surge as a recognition of the greater financial and socioeconomic collapse we have been forecasting since the onset of the “Panic of ’08.” We hold to our forecast of “Gold $2,000,” and depending on how the coming crisis unfolds and the responses to it made by governments and central banks, $2,000 may prove but a temporary ceiling before climbing higher.

Regards,

Gerald Celente
for The Daily Reckoning

[Editor's Note: The above Trend Alert is available as part of a subscription to The Trends Journal, which is published by Gerald Celente. The Trends Journal distills the ongoing research of The Trends Research Institute into a concise, readily accessible form. Click here to learn more about and subscribe to The Trends Journal.]

PIIGS, Presstitutes and the Global Meltdown originally appeared in the Daily Reckoning. The Daily Reckoning, published by Agora Financial provides over 400,000 global readers economic news, market analysis, and contrarian investment ideas.

According to a June 8th CNN/Opinion Research Corporation poll, 48 percent of Americans believe that another Great Depression is likely to occur in the next year – the highest that figure has ever reached. The survey also indicates that just under half of the respondents live in a household where someone has lost a job or is worried that unemployment may hit them in the near future.

Suddenly, after years of obvious economic hardship experienced by tens of millions of Americans – only when the suffering and pain can no longer be cloaked in abstractions and cooked statistics – does an emboldened media dare utter the forbidden “D” word.

For Trends Journal readers, alerted to this emerging trend some three years ago, the prospect of Depression should come as no surprise. Neither should the idea that, when it hits and can no longer be denied, a long suffering public will take to the streets.

When I made this forecast back then it was written off by most of the major broadcast and print media. Now, however, when one of their own, belatedly and hesitantly, raises that possibility he is elevated to sage status and it becomes big news. In early June, Democratic strategist James “It’s the Economy, Stupid” Carville, having finally mastered the higher math of adding two plus two, warned that decaying economic conditions heightened the risk of civil unrest.

As I described it all those years ago: “When people lose everything, and have nothing left to lose, they lose it.”

Trend Forecast: The wars will proliferate and civil unrest will intensify. As we forecast, the youth-inspired revolts that first erupted in North Africa and the Middle East are now breaking out in Europe. Given the trends in play and the people in power, economic collapse at some level is inevitable. Governments and central banks will be unrelenting in their determination to wring every last dollar, pound or euro from the people through taxes while confiscating public assets (a.k.a. privatization) in order to cover bad bets made by banks and financiers.

When the people have been bled dry financially and have nothing left to give, blood will flow on the streets.

Trend Lesson: Learn from history. Do you remember when it first became apparent that the US economy was in deep trouble and heading toward the “Panic of 08”? Not many will. Most people were in a summer state of mind and in holiday mode. It was late July 2007 when the stock market suddenly plunged from its euphoric 14,000 high.

Though we had warned in our Summer 2007 Trends Journal (released that June) that “trends indicators point to a major crisis hitting the financial markets between July and November,” the diving Dow was downplayed as a mere “hiccup” … a time to pause between more mouthfuls of expansion.

Biggest mistake in a falling stock market

The huge swings in the Dow are giving investors pause. But taking your money out of the market now could be the gravest mistake of all.

NEW YORK — This past Thursday was the second worst day of the year for the Dow Jones Industrial Average. But remember, it was just a week ago today that the Dow closed above 14,000 for the first (and only) time.
Fluctuations in the market shouldn’t get to the 401(k) investor. Keep in mind your time horizon – most of us are going to be invested in the market until we retire, often decades from now. CNN 27 July 2007

Four years and trillions of dollars in stock and 401(k) losses later, that typical “take a deep breath, stay the course” advice looks tragically misguided. The Dow would eventually lose more than half its value and now, in June 2011, it’s fallen below 12,000.

The moral of this story is to not let your mind take a summer vacation. Conditions are rapidly deteriorating and it is imperative to remain on high alert. Another violent financial episode is looming. It may be triggered by economics (e.g., debt defaults and debt crisis contagion in Europe, a crashing US dollar, or commodity price spikes); it could be terror (false flag or real), a man-made disaster (another Fukushima) or one made by Mother Nature … or any combination of the above.

Publisher’s Note: To excel in any field – from gourmet chef to concert pianist to close-combat warrior – you have to practice … endlessly, over and over, until finally the training sinks in and becomes a part of you.

In that spirit, I again repeat: preparing for financial survival is a “practice.” And it has to be treated as if you are preparing for battle; expect the unexpected and prepare for the worst, which in these perilous times could be a declaration of economic martial law. Banks may close, currencies may be devalued and deposit withdrawals may be imposed. Remember Gerald Celente’s basic survival strategy, “GC’s Three G’s: Guns, Gold and a Getaway plan.”

Regards,

Gerald Celente
for The Daily Reckoning

P.S. In the Summer 2011 Trends Journal (mid-July release) we will provide practical strategies to cope with the coming collapse and offer approaches that, if implemented, could reverse the prevailing negative trends.

Collapse: It’s Coming! Are You Ready? (Part Two of Two) originally appeared in the Daily Reckoning. The Daily Reckoning, published by Agora Financial provides over 400,000 global readers economic news, market analysis, and contrarian investment ideas.

Not so, say world leaders and mainstream media experts. Yes, there are problems, but the financiers and politicians are aware of them. Policies are already in place and measures are being taken to correct them.

Whether it’s failing economies, intractable old wars or raging new wars, the word from the top always maintains that steady progress is being made and comforts the populace with assurances that the brightest minds and the sharpest generals are in charge and on the case. On all fronts, success is certain and victory is at hand. Only “patience” is required … along with more men, more time and more money.

As far as these “leaders” and their media are concerned, the only opinions that count come from a stable of thoroughbred experts, official sources and political favorites. Only they have the credentials to speak with authority and provide trustworthy forecasts. That they are consistently, if not invariably, wrong apparently does nothing to diminish their credibility.

How can any thinking adult possibly imagine that the same central bankers, financiers and politicians responsible for creating the economic crisis are capable of resolving it? Within days of its announcement, we predicted that Bush’s TARP (Troubled Asset Relief Program) was destined to fail, and subsequently predicted the same for Obama’s stimulus package (The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act). They were no more than cover-ups; there would be no recovery.

Meet the New Plan, Same as the Old Plan

Democrat or Republican, it makes no difference. Despite the heated rhetoric, solving economic problems had less to do with the party in power and more to do with professional competence. Both sides had their turn in office. Both used their power to initiate policies that created the problems. Both sides had their shot at fixing the messes they were responsible for. Both sides failed, as we predicted. Given who they are and what they’ve done, we confidently predict an unbroken sequence of bipartisan failures in the future.

The Beltway Incompetents are in the driver’s seat. What person with a healthy instinct for self-preservation would believe the promises of politicians or trust the judgment of central bankers or Wall Street financiers whose only real interest is self interest?

Not “Business as Usual”

In the 1920s, US President Calvin Coolidge declared, “The business of America is business.” Four score and 10 years later, the business of America has become war: The forty-year War on Drugs; The ten-year War on Terror; the Afghan War (longest in American history); the eight-years-and-no-end-in-sight Iraq War; the covert wars in Pakistan and Yemen; and most recently, the “time-limited, scope-limited kinetic military action” in Libya.

While the justifications for engaging in these wars were all different, all were murderous, immoral, interminable, ruinously expensive and abject failures. Why would anyone believe the optimistic battle communiqués issued by the “czars” in charge and the battlefield brass who keep reassuring the public that reapplying previously failed strategies would, this time, lead to success?

Yet even in the face of their proven failures and gross incompetence, anyone daring to challenge the party line or the conventional wisdom is dismissed as an “alarmist,” “fear monger,” or “gloom-and-doomer.” However unwelcome our forecasts may be – pessimism, optimism, like or dislike are all irrelevant – only their accuracy counts. We correctly forecast:

• Afghan and Iraq Wars would be debacles

• Bursting of the housing bubble

• The “Gold Bull Run”

• The “Panic of ’08″

• European Monetary Union crisis

• Failure of US bailout/stimulus packages to revive housing and create jobs

• Falling governments, spreading civil wars and social upheaval on a global scale

We also said that the Federal Reserve’s sighting of economic “green shoots” in March 2009 was a “mirage” and predicted that their much vaunted “recovery” was no more than a temporary solution, a quick-fix to be followed by “The Greatest Depression.” And now, in June 2011, with the Dow on a down trend and the economic data increasingly pointing in the direction of Depression, Washington and Wall Street remain in denial. The only debate among the “experts” is whether or not a “double dip” recession is likely.

However, for the man on the street – pummeled by falling wages, higher prices, intractable unemployment, rising taxes and punitive “austerity measures” – “Depression,” not “recession,” and certainly not “prosperity,” is just around the corner.

To be continued in Part Two.

Regards,

Gerald Celente
for The Daily Reckoning

[Editor's Note: The above Trend Alert is available as part of a subscription to The Trends Journal, which is published by Gerald Celente. The Trends Journal distills the ongoing research of The Trends Research Institute into a concise, readily accessible form. Click here to learn more about and subscribe to The Trends Journal.]

Collapse: It’s Coming! Are You Ready? (Part One of Two) originally appeared in the Daily Reckoning. The Daily Reckoning, published by Agora Financial provides over 400,000 global readers economic news, market analysis, and contrarian investment ideas.

But these were the stories that preoccupied the US press. Whereas all were certainly newsworthy – and a cut above the usual obsession with the purely titillating and violent – the most trend-significant story of all got scant, or no coverage from the mainstream media.

While the downfall of Strauss-Kahn shattered his hopes to run for the French Presidency, the repercussions would be mainly confined to France. His resignation from the IMF, however, would have limited consequences. A new chief will quickly be found to replace him, and regardless of the Strauss-Kahn rape verdict, the IMF will continue raping countries that are forced into accepting their “aid.”

As for Obama’s speech, it was essentially meaningless; many empty words and more vague, unfulfillable promises that will lead to no action of consequence.

Undoubtedly, the devastation wrought by the violent weather patterns will be felt severely by all those directly affected. The physical and emotional toll on the tens of thousands whose homes, businesses and livelihoods were destroyed is incalculable. Nevertheless, the consequences will impact mostly those directly affected while the spillover implications will only temporarily affect the national, and to a lesser extent, the global economy.

Trend Forecast: Should current weather patterns become more a norm than an anomaly, the socioeconomic consequences will prove long-term, far-reaching and disastrous. Farming, shipping, seafood, food supplies and petroleum refining will be among the foreseeable casualties, accompanied by massive population displacement. But the ensuing chain reaction (inflation, shortages, unemployment, etc.) will claim many other victims, which, at this time, are unquantifiable.

The 800 Pound Gorilla in the Press Room

Strauss-Kahn, Obama’s speech, tornadoes and floods notwithstanding, the biggest news with the greatest implications was the story with the least coverage. If you watched the Sunday night network news (ABC, CBS, NBC, etc.) you wouldn’t have seen it. If you read the front page of The New York Times, America’s self-described “Paper of Record,” it wasn’t there either.

The most prominently placed story with the biggest photo, that was obviously intended to catch the reader’s eye of the flagship Sunday edition, also bore testimony to what the Times considered the news most “fit to print”:

The Gossip Machine, Churning Out Cash Appetite for Dirt
Fuels a Growing, Round-the-Clock Industry

To satisfy the Times’s own insatiable “Appetite for Dirt” it devoted some 4000 words to an imbecilic, inconsequential, lowest common denominator, supermarket tabloid, junk news story on the growth industry of celebrity gossip. Spread across three pages and emphasized by eleven meaningless and superfluous color photos, the Times did what all the mainstream media characteristically do: hawked sleaze and justified it with the reasoning, “This is what the people want.”

Perhaps it was this lust for lust that accounted for the inability of the “Paper of Record” to recognize a megatrend-in-the-making that was already reshaping the global geopolitical landscape. To their credit, however, unlike the networks that ignored the story, the Times at least covered it. According it less than 500 words and relegating it to the Page 12 boondocks, its innocuous headline read: “Despite Ban, Protests Continue Before Spanish Vote.”

Anti-austerity/anti-big bank bailout protests had been sporadically erupting throughout Europe for over a year. But these Spanish demonstrations signaled a major turning point. It was the unrest and discontent in Europe that led us to forecast our “Off With Their Heads” trend that would lead to revolts and topple governments (Trends Journal, Autumn 2010).

But European unrest was overshadowed by the far more violent and widespread Middle East and North Africa uprisings of late 2010 and early 2011. Unlike the Europeans who still believed in the power of their vote, Arabs, with only autocrats, dictators and monarchs in control, had no ballot boxes to divert them. They knew that unless the system changed, nothing would change.

As I had forecast in the Trends Journal and repeated in media worldwide, it would only be a matter of time before Europeans would wake up to the same realization: the system had to change. What distinguished this latest round of Spanish protests from earlier ones in Europe was that very realization; no matter how many votes were dropped into the ballot box, the result would be essentially the same. All the shouting, demands, marches and strikes would accomplish nothing without a responsive government to address them – and this could not be achieved through the current system in which, despite the rhetoric, there was little difference between the major parties.

Trend Forecast: The massive bailouts of Greece and Ireland are already proven failures, and the Portuguese bailout will follow the same path: more debt, higher unemployment, draconian austerity measures imposed upon the people, and a wholesale sell-off of valuable public resources.

Spain, the UK and Italy are next in line to suffer the long-term consequences of the economic “Panic of ‘08” … that has been only temporarily assuaged by the trillions pumped in by the central banks to keep the financial system afloat.

Economic conditions will continue to deteriorate for most European nations. The worse they get, the louder and more heated the protests will become. Entrenched political parties, unwilling to make adequate concessions or yield power, will intensify their crackdown efforts.

The youth-inspired Spanish demonstrations, sit-ins and camp-outs will serve as a template for the equally disenfranchised youth of other countries. In the absence of an economic miracle, divine intervention … or a fulfilled Doomsday Prophesy (in which case all forecasts are off), expect protests to mount throughout the summer of 2011 and continue into 2012 and beyond.

One wild card that might derail the demonstrations, quiet the discontent and unite the people, would be one or several terror strikes in European cities. Considering NATO’s military actions against Libya, revenge attacks are a distinct possibility.

Regards,

Gerald Celente
for The Daily Reckoning

[Editor's Note: The above Trend Alert is available as part of a subscription to The Trends Journal, which is published by Gerald Celente. The Trends Journal distills the ongoing research of The Trends Research Institute into a concise, readily accessible form. Click here to learn more about and subscribe to The Trends Journal.]

Arab Spring + European Summer = World Winter of Discontent originally appeared in the Daily Reckoning. The Daily Reckoning, published by Agora Financial provides over 400,000 global readers economic news, market analysis, and contrarian investment ideas.

Though the uprisings in the Middle East were initially, and correctly, attributed to high unemployment, widespread poverty, lack of opportunity, rising prices and rampant corruption, it would not take long for the script to change from implicating politics and economics to implicating God.

Shortly following the downfall of Hosni Mubarak, western politicians, the media and analysts sounded the alarm: “Beware, here comes the Muslim Brotherhood.” Yet, two months later, polls showed only 10 percent of Egyptians would vote for the leader of the Brotherhood as president.

And if the Brotherhood wasn’t a frightening enough group to use as a pretext to blame religion for the troubles, there was always an endless supply of faceless, nameless, Islamic extremists lurking in the shadows, waiting for the opportunity to set up Sharia Law and threaten governments around the world.

But it was not religion that sparked the conflagrations. As “the good book” has it, “money is the root of all evil.” (1 Timothy 6:10)

It was neither God nor Allah that would take the world into “The 1st Great War of the 21st Century.”  It was the falling bottom line.

In 2011, all across Europe, the bottom continued to fall out of the bottom line. Like Greece and Ireland before it, the Portuguese government, after religiously vowing never to ask for a bailout, asked for a $118 billion bailout from the European Union.

Bailouts were not gifts, but debt traps – loans at interest rates lower than the private sector but still unmanageably high. Endlessly piling new un-repayable debt on top of old un-repayable debt would not solve the underlying problem, If fact, it would worsen it. By imposing forced austerity measures and draconian spending cuts in order to service the debt, the bailed-out nation would reduce its productive capacity and its ability to compete in the global market.

Moreover, the indebted nations would be required to privatize valuable resources and industries to service the debt, with the profits going to creditors, often in foreign countries.

In layman’s terms, “bailout” is a euphemism for state sponsored loan-sharking. Precious national assets are sold at bargain basement prices to political insiders, robbing the nation of its wealth.

How did the bailouts of Portugal, Ireland and Greece figure into the Great War? It was the same bottom line issue that brought on the “Arab Spring.” Apart from nationalities and languages, the provocations were the same: high unemployment, restless youth, rising prices, etc. – and, of course, corruption.

But it wasn’t the stereotypical Middle Eastern-style corruption of vulgar Arab sheiks doing dirty deals behind closed doors with shifty business moguls. In Europe, corruption was refined, honorable, prudent and openly practiced. It was called “banking.”

Legal, state-sanctioned European financial corruption that made more billions for billionaires and mega-millions for multi-millionaires had crashed or crippled many EU member countries.

Regards,

Gerald Celente
for The Daily Reckoning

[Editor's Note: The above essay is excerpted from The Trends Journal, which is published by Gerald Celente. The Trends Journal distills the ongoing research of The Trends Research Institute into a concise, readily accessible form. Click here to get the full story in, learn more about, and subscribe to The Trends Journal.]

The Falling Bottom Line originally appeared in the Daily Reckoning. The Daily Reckoning, published by Agora Financial provides over 400,000 global readers economic news, market analysis, and contrarian investment ideas.

Ten years have passed since the Twin Towers toppled and the Pentagon was whacked. After two failing wars and billions of dollars spent on the global manhunt to bring in Bin Laden “Dead or Alive,” America has now claimed victory. “This is bigger than the moon landing, this is huge,” exclaimed Fox News’ Geraldo Rivera.

“Justice has been done,” intoned President Barack Obama announcing Bin Laden’s death. He not only called it “a good day for America,” but also declared that “The world is safer. It is a better place because of the death of Osama Bin Laden.”

While Secretary of State Hillary Clinton echoed the sentiment that “justice has been served,” she evidently took issue with the Presidential vision of a “safer” world, warning that terror “won’t stop with the death of Bin Laden, we must redouble our efforts.”

If it’s a “safer” world, why the need to “redouble our efforts”? These were but two of the contradictions coming from the White House in the early hours of the breaking story, and many discrepancies would follow. Some of them would be noted and debated, but totally absent from the 24/7 news coverage, political “high-fives” and patriotic triumphalism was the simple question: Why did Osama Bin Laden, former mujahedin ally of the United States, turn against it to become Public Enemy No.1?

Was it that he and his Al Qaeda fighters suddenly decided to hate America’s “freedom and liberties” as George W. Bush maintained? Or was it remotely possible that the attacks were motivated by US foreign policy – with its unconditional support of Israel and concomitant support of the same Middle East monarchs, autocrats and dictators now being toppled in the wave of revolution?

Also absent from America’s non-stop exultation and self-congratulation, absent from the acres of newsprint and the countless hours of air time, was any discussion of the practical consequences of the death of Bin Laden who, before making it back into the headlines, had been both a fading memory and a non-issue.

Osama Bin Who?

So irrelevant had Bin Laden and his jihad rhetoric become that, in the months preceding his assassination, every one of the uprisings occurring throughout the Middle East and North Africa was secular and in direct opposition to Bin Laden’s militant pan-Islamic vision.

In a sentence: There were no practical consequences whatsoever attending the death of Osama Bin Laden. It would do nothing to:

• Help America win losing wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
• Lower the unemployment rate.
• Stop the US or European nations from sinking deeper into recessions and depression.
• Revive failing real estate markets or solve the debt and deficit crises.
• Lower oil and food prices.
• Reverse the damage or stop the radioactive fallout from Fukushima.

What Osama’s death did do was boost the President’s sagging poll numbers and deflect public attention from the news that really mattered.

On Wednesday, April 27th, just four days before Bin Laden was killed, a new Public Enemy No.1 held his organization’s first ever press conference. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke told the world that the United States would continue its low interest rate polices and, in effect, continue to flood the world with cheap money.

The global equity markets immediately responded to the predictably destructive consequences. Before Bernanke ended the press conference, gold prices shot up $20 an ounce, silver $2, and the dollar fell to a 3 year low against a trade-weighted basket of currencies. Despite the Chairman’s claims to the contrary, the US dollar would continue to devalue and subsequently dollar based commodity prices would soar.

Needing neither a mountain lair nor sequestration behind closed Fed doors, the new Public Enemy No.1, “Osama” Ben Bernanke committed, in broad daylight, an act of financial terrorism that would have far reaching and long lasting implications for the American public. As the value of the dollar went down, the cost of nearly everything would go up…excepting the cost of “risk.”

This meant that financiers could continue to speculate and exploit the equity markets, with the profits going only to the 10 percent of Americans that owned 90 percent of the stocks, bonds and mutual funds. Moreover, the Fed reasoned the cheap dollar would also give a competitive edge to big US exporters. But as exports rose, so did the price of imports, putting further strains on average consumers whose real wages fell ever further behind the pace of inflation.

Bombs Away

What Osama Bin Laden’s death also did was to deflect attention from the US/NATO “humanitarian” mission in Libya, which, just two days earlier, had delivered several humanitarian bombs upon the home of Muammar Qaddafi’s son, killing him and three of his children.

The bungled attempt to assassinate Qaddafi (who had been visiting his son) was condemned by Russia, brought recriminations against NATO from other UN members for overstepping the UN mandate, and called into question the legality of the air strike.  With a groundswell of public sympathy building around the world for Qaddafi’s murdered grandchildren, the very purpose and future of the entire mission was being called into question.

Trend Forecast: With the death of Osama Bin Laden, the restored, rebuilt, new and improved terror bandwagon rolls again…and it will keep rolling until Election Day 2012. Whether a real terror attack happens or not, Barack Obama, as he has done before, will take a page from the G.W. Bush playbook and keep the American public in a state of fear and hysteria.

And should terror strike the US, UK, France or other NATO ally, their governments, media “presstitutes,” pundits, and the public at large will debate and deplore the “cowardly act” and demand “swift justice.” They will blame Bin Laden sympathizers, Al Qaeda cells, Muammar Qaddafi, radical Islamists…but never will they blame themselves. They will refuse to acknowledge that what they called “terror” was nothing more than “revenge”; reprisal for foreign meddling in the domestic affairs of other nations, or retaliation for military invasions launched by the US, UK, France or other NATO ally upon a sovereign nation.

Meanwhile, back in DC, the Chairman of the Fed, Public Enemy No.1, “Osama” Ben Bernanke, will mastermind the destruction of the American dollar, the US economy and the purchasing power of the American people.

As we have been forecasting for years, gold, despite its recent pull back, is on-trend to reach $2000 per ounce (and possibly higher). And while Ben Bernanke claims that inflation is merely “transitory,” considering his penchant for printing trillions of digital dollars not worth the paper it’s not printed on, we see inflation as both entrenched and rising.

Regards,

Gerald Celente
for The Daily Reckoning

[Editor's Note: The above Trend Alert is available as part of a subscription to The Trends Journal, which is published by Gerald Celente. The Trends Journal distills the ongoing research of The Trends Research Institute into a concise, readily accessible form. Click here to learn more about and subscribe to The Trends Journal.]

Bigger than Bin Laden – America’s New Public Enemy No.1 originally appeared in the Daily Reckoning. The Daily Reckoning, published by Agora Financial provides over 400,000 global readers economic news, market analysis, and contrarian investment ideas.

When the Tunisian and Egyptian rebellions began, President Obama and Secretary of State Hillary “The Determinator” Clinton vacillated for weeks while hundreds of protesters were being slaughtered. It was only after it became clear that the autocratic leaders (that the US had supported for decades) would be overthrown that the US would champion the need for a transition to “democracy.”

Yet similar uprisings, destabilizing other Middle East and North Africa nations, were met only with earnest diplomatic calls for restraint and dialogue, never with demands for regime change… except when it came to Muammar Qaddafi.

On February 26th, just days after the first uprisings in Libya, President Obama boldly declared, “When a leader’s only means of staying in power is to use mass violence against his own people, he has lost the legitimacy to rule and needs to do what is right for his country by leaving now.”

Two days later Hillary Clinton threw her Secretarial weight into the fray, proclaiming, “It is time for Qaddafi to go, now, without further violence or delay. We want him to leave, we want him to end his regime.”

That these ludicrous ultimatums should have been uttered by people in responsible positions and then seriously reported by the world’s media (without editorial comment) was further proof of their arrogance and hubris. In the history of the world, what autocratic leader had ever packed up his bags, bowed down, bent over and gone into exile because a bunch of blowhards seven thousand miles away gave the order: “We want him to leave.”

On the other hand, perhaps the position wasn’t as foolish as it looked, but a calculated exercise in political cunning. Knowing full well that Qaddafi would never leave willingly and that plans were already in place to attack, when they attacked, their nonsensical ultimatum would serve as an effective excuse. Qaddafi had been given fair warning.

Three weeks before President Obama launched “Operation Odyssey Dawn” (a grotesque name to apply to a military exercise that would consist of launching missiles and dropping bombs without any fear of reprisal!), Hillary Clinton told reporters that the movement of US military forces off the coast of Libya was meant to position them to help with humanitarian efforts. And although there was discussion of a no-fly zone, “There is not any pending military action involving US naval vessels,” she said.

“We’ve been reaching out to many different Libyans who are attempting to organize in the east and, as the revolution moves westward, there as well,” she said, “… but we’re going to be ready and prepared to offer any kind of assistance that anyone wishes to have from the United States.”

[Editor's Note: As discussed in the next portion of The Trends Journal, exactly who these "anyones" were, that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was keen to “offer any kind of assistance,” was a matter left to be sorted out later...]

Regards,

Gerald Celente
for The Daily Reckoning

[Editor's Note: The above essay is excerpted from The Trends Journal, which is published by Gerald Celente. The Trends Journal distills the ongoing research of The Trends Research Institute into a concise, readily accessible form. Click here to get the full story in, learn more about, and subscribe to The Trends Journal.]

Regime Change, Hillary’s Head Fake originally appeared in the Daily Reckoning. The Daily Reckoning, published by Agora Financial provides over 400,000 global readers economic news, market analysis, and contrarian investment ideas.

Exactly eight years to the day that President George W. Bush took America and his “Coalition of the Willing” to war with Iraq, President Barack Obama has taken America and his “Broad Coalition” to war with Libya.

And just as the world was sold a “coalition of the willing” that was predominantly a fleeting alliance of the cajoled and the arm-twisted, the putatively “broad” Obama coalition consists primarily of America’s two cronies-in-war, the UK and France.

Only in a mad political science fiction movie could a President engaged in perpetuating two unjust, immoral, interminable and expensive wars begun by his predecessor, take his nation into yet another unjust, immoral, expensive and, in all likelihood, interminable war … and expect a happy ending!

Eight years of war in Iraq and 11 in Afghanistan has resolved nothing and served only to inflame anti-American sentiment around the world, drain the US treasury, kill and wound hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of innocent people and destroy the lives, limbs and souls of thousands of American troops.

Batting zero on the battle field, the mad political scientists have stepped up to the plate again. Despite nothing but failure, President Obama has decided, unilaterally, to squander still more American men and money in a war on Libya, promising that this time he won’t strike out.

In what could be a casting call for a mad sci-fi movie starring the Three Stooges, America’s newest Decider-in-Chief fights from the safety of the Oval Office while his equally battle-unscarred and chicken-hearted French and British counterparts, Nicolas “Sarko the American” Sarkozy and David (Eton/Oxford, what else?) Cameron lead the charge from the plush distance of the Palais de l’Élysée and 10 Downing Street.

What’s Next? Having accurately predicted, at their onsets, that the Afghan and Iraq wars would be failures, we now predict that war with Libya will not only be equally unsuccessful, but could have even graver global implications. Will Gaddafi fold without a fight? Or, faced by defeat and certain death, will he hit London, Paris, or New York with bio warfare, a dirty bomb or other tactic?

Absent a worst-case terror attack, even if the “broad coalition” overthrows and kills Qaddaifi, it will not amount to victory any more than executing Saddam Hussein and routing the Taliban has brought victory to Iraq and Afghanistan.

If it feels as though the world is spinning out of control, that’s because it is … and at breakneck speed! In just the past few months, revolution has engulfed the entire Middle East and North Africa. In just the past week a gigantic earthquake, tsunami and nuclear meltdown has crippled Japan. And war, (under whatever guise; e.g., “humanitarian crisis” or “answering the call of a threatened people”) has been declared on Libya.

The trend to the “1st Great War of the 21st Century” is accelerating. Events are happening so quickly that it is nearly impossible for us to compile, absorb, analyze and distill the voluminous information in our Trend Alerts before they are eclipsed by the cascade of new events.

The opening salvos of the “1st Great War of the 21st Century” … the War that no one else to date is either recognizing or daring to talk about … represents a crucial episode in the “History of the Future” – a blow-by-blow build-up to war, rather than the mainstream media’s blah-by-blah coverage. Busy cheerleading the home team they are, even at this late stage, incapable of recognizing that the game ends with the 1st Great War of the 21st Century.

What will the War mean to you personally? What can YOU do to prepare yourself for what’s to come? What can be done to individually and collectively halt the march to war – or at least divert and mitigate the damage.

Regards,

Gerald Celente
for The Daily Reckoning

[Editor's Note: The above Trend Alert is available as part of a subscription to The Trends Journal, which is published by Gerald Celente. The Trends Journal distills the ongoing research of The Trends Research Institute into a concise, readily accessible form. Click here to learn more about and subscribe to The Trends Journal.]

The 1st Great War of 21st Century Has Begun! originally appeared in the Daily Reckoning. The Daily Reckoning, published by Agora Financial provides over 400,000 global readers economic news, market analysis, and contrarian investment ideas.