12/22/10 Rhinebeck, New York — After the tumultuous years of the Great Recession, a battered people may wish that 2011 will bring a return to kinder, gentler times. But that is not what we are predicting. Instead, the fruits of government and institutional action – and inaction – on many fronts will ripen in unplanned-for fashions. Trends we have previously identified, and that have been brewing for some time, will reach maturity in 2011, impacting just about everyone in the world.
1. Wake-Up Call In 2011, the people of all nations will fully recognize how grave economic conditions have become, how ineffectual and self-serving the so-called solutions have been, and how dire the consequences will be.
Having become convinced of the inability of leaders and know-it-all “arbiters of everything” to fulfill their promises, the people will do more than just question authority, they will defy authority. The seeds of revolution will be sown….
2. Crack-Up 2011 Among our Top Trends for last year was the “Crash of 2010.” What happened? The stock market didn’t crash. We know. We made it clear in our Autumn Trends Journal that we were not forecasting a stock market crash – the equity markets were no longer a legitimate indicator of recovery or the real state of the economy. Yet the reliable indicators (employment numbers, the real estate market, currency pressures, sovereign debt problems) all bordered between crisis and disaster.
In 2011, with the arsenal of schemes to prop them up depleted, we predict “Crack-Up 2011”: teetering economies will collapse, currency wars will ensue, trade barriers will be erected, economic unions will splinter, and the onset of the “Greatest Depression” will be recognized by everyone….
3. Screw the People As times get even tougher and people get even poorer, the “authorities” will intensify their efforts to extract the funds needed to meet fiscal obligations. While there will be variations on the theme, the governments’ song will be the same: cut what you give, raise what you take.
4. Crime Waves No job + no money + compounding debt = high stress, strained relations, short fuses. In 2011, with the fuse lit, it will be prime time for Crime Time. When people lose everything and they have nothing left to lose, they lose it.
Hardship-driven crimes will be committed across the socioeconomic spectrum by legions of the on-the-edge desperate who will do whatever they must to keep a roof over their heads and put food on the table….
5. Crackdown on Liberty As crime rates rise, so will the voices demanding a crackdown. A national crusade to “Get Tough on Crime” will be waged against the citizenry. And just as in the “War on Terror,” where “suspected terrorists” are killed before proven guilty or jailed without trial, in the “War on Crime” everyone is a suspect until proven innocent….
6. Alternative Energy In laboratories and workshops unnoticed by mainstream analysts, scientific visionaries and entrepreneurs are forging a new physics incorporating principles once thought impossible, working to create devices that liberate more energy than they consume.
What are they, and how long will it be before they can be brought to market? Shrewd investors will ignore the “can’t be done” skepticism, and examine the newly emerging energy trend opportunities that will come of age in 2011….
7. Journalism 2.0 Though the trend has been in the making since the dawn of the Internet Revolution, 2011 will mark the year that new methods of news and information distribution will render the 20th century model obsolete.
With its unparalleled reach across borders and language barriers, “Journalism 2.0” has the potential to influence and educate citizens in a way that governments and corporate media moguls would never permit. Of the hundreds of trends we have forecast over three decades, few have the possibility of such far-reaching effects….
8. Cyberwars Just a decade ago, when the digital age was blooming and hackers were looked upon as annoying geeks, we forecast that the intrinsic fragility of the Internet and the vulnerability of the data it carried made it ripe for cyber-crime and cyber-warfare to flourish.
In 2010, every major government acknowledged that Cyberwar was a clear and present danger and, in fact, had already begun. The demonstrable effects of Cyberwar and its companion, Cybercrime, are already significant – and will come of age in 2011. Equally disruptive will be the harsh measures taken by global governments to control free access to the web, identify its users, and literally shut down computers that it considers a threat to national security….
9. Youth of the World Unite University degrees in hand yet out of work, in debt and with no prospects on the horizon, feeling betrayed and angry, forced to live back at home, young adults and 20-somethings are mad as hell, and they’re not going to take it anymore. Filled with vigor, rife with passion, but not mature enough to control their impulses, the confrontations they engage in will often escalate disproportionately.
Government efforts to exert control and return the youth to quiet complacency will be ham-fisted and ineffectual. The Revolution will be televised … blogged, YouTubed, Twittered and….
10. End of The World! The closer we get to 2012, the louder the calls will be that the “End is Near!” There have always been sects, at any time in history, that saw signs and portents proving the end of the world was imminent. But 2012 seems to hold a special meaning across a wide segment of “End-time” believers.
Among the Armageddonites, the actual end of the world and annihilation of the Earth in 2012 is a matter of certainty. Even the rational and informed that carefully follow the news of never-ending global crises, may sometimes feel the world is in a perilous state. Both streams of thought are leading many to reevaluate their chances for personal survival, be it in heaven or on earth.
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.]
Gerald Celente
Gerald Celente is founder and director of The Trends Research Institute, author of Trends 2000 and Trend Tracking (Warner Books), and publisher of The Trends Journal. He has been forecasting trends since 1980, and recently called “The Collapse of ’09.” Also a Close Combat practitioner and black belt trainer, Celente has made many media appearances including Oprah, CNN, The Today Show, Good Morning America, NBC Nightly News, C-Span, and CNBC. He has been cited in the Economist, Chicago Tribune, LA Times, Entrepreneur, USA Today, and many other publications.
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I was totally with you up until numbers (6) and (7), but the bit about alternative energy is just plain silly, as is the boilerplate concerning the new media. The energy crisis will be unremediable and enduring; and I should point out that the continued growth of the internet is incompatible with everything else on the list.
Quite amazed with point 6 as well.
A combustion engine can also output more energy as it takes to make one. Is therefore the invention of the combustion engine forging principles of physics?
Oil is just thousands of years old stored solar energy.
The whole thing prepares for a US president 2012 of protectionist nationalistic colour.
An engine is not an energy source. An engine converts energy from one form to another.
Gerard must be suggesting fusion in #6, which is the energy source of the future and probably always will be.
Curious to know if purchasing the Trends Journal is worth the read for the money?
So will the world end or not?
The webbot guys say there will be advancements in new electrics – new discsoveries based on electricity.
When it comes to emergency preparedness, most people I talk to think that nothing will ever happen to them- I constantly hear “why should I bother”. In today’s world it sounds crazy to talk about storing food. Why bother when restaurants, convenient stores and grocery stores are open 24 hours a day, 7days a week? We have grown up in the age of consumerism and take for granted there will always be food on the shelves. Well, what if there is a national emergency? Or if the unions repeat what happened in France – and stop delivery trucks in protest. What if our government keeps spending and hyper inflation occurs? Just look what happened in Boston! survivalist-hub.blogspot.com/. Why not be prepared just in case? It drives me NUTS when people have their heads in the sand!! But I know I am not nuts.
As a father of 3 small children, I have always tried to protect and provide for all their immediate and future necessities. I could not come home and tell my kids there was no food on the shelves. Now, I can sleep in peace having purchased years of emergency food! I love having the peace of mind, the feeling of being empowered– that my family and I are covered with the necessary emergency food, and survival supplies for the next 20 years at TODAY’S prices for what ever comes our way. For more information, go to blog survivalist-hub.blogspot.com/
Gerald,
In your own words, “Schemes Undreamed Of”. You may be one of the few people telling the truth (one of the very few), but when you have a printing press and no controls or restraints (fed not elected),why would it be any different in 2011? Wouldn’t a currency war or collapse cause a stock market crash? Debt no longer seems to matter, in fact, the market rallies on bailouts and more spending. Yes, asset prices are no longer based on expectations for growth and profit, but on POMO, but you know as well as I that bubbles last a long time, and to use your words again, a “Bailout Bubble” we are in….
When there will be anarchy, people who have stored food will be targeted. So if you did, take care for security as well, like machine-guns and bulletproof jackets.
Tim it is the same in Europe, there’s weekly demonstrations but 99% still think its all gonna be ok. I’m only now being able to convince my mam to secure her money so that they can’t block it or take it. When we say the s*** gonna hit the fan, they say we need to think positive. Gerald Celente keeps saying it, its only the 20% of people that are awake who will come out of it above the rest. You can’t help those who don’t want to be helped.
http://www.unitetoday.com
Nice post.
I think that alternative energy is the only trend that will save the planet.
I have readed in NY Times that china is leading global race to make clean energy.
I quote: “Faith in the future was a thing you could almost bottle & sell when I was a youngster, but nowadays it’s a cruel hoax, and overpopulation
is the sole, absolute and abiding cul-
prit: it’s the root cause of inflation,
it’s behind every political upheaval,
it’s filling our jails, our mental hos-
pitals — you name it. And for what?
So as to keep the toy-makers in busi-
ness?” ISBN-10: 0-9788300-2-4 (2006)
The promise that new energy technology will surface anytime soon is a recurring cruel red herring! I lost USD 10,000 on International Energy Solutions Incorp. supposed development of cold fusion, before I found out that the real money is in APPLICATION, not discovery. See how well Thomas Edison did with his light bulb idea.
That is basically what Glenn Beck has been forcasting
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