Off The Grid News Better Ideas For Off The Grid Living
“The Martial Artist of Trend Forecasting” returns and his acerbic wit is as evident as ever. As someone has said, if Nostradamus was alive today, he’d have a hard time keeping up with this man, the world’s only trend analyst covering 300 trend fields.
Gerald Celente joins Brian Brawdy in discussing the current state of our union, with most of his salvos aimed in the direction of our current Federal Reserve chairman. According to Celente, having Bernanke, an expert on the Great Depression, in charge of overseeing a 21st century economic recovery is akin to having an expert in 1830s economics trying to address the issues of 1911… you can’t use Model T Ford solutions with a Mustang GT Shelby problem. The gap between the rich and poor grows larger every day, and we’re going to have to address the issues that face us if we’re to have any hope of getting ourselves out of the mess we’re in.
[powerpress]
Off The Grid Radio
Ep 076
Released: November 18, 2011
Brian: Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Off the Grid News – the radio version of offthegridnews.com. I’m Brian Brawdy, sitting in today for Mr. Bill Heid who is on assignment in all places of Europe. We have a very special show today in that it’s going to be a solid 30 minutes, no commercials, uninterrupted show, with our guest. Whenever this guest is on we always get great emails and Facebook posts and the like and here’s why – I’ll read you some of the quotes. As soon as I say his name everyone’s going to go “Bri, you didn’t even need to do the introduction.” “If Nostradamus were alive today, he’d have a hard time keeping up with our guest.” Another quote, “when CNN wants to know about the top trends, they ask our guest today to come on.” I’ve seen him before on CNN, he does a great job. “A network of 25 experts whose range of specialties would rival many university faculties” – that’s what they say about our guest today and his ever popular “The Trends Journal,” which is the world’s #1 source for the most important trends that are shaping – not just the future, not just my future, but your future – “The Trends Journal” shows you how these trends will affect your life, how to profit from them and what to do to avoid the pitfalls. Regardless of the business or the profession that you find yourself in, “The Trends Journal” provides insight, strategies and opportunities to help you navigate these treacherous and – I would say everyone would think – unprecedented times. Of course, I’m talking about Mr. Gerald Celente, trend expert, visionary, keynote speaker and the guy who’s trusted worldwide as the foremost authority on forecasting, analyzing and tracking the trends. Ladies and gentlemen, for an uninterrupted half-hour, Mr. Gerald Celente. Gerald, how are you sir?
Gerald: Thank you, Brian, that was very nice of you.
Brian: Not at all, my friend. I have to tell you, I was thinking about you today when the Fed – our big brother, Ben Bernanke, the four B’s – “Fed Lowers the GDP forecast, Mulls More Action.” Then you throw that in, sir, with everything going on now – Greece hasn’t decided if they like the bailout or not. When I knew you were going to be the guest today, it was like “I cannot wait to hear what Gerald thinks about the combination of those two events,” because the stuff happening in Europe will absolutely come to our country, won’t it?
Gerald: Oh yeah. It’s all connected. The global financial system is in collapse. Let’s call it what it is. You mentioned Ben Bernanke. Let’s pretend now, Brian, we are not in 2011, we’re in 1911. I’m the President and you’re my top economic advisor. I say to you “Brian, we have a catastrophe on our hands. We need to bring some people in here that really know how to deal with this problem.” You look at me and say “Mr. President, I got this guy – he’s a professor down at Princeton University and he’s an expert on the 1830s economy.” I say “what, are you out of your mind? What are you doing over here? You’re going to bring in somebody from the 1830s to deal with a 1911 problem? Whadda ya got rocks in your head?” Well, that’s who Ben Bernanke is. They brought in an expert from the Great Depression. They brag about it all the time – “Ben Bernanke knows everything about the Great Depression.” Yeah, I know how to fix Model T Fords. Big deal. This is a different world. This guy is an out and out loser. They used to call Osama bin Laden America’s Public Enemy #1. To me, it’s Osama Ben Bernanke. This guy has sold this country out. Let’s call a spade a spade. This is the guy who’s been pumping trillions – tens of trillions of dollars of our money to boost up banks, bailout hedge funds and businesses that are “too big to fail” and need our dough. He is the man responsible for devaluing our dollar and making life more expensive for all of us and all you folks out there that don’t want to gamble in the stock markets and you don’t want to take risk with your hard-earned money – you can’t put it in the bank anymore and get any kind of return on interest because Public Enemy #1, Osama Ben Bernanke, brought those interest rates down to zero. I love these ads that they run in the newspaper – “buy a CD at Citibank and you can get 0.1% on your money. It’s guaranteed!” Or something stupid like that. What they’ve done is they bankrupted the nation. Then you go and look at this guy’s track record. If I had a track record like him, I’d have been laughed out of business years ago. Let’s go back to 2007, in November, we came out with the panic of ’08 was going to strike. “No, no, no, Celente. You’re wrong, says Bernanke.” You go to our website and I’m on a TV show at the same time. It’s right there. Bernanke said … the host said, “come on, let’s not get excited about this. These things go up and down. Everything’s going to be alright. It’s not all dark clouds” – this is what the guy on the TV says. That’s all jive talk. We’re in a recession already, and we were, but not according to Ben Bernanke. He said we weren’t. He said we weren’t in a recession in 2008. He said we weren’t in a recession when we were already in a recession. He said we would be out of this recession. The Obama administration said with the stimulus packages, right now, Brian, we’d be at 7 percent unemployment, instead of what we’re really at and when you look at John Williams’ Shadow Stats it’s around 22 percent when you put in the people that are working part-time and want full-time jobs. Then you hear Bernanke today say “I’m dissatisfied with the state of the economy. Unemployment is far too high and I fully sympathize with the notion that the economy is not performing the way we would like.” Who could take this kind of baloney? If this guy talked to me for – “what are you, some kind of a jerk? The economy’s ‘not performing the way we like’ – not the way we like, the way you said it would and you were wrong.” That’s what you get when you get into government. Now he walks outside, you think he’s dissatisfied, he gets into the limousine, everybody salutes and he gets his big fat paycheck. That’s what it all is. You fail your way up to the top when you’re in government. Remember Larry Summers, Obama’s Chief Economic Advisor, the presstitutes and the media could never say this guy’s name without putting brilliant in the middle of it. It was the “brilliant Larry Summers” or “Larry ‘the brilliant’ Summers”. You never heard – it’s one big Washington circle jerk, that’s all this is and they keep the con game going.
Brian: Gerald, I’m on trendsresearch.com right now and I saw the video before the show. I had it on, although I don’t have the volume up, I still have it in the background. It has to be infuriating to you because let’s say we book you with Neil Cavuto or we book you with any of the other people that allegedly have their finger pulse – all the experts, all the trained people. No one listens to you and me. No one says that Ben Bernanke should be right up there with Eric Holder.
Gerald: Because they’re the presstitutes.
Brian: How do you get up in the morning and go “what is it going to take for people to listen to me?”
Gerald: They’re the presstitutes. That’s not what they do. The presstitutes serve their masters, not only about Bernanke, how about all these losing wars that are going on? How about those weapons of mass destruction that tie us to Al-Qaeda? Remember that one? Then you hear a guy like Cheney going around hawking his book … if it was the Nuremberg Trials he’d be hung. Instead, he’s out there selling his book and no one asks him about the big lie. “Mouse Blitzer” over there on CNN throws out a softball question, Cheney comes back with the answer “no one would disagree that the world is better off without Saddam Hussein.” Oh yeah, man? My life has really changed! I’m so happy he’s not here anymore … wow, happy days are here again! What, are you kidding me? You just destroyed a country, you killed how many thousands of our soldiers, maimed them or ruined them for life, killed a couple of hundred thousand people and you’re saying that? The presstitutes, you see, that’s all they are. They are servants to their masters. They’re never going to get anything real from them. By the way, I’ve been turning down these shows. Cavuto called up last week. I was too busy to go down. I blow them off now, because I’m not about – I make this really clear, Brian – I don’t tell anybody what to believe. Believe what you want. I’m a political atheist. I don’t believe in anybody’s political religion and I don’t bow to political gods. Anybody wants to do that, knock yourself out, not my trip. I look at the facts the way they are. Again, I don’t tell anybody what to believe but what these other people do is they tell you “this is the way it is. This is the way it’s supposed to be.” Like an arrogant guy like Ben Bernanke that “the economy is not performing the way we would like.” The way you would like?
Brian: That’s why I think – every time I’m on your site, and again it’s trendsresearch.com – I go to your site and I see some of the other things that you’ve written and some of the research and the keynotes and the like. It makes me think, even though you’re not telling anyone what to think, how is it that once you become a politician, you’re elected to political office, that people fail to see that you’re a mugger, you’re a pickpocket – that nothing good comes from government. You can be Jon Stewart, you can be everyone who says “government builds road.” They generate no income of their own unless they take it from you and me. I know you’re not asking people to look at it the way you do, but still isn’t it frustrating when you do as excellent a job as you do at trendsresearch.com and then people still go “King Ben … the brightest mind ever … Larry Summers …” Or, like you said, let’s go and hire somebody from a college who’s never ran a company, who’s never been involved in the free market and let them tell us how to be the free market. I don’t know how you keep your head on.
Gerald: What happens is the reason we do, Brian, in all honesty – “The Trends Journal,” knock on wood, is an international publication and every day we get emails from people thanking us for what we’re doing for two reasons. We get emails saying that we’ve inspired them, because that’s our motto is “think for yourself and find your own greatness.” Don’t let anybody lead you. You be the leader. Work, of course, with those of like mind for a better civilization. The second one is “thank you for speaking out.” That’s the reward that we get, and it’s a great one. It keeps everyone here going. We’re calling it like it is and we’re grounded in the truth. The truth’s not abstract. If you asked me how tall I was and what I looked like and I told you I was 6’5”, blonde hair, blue eyes, that’s not the truth. The truth is not abstract, there’s foundations to it. That’s what really keeps us going. Also, what keeps us – and again, this whole “Trends Journal” – the focus is on it and we ended with the note that “the future is in your hands. Let’s not drop it.” But to prevail for true civilization to arise from chaos of the present, all those who understand the necessity for action must take action. Don’t wait for a leader to lead you, lead yourself, do something. The doing something is happening now. You mentioned about our forecast and when you look at “The Trends Journal,” it begins with “Nostradamus, top this.” I wrote a book, “Trends 2000,” a Warner book??. It was a best seller in 1997. I had predicted in that book, and I was giving a scenario of the new millennium, that they were marching on Wall Street and what they were marching about was the gap between the rich and the poor. I was just on a TV show, “Russia Today” actually, and they were asking me about some of the political candidates. I said “you know that guy, the Pizza King over there running for President, Herman Cain, he said those people at Occupy Wall Street are anti-capitalists.” I said “no, no. Herman got it wrong. Anti-capitalist is bailing out banks. Anti-capitalist is bailing out ‘too big to fail.’ That’s anti-capitalist.” That’s what’s happened to this country. It’s anti-capitalist. Do you know what it is? People say “that Obama …” I was thinking too about Obama. This is a man without a past. Nobody knows about this guy’s past. If they ever look into my past, ??[0:14:53], what they’d find out about me. “Oh yeah, Celente? I remember him when he threw the desk out of the second story window …”
Brian: That’s why when you said earlier imagine you were President and you called me in and I chuckled to myself going “yeah, you and I are in the same boat …”
Gerald: But this guy has no past and what’s his present? His present is a teleprompted presence. There’s nothing there. And you look at his future – what is it going to be? What we’re looking at are people being led by empty leaders and now is the time for people to take the future in their own hands. Going back to the Occupy Wall Street and the anti-capitalist – no, they call Obama a Marxist and a Communist. No he’s not. It’s fascism. It’s the merger of state and corporate powers. That’s what we have today. They give it a white shoe boy name like “too big to fail.”
Brian: Absolutely. I think of this often when I hear you speak and I see you on TV – we get the government that we get. We’ve done this. Not so much you and me but other people out here. We’ve elected this guy. What’s Obama going to look like in the future? I’m sure he’s going to continue to sell the State Department copies of his books. You read something like that and you go “wait a minute, the State Department paid $70,000 to get copies of Obama’s books.” If that isn’t a red flag about transparency and how people inside the beltway look at what they consider to be the norm, I don’t know what is. Could you do that?
Gerald: No.
Brian: Would you and I be able to do that?
Gerald: Of course not. But that’s the way the whole thing is worked. I was down to Occupy Wall Street. We have somebody down there virtually every day. The day I was down there, about a week-and-a-half ago, it was a Thursday and the headline news in the Times and the business news was Citigroup just got fined $285 million for doing a dirty deal. The dirty deal was “hey, Brian, buy this security. I’m telling you, it’s a winner. I’m selling them to everybody that I know. I’m shorting them.” They got caught on that so they paid $285 million. Who did time? Who got busted at Citigroup? How about nobody? None. You and I, we go five miles over the limit … these kids sell lemonade stands, they get busted. I just read about these people having a party and the food inspectors came in and they bought all the food from local farms from people that grew it on their own and they weren’t inspected. They closed down the party. You’ve got one thing like this after another. How about the one that was over the internet the other day, the woman that didn’t pay for a chicken salad sandwich – they threw her and her husband in jail and took the kid away and put her in a foster home. There’s fascism. I’m telling you … you look down the line – nobody gets busted at Citigroup for doing $285 million worth of dirty deals, and that’s just the beginning. There’s the Goldman Sachs Gang – they got a slap on the wrist – remember that one? All of them. Oh, and here’s the other thing that only the fascists get away with this one and they did not admit or deny the accusations. They didn’t admit to it and deny – again, you get caught with a joint, you’re in jail.
Brian: How about if you’re Roger Clemens and you go testify in front of Congress and then you get brought up on charges, but if you’re Attorney General Eric Holder, you can go and mislead the panel all you want and now only 30 lawmakers have called for him to resign. I saw that this morning and, again, I thought “I’ll talk to Gerald about this, this afternoon.” Roger Clemens gets spanked for allegedly lying about juice, but Holder can absolutely – people say “you shouldn’t say he’s lied, it hasn’t been proved yet” – great, so he comes and he absolutely misleads. He absolutely drags his feet. Who’s a coward now?
Gerald: I know … well, a baseball game … people lose their homes, they lose their future – that’s OK. And this is what these Occupy movements are about. Again, the media’s totally misrepresenting, from what I’ve seen. It’s not a bunch of – are there whackos there? You bet there are. There are whackos anywhere. You want to look at Congress, the Gang of 535? You want to look at some crazy cats? And they get the red carpet treatment. What I’m saying is, what we’re looking at now is a total breakdown in society and it’s going on worldwide. There is no solving the Greek debt crisis because behind that there’s a Portugal debt crisis, the Irish debt crisis, the Spanish debt crisis, the English debt crisis, the Italian debt crisis, the upcoming downgrading of France’s creditworthiness and it goes down the line. I love the language – again, the language is great. They call this group over there that’s putting on these austerity measures – austerity measures mean this – you lost your job, you can’t find one, you’ve got your pensions and benefits cut. Look at the wages in the United States – real wages of the median wages have declined 10 percent since 2007. I’ve got an idea. We’re going to raise your taxes, jerk! We’re going to raise them on your house, we’re going to raise them on your school taxes and we’re going to raise them on sales taxes. That’s not enough for you? We’re going to slap an extra fee on your home heating oil – winter’s coming. This is what they’re doing. Oh, and that retirement age? We’re going to increase it until after you die. How’s that? So what they do, and they say that … all these groups are, they’re loan sharks. They like to call themselves banks. They give the name over in Europe that they have to meet the conditions set by the troika – that’s the word they use – the troika. The troika is the IMF, which is actually the “International Mafia Federation,” the European Commission and the European central banks. They’re not a troika. If they were called the Gambinos, the Bonannos and the Genoveses, they’d be called the Family. That’s all this is. These are loan sharks. The International Monetary Fund, or the International Mafia Federation, is the loan shark of last resort. “Brian, listen, borrow money – I’m telling you, borrow it from me.” “But Gerald, how am I …” “Don’t worry about paying me back. Interest rates are next to nothing. Pay me the money you could grow your business.” Then your business doesn’t grow. “Brian, I want my money back.” “Listen, Gerald, I’m sorry. Things slowed down really bad.” “I want my money!” “Alright, we’re going to raise taxes, we’re going to put the austerity …” “That’s not enough. You’re not paying me back enough. I’ll tell you what I want. You’re going to call it privatization. You got it? I want your ports. I want your oil. I want your road tolls. I want your land. You got it?” That’s what they’re doing. But they give them fancy names. I’ve said this before and I’m going to say it over and over again until people get tired of it or get it in their head. If the names on Wall Street were named Celente, Caruso, Mondavi, Puccini, Rossini – they’d call them the mafia. But you’re not allowed to call the white shoe boys crooks and criminals – no, no, they’re financiers and we’re going to give the heads of the families nice names. Try this one on – John Paul Trouche– isn’t that nice? Christina Lagarde. Instead of Lucky Luciano, Al Capone and Meyer Lansky. That’s all it is. That’s all this is. It’s the biggest criminal operation in world history and they’re getting away with it by putting up fronts like Osama Ben Bernanke and the rest of the crew.
Brian: And then you look at cartels – you look at drug cartels, you look at the like – all the bait and switch. I remember a couple of interviews ago you were talking to us about that as well, where they’ll have you focus on one thing over here on the left hand, while the right hand is doing something else. In addition to the names – I saw this report this morning where Chicago is contemplating – they’re going to go ahead and decriminalize marijuana. But here’s the thing, Gerald, and what’s so infuriating to me when I read the report – they’re going to decriminalize it to the degree that if a cop catches you, he can instantly write you a ticket for $200. Instead of arresting you, instead of putting you in jail, now they just want your money. For those of you people that say cops aren’t nefarious in that regard, let me tell you, I’m an ex-New York cop and the moment they decided to make DUIs illegal, they paid cops – their overtime was paid out of the fines of the very people that the patrolmen arrested for DUI. So when you see this thing “we’re just going to charge everybody $200 if you get caught. That’ll free the police up.” That’ll free the police up to focus on real crimes. Now, I’m not disparaging every police officer, there’s some great ones out there, but there’s also a percentage – and I’ve been there, I know – there’s a percentage now that know they’re going to start making money by looking for those $200 pops. This hasn’t called off any work on pot smokers, this is just increased work because now they can extort $200 from you, giving you an appearance ticket.
Gerald: What a joke. I love these drug ads they have on TV that came via the Bill Clinton administration. They weren’t allowed to put these on before then. You take this drug and then they tell you its side effects – “it may cause suicide, kidney failure.” But smoke a joint and then you get busted. Look, that’s what I’m saying. The whole system has now become down to – and that’s what a lot of these protests are about – and this is what I’ve been writing about for years. When I was a young man, there was such a thing called a middle class. Remember that song, I remember in the ‘60s, “I take the 8:15 into the city and I get to work at 9:00.”
Brian: Sure! Bachman Turner Overdrive.
Gerald: Who leaves now at 8:15 and gets to work at 9:00? People are on the road at 5:30 in the morning and don’t get home until 9:00. What’s happened is, the gap between the rich and the poor is the widest in the United States of any of the industrialized nations. When you look around the world that’s going on, the big picture is this – we’re on the cusp of the first great war of the 21st Century. When revolts break out over in Tunisia, when they start out – you hear the presstitutes say things like “I tell you, it’s them Islamo-fascists.” Then when it happens over in Egypt, they say “it’s the Muslim Brotherhood.” Then the same thing when it happens in Yemen and Bahrain – no, no, Bahrain it’s those Shi’ite – those Shia crazy Iranians that are instigating it. Then it happens over in Syria and then it goes over to Greece. Oh, those Greeks on the street – them are anarchists. Then you go over to Spain – it’s the Indignatos. Then you go over to the UK when the riots break out – it’s the hooligans. It’s none of them. It’s a lot of angry people. You’ve been a cop. When people lose everything and have nothing left to lose, they lose it. That’s what’s going on. This is class warfare 2.0.
Brian: Gerald, you’re a martial arts expert. You’re a trained a fighter and a black belt. For our listeners that aren’t ex-cops, that aren’t martial arts experts, that don’t have that sense – what can they do? Because I have to tell you, when I’m on trendsresearch.com and I read “The Trends Journal” and subscribe, even though it seems terribly foreboding, it always gives me help because you throw it back on the individual – “don’t wait for a leader. Be your own leader.” I say all the time, “if you’re waiting for a hero to ride in on some big, white horse? You’re backing the wrong pony.” So what can regular folks do – and unfortunately we only have a couple of minutes left – what can regular folks do when they listen to this interview going “Gerald’s got me fired up.” What’s the first thing you would say to them that they can do to start to turn this around for themselves?
Gerald: Here’s what you have to do. You know this. You have to get in shape – physically, emotionally and spiritually. I was looking at some data. When I graduated college, I got my Master’s in 1970, 5 percent of the children were obese. Today it’s over 17 percent. When I say emotionally and spiritually, I meditate every day. I try to quiet my mind. And I stay in shape. You have to have a foundation to work from. What it is, it’s about finding the greatness within yourself. We all have it. We’re all endowed with that special gift. For me – only speaking for myself – hell is taking that last breath of life and knowing that I BS’d myself and I’m not the guy I said I was. So it’s for everybody to find the truth within them. When they find that truth, and that’s judgment day to me, is every day – were you the person that lived to the ideals that you believed in and that you know are morally correct – values change, morals don’t. That’s the beginning of the new way. To me that’s the intellectual revolution, the renaissance and a higher civilization. Again, you know from to get to where you were, you know that you have to do the work. There’s that wonderful saying – the Hindu saying – “when the student’s ready, the teacher appears.” The people have to get ready and it starts on the individual basis. Then things start falling in line. Then you start seeing clearly. Then you start taking measures. You don’t get it in a pill.
Brian: Gerald, I think I’ll trade you one when you talk about “when the student is ready, the teacher appears.” remember Tat Tvam Asi – thou art that. The person that you’re looking for to turn the ship is you. The person that you’re looking for to stand and draw your line is Tat Tvam Asi – thou art that.
Gerald: Thou art that. Wonderful.
Brian: My friend, I know we have to run because we promised we’d only keep you for the half-hour. Any closing thoughts before I go ahead and let everybody know about your website before we run?
Gerald: Yes. To really understand that we’re going into a winter of discontent. The people that got us into this problem are not going to fix it. Your politicians and your policy makers and your military leaders are the same people that you couldn’t stand in high school and college that wanted to be class president, head of the student council, the gladhanders, the suckups, the bow-downs and the brown-nosers and the overly ambitious. If you listen to them to lead you to salvation, it’s not going to be a happy ending. Plan your own future. It’s in your hands, don’t drop it.
Brian: Ladies and gentlemen, we’ve had the good honor and fortune of being with Mr. Gerald Celente for the full half-hour. Do yourself a favor, go now to trendsresearch.com. Been forecasting worldwide since 1980 – same year, Gerald, coincidentally, that I became a police officer in New York – since 1980, forecasting worldwide. Go ahead, sign up. You’re going to love his website. Do as I do. You can check it out from time to time. It’s there. He tells it like it is. Gerald, thank you so very much for giving us a half-hour of your time.
Gerald: Thank you, Brian. Good luck.
Brian: Ladies and gentlemen, as always, thank you for listening to Off the Grid Radio. Please email us your questions, your comments, your critiques – to [email protected]. You can find us on Facebook – facebook.com/offthegridnews and, of course as always, you can follow us on Twitter @offgridnews. On behalf of Mr. Bill Heid who’s on assignment today, and the entire team at Off the Grid News, thank you so very much. I’m Brian Brawdy.
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