Gerald Celente

nyarlothothep

He predicts food riots in the US, mass revolt etc. An economist and CEO of The Trends Research Institute, his previous predictions were the 87 stock market crash, the fall of the soviet union, the asian fiscal crisis and now he's saying there is going to be a serious upheaval in the US. And we know that what happens in the US invariably transfers over here. So if his predictions come true, what would you extrapolate from them? End of the world? He does mention the possibility current Gaza conflict developing into a global conflict with Iran.

humanji

That's strange, because he also claims, "The bottom of the luxury market is not going to fall out." So there'll be riots over food, but we'll all be living in comfort while doing it.

Kama

Pretty down with a lot of what he’s saying; but then I’m a ‘Doomer’. Came across this guy on a Goldbug site before iirc, don’t know him well though to make a measured judgement.

Humanji, a strong high-end luxury market isn't that incompatible with people starving; there was just that in Russia during it's collapse and chaotic 'liberalization'. The argument of people like Dmitri Orloff is that something similar is taking place in the USA. Rather than 'we'll all be living in comfort', a small number of bandits will; Russia had its oligarchs and privatised KGB, the USA would have its own protected elite, with good security to keep the mobs at bay, I presume. A casual google on him produces Futurust Fraud page, where his most off the wall predictions aren't that crazy...


The Tax rebellion I’d be +1 on; with states forced to try and take more out through tax, in context of lowering standard of living, you have a recipe for a pretty ugly situation, angry people feeling shafted and betrayed, and not just having a whinge about it. Tax rebellion has a definite pragmatism as a strategy (given that its what a lot of people would like to do anyway, so it will have a strong bandwagon-conformist effect once people think 'other' people are doing it, and to it also will be a clear tipping point when states lose their legitimacy.

Tax compliance has been shown to be skewed mightily by the perception of others complying, I'd suggest rebellion will be the same, once people work out how much leverage it actually has, how scared governments would be by mass non-payment, and once they have a large enough group to get some kind of herd effect, and pass the 'they'll throw little old me in teh jailz' point.


This may not be far off; Greece, Iceland and Latvia are already on this slope. No longer able to satisfactorily provide public goods, the statist center doesn’t hold. For a more extreme example, look at Mexico, the north of the country has degenerated into gangs-and-paramilitaries, the State has lost even a pretence at claiming a monopoly of violence, which kicks in a feedback loop toward decreasing legitimacy (and increasing legitimacy for its competitors).

End of the world? Depends what you mean by ‘end’, and ‘world’. The world of the last 20+ years has clearly ended already, not many people are in much doubt about that; but then you can talk about the fuzzy warm Clinton period ending with the Bush/GWOT era, and so on. A drastic shift in living standards and expectations? For sure. Survivalist Mad Maxism? Hmm...A disconcerting number of people in my acquaintance are stocking up on seeds and non-perishables. Course, some of my family did this in the 70s teehee, but we laugh less at them now than 5 years ago. Food riots? A little hitch in just-in-time supply chain would give you that, without total collapse. 3 square meals from barbarism, and all that. Course some folks just call that Doomer pessimism, and that all this is is a fairly standard bursting of a bubble in a straightforward banking/business cycle, a good ‘ol hangover from the drunken party.

Gentlemen, place your bets?


The parts where he talks about the chief concern being food on the table rather than a new Ipod is on the proverbial money, as is the collapse of a lot of the corporate-oligopolies, and an enforced return to localism and self-sufficiency. Parks and lawns as urban gardening, allotments and home production (London during the War is the usual model). This is pretty close to the Transition Towns model, not as a shiny RightThinking hippy ideal, but on plain pragmatism…Similarly when he said the ‘academic-industrial complex’ needs to be downsized; that argument was going on in the UK quite loud, on the ‘too many media studies not enough plumbers’, chicken to roost for the Labour ‘degrees4 everyone’ target. Skills of a practical nature > chalk and talk, frankly, whether the discipline is economics and finance, or Critical (Post)Decultural Studies. To rephrase noted Indian Chief, the time will come when man will learn that he cannot eat derivatives. It would be a pretty sick irony if Ireland managed to starve again, neh?


As to Iran and a global war? I’m more dubious. You can’t have a world war if its not against a comparable world power or alliance of powers; that’s why we bomb countries like Iraq or Bosnia; as HL Mencken said, the Anglo-Saxon race has been renowned throughout history for its disinclination to pick a fair fight. To what extent China and Russia have Irans back is arguable, even though they are aligned in the SCO; however, Iran does have the capability to shut down the Gulf fairly effectively.


The interesting thing will be how China behaves; China has a lot of centrifugal force which the central Government keeps down with repression, and can buy off with economic performance. In the absence of the economic side, the CCCP is up the proverbial creek, since they dumped their ideology for the market. Lots of unemployed men is a bad sign for any government, moreso in a country with a long tradition of violent rebellions against corrupt central authorities. If I was them, or in one of their giant military thinktanks, I'd be getting a war on pronto, tbh. Manufacture some nationalist slight, and go rarr rarr stomp stomp somewhere.


On the whole, I think a lot of these horrible changes could actually be pretty healthy, looked at the right way; like I said, I'm a Doomer, but with occassionally sustained bursts of optimism

Sofa_King Good

Fom the book The best democracy money can buy by Greg Palast.

Here he interviewa Joseph Stiglitz - Former Chief Econmist of the World Bank, who describes the IMF/World Bank's four step process. Here is point 3 and 3 1/2.

"Stiglitz is no conspiracy nutter ranting about Black Helicopters. The man was inside the game, a member of Bill Clinton’s cabinet as chairman of the president’s Council of Economic Advisers...


... At this point, the IMF drags the gasping nation to Step 3: Market-Based Pricing, a fancy term for raising prices on food, water and domestic gas.

This leads, predictably, to Step 3-1/2: what Stiglitz calls “The IMF riot.”
The IMF riot is painfully predictable. When a nation is “down and out, [the IMF] takes advantage and squeezes the last pound of blood out of them. They turn up the heat until, finally, the whole cauldron blows up”—as when the IMF eliminated food and fuel subsidies for the poor in Indonesia in 1998. Indonesia exploded into riots, but there are other examples—the Bolivian riots over water prices in April 2000 and, in February 2001, the riots in Ecuador over the rise in domestic gas prices imposed by the World Bank. You’d almost get the impression that the riot is written into the plan


And it is. Stiglitz did not know about the documents the BBC and the Observer obtained from inside the World Bank, stamped over with those pesky warnings “confidential”, “restricted”, “not to be disclosed”. Let’s get back to the “Interim Country Assistance Strategy” for Ecuador. In it the Bank several times states—with cold accuracy—that they expected their plans to spark “social unrest”, to use their bureaucratic term for a nation in flames.

That’s not surprising. The secret report notes that the plan to make the US dollar Ecuador’s currency has pushed 5 1 per cent of the population below the poverty line. The World Bank “Assistance” plan simply calls for facing down civil strife and suffering with “political resolve”—and still higher prices.

The IMF riots (and by riots I mean peaceful demonstrations dispersed by bullets, tanks and tear gas) cause new panicked flights of capital and government bankruptcies. This economic arson has its bright side—for foreign corporations, who can then pick off remaining assets, such as the odd mining concession or port, at fire sale prices."

nyarlothothep

oh well, I'm fcked, I'm the most impractical scatter brained, can't tell left from right person you're ever likely to meet. I think there could well be positive outcomes, but what I'd hate to see is some recourse to fascism or something equally stupid, the rule of the fist rather than the rule of "law." Nor would I like to see a new dark ages, with scientific and cultural progress going out the window. I am totally clueless about economics, however I do have one question. Is money essentially an arbitrary way of valuing labour hours and the exchange of goods and services this underpins? Secondly if it is arbitrary, why doesn't everyone just ignore the crisis of confidence this collapse has brought about, would the end result of collectively deciding the crisis doesn't exist not mean that there would a return to normality again?

Kama

Hehe I wonder the same, and we're not alone. The power element imo is in who gets the right to create money/debt etc. If taken to its limit case, anyone can...If I promise you a cup of coffee tomorrow, in a sense we are creating a form of money. If that promise is honored by other people, hell, its a currency. Again, I don't thik this is that far off, similar things happened in Germany in their depression (Gesell is the best source for this), barter clubs are forming in dublin, Transition Towns did the Totness Pound, and so on.

As to 2, I often wonder what would happen if we did a reboot/jubilee. As the IT Crowd say, if it breaks, turn it off and on again...