Introduction: Forecasting trends since 1980, Mr. Gerald Celente is publisher of the Trends Journal®, Founder/Director of the Trends Research Institute® and author of the highly acclaimed and best selling books, Trend Tracking and Trends 2000 (Warner Books). Using his unique perspectives on current events forming future trends, Gerald Celente developed the Globalnomic® methodology, which is used to identify, track, forecast and manage trends. His on-time trend forecasts, vibrant style, articulate delivery and vivid public presence makes him a favorite of major media. The Trends Research Institute has earned its reputation as "today's most trusted name in trends" for accurate and timely predictions. On the geopolitical and economic fronts, Celente and The Trends Research Institute are credited with predicting the collapse of the Soviet Union, the last two economic recessions, the dot-com meltdown, the 1997 Asian currency crisis, the 1987 world stock market crash, increased terrorism against America, "Crusades 2000," the quagmire in Iraq … before war began and much more. The Trends Journal is on YouTube here.

Anthony Wile: Thanks for taking time to speak with us again. There's a lot of interesting material in the Spring 2014 Trends Journal, and we'll ask more about just a few of the issues covered. You previously told us about your historic building restoration work in Kingston, New York and now you've announced you'll be hosting a conference at your headquarters there August 1-3 called "History Before it Happens." Your description states: "The program will provide up-close interaction with Gerald and others who will open your eyes to German poet, playwright and philosopher Friedrich von Schiller's observation: 'In today, walks tomorrow.' " That's intriguing … tell us more about your goals for the conference.

Gerald Celente: The conference is going to take place, of course, August 1st and people from all over the world are coming. They're traveling from Japan, Australia, Switzerland, Alaska and Oklahoma, just to name a few. So they're coming from everywhere. It's sold out. And really, it's the only conference of its kind. It is going to teach people how to look at the kind of things that I use as a trend forecaster in helping me see how the current events are going to form future trends. So I could say with all honesty that they're gong to receive information that's not available anywhere else. They certainly don't teach it in universities and you don't hear it from the mainstream or even the alternative media. We're going to have a number of speakers here, as well, giving their insights in their fields and what they see coming. It will be a wonderful conference. And not only that, it's being held on the most historic corners in the United States, the only four corners where there's a pre-Revolutionary War stone building on each corner, and we have three of them; the fourth is a museum. So the setting is perfect and the topics are going to be original.

Anthony Wile: Since this one's already sold out, is there another conference that people can look forward to in the future?

Gerald Celente: Yes. We're going to have four a year and the next one's coming up in October. I urge people, if they're going to consider coming, to do so as soon as the information comes out because this one sold out almost instantly. Again, it's something that you're not going to find anywhere else. And we like to have a good time so it won't be all work. There will be a good amount of play in there as well.

Anthony Wile: Let's look at some trends. Where are the US and the West headed economically? We think the stock market is going to be boosted for another year or two via incredible monetary stimulation before it finally crashes and a more globalist system is ushered in. Your take?

Gerald Celente: It's hard to put timing on it. The forecast that I've gotten wrong over the last couple of years was I thought the markets would have crashed earlier. As you mentioned, the stimulus is unprecedented – record low interest rates and negative interest rates in the ECB. Now they're talking about the IMF wanting the ECB to also use quantitative easing. Will that work? To date it has not. It's only boosted the equity markets and when you look at the real numbers just coming out, for example, the forecasts for the European Union are coming in at half of what they were supposed to be. The same thing in the States. And you can't blame the bad weather that went on in the States for what's happened in Europe. It was a very warm winter so it had nothing to do with that.

So the timing is very difficult. As a trend forecaster we don't only look at economics; we have a geopolitical destabilization now, the likes of which we haven't seen in several years. Will that have an effect? So two years may be the right timing and it may not be. There's just no way of knowing and there's also no way of knowing what kind of "schemes undreamed of" they'll come up with that would juice the markets.

Anthony Wile: A brief article in the Trends Journal is entitled "The pot legalization train has left the station." High Alert recently financially partnered with a medical marijuana production company. What's your take on this growing drug legalization trend? Does it provide entrepreneurial opportunities? And will it end with pot, or do you see other drugs being legalized as well?

Gerald Celente: Yes, it does provide entrepreneurial opportunities but in looking at the bigger picture, there's a reason why they did it – and that is to get tax revenues. It's like gaming. In the same way that provided a revenue stream of taxes to states, so too is the legalization of pot and any other drugs that follow. But all it means is that the government gets in the business. When I was a young kid in the Bronx and Yonkers, we used to play the numbers, run the numbers. You would pick the three last numbers of the attendance of Aqueduct Raceway the previous day. So the next day if you got the numbers right, the last three numbers, you won. And, of course, it was the big deal. The police were always breaking the numbers racket up because the people that could afford it the least were playing it the most. So, of course, when they got in the business – they called it Lotto and Megamillions – then it was okay. It was legitimate.

The point I'm making is that these things run their course. You look at legalized gambling. Many places sold it as a panacea to rev up depressed areas. By putting casinos there they thought they would have new gambling opportunities to bring in new revenue streams. Those days are over.

So going back to legalized marijuana, it's going to be an entrepreneurial opportunity in the beginning but then, just like you see everywhere else, the multinationals and the large corporations will take all of the action and freeze out the little people. They make it look like it's going to help the entrepreneur but when the business becomes too big, the government will step in to make sure that big business gets most of the business because that's all the government is. It's big business under the guise of democracy. It's not a corporate revolving door. It doesn't revolve. The corporations are running the country.

Anthony Wile: Let's examine some of the other content in this issue. In "Stoking a war that can't be won," a 6-page piece on Ukraine, the US and Russia, you point out: "At this moment, political lunatics have their fingers on the triggers. They need to be stopped." Please elaborate for our readers. What role has the US Leviathan played in what's going on in Ukraine? And is this really a potential World War III scenario or an effort to distract the public from the realities of economic devastation and another failed administration?

Gerald Celente: On the first note, how is America involved in it, it's too lengthy to go into but anybody who wants to really follow it, I suggest they go to Dr. Paul Craig Roberts's site. Of course, we wrote about it extensively in the Trends Journal. His website is paulcraigroberts.org. Of course, he was the former assistant treasury secretary under Ronald Reagan and in that position he had the authority to bring in the director of the CIA to question him under oath. This is a guy that's been on the inside and knows what's going on.

Look at the videotapes of our assistant secretary of state, Victoria Nuland, on December 13, 2013 at the National Press Club in Washington with a Chevron sign over her shoulder, saying that Ukraine is European and they should follow the path set forth by the IMF. That's all you need to know to see what's going on.

And by the way, for those who don't know, Vice President Joseph Biden's son, Hunter Biden, was appointed to the board of directors of Burisma Energy, the largest private energy company in Ukraine, and so too was Devon Archer, the business partner of Christopher Heinz. Christopher Heinz is John Kerry's stepson and Devon Archer worked on a number of John Kerry's campaigns. He, too, was appointed to the board of directors of Burisma Energy. So the United States involvement in this is extensive – Victoria Nuland, Jeffrey Pilot, the American ambassador to the Ukraine prior to the overthrow of Yanukovych, the tapes that they have planning an overthrow and saying who would be best put in place when Yanukovych went and on and on and on – it's nonstop.

Can it be World War III? Absolutely. These things are out of control and it's not as though somebody sets the trigger off intentionally. These are madmen and madwomen. When I say madwomen, we can't forget Tymoshenko, either, the former prime minister who is trying to run again. When you listen to her crazy rants on the recordings, saying things like they should basically nuke Russia, it's an equal opportunity employer. All genders are created equal.

It could escalate out of control. You have to keep putting the pieces together. You could go back to the Iraq crisis that's heating up again and look at energy prices. Energy prices are playing a big role in Russian energy going into Europe and Ukraine. As the prices go up, the conflicts intensify. As recessions get worse – and, of course, Ukraine is headed toward a depression – that's when violence escalates. It's very, very much a situation to worry and wonder about.

Anthony Wile: In "Stagnation rules the world economy," you pointed out: "Global markets are weathering economic storms for one reason and one reason only. Cheap money! And lots of it!" You didn't mention China specifically but we assume China is part of this same environment. What's in China's future?

Gerald Celente: The real estate market in China has essentially crashed. I guess they don't have a Chinese word for quantitative easing and cheap money but they're doing the same thing. The differences are that China puts its money into real estate development and infrastructure. According to the Financial Times – and I'm only quoting them so it's not my number and I haven't verified it but, again, quoting the Financial Times – "Between 2010 and 2013 China used more cement in infrastructure and real estate than the United States used in the entire 20th century."

When you look at where China's investing now and then go back to the Winter Trends Journal, one of the top trends we had was Global Chinatown. Chinese are buying up a lot of the world. The big Chinese investment companies know the bubble has burst and they're looking to diversify. There's no way of stopping it. Look at the yuan. It's become greatly devalued. They're doing the same thing. The Chinese keep saying they will not juice the markets and immediately after they say they won't, they do. One fact after another. So it's one big Ponzi scheme.

And again, I don't know how you say Ponzi in Chinese – or Japanese. But look at the Japanese, too. Their quantitative easing, the relation to GDP, the United States, is three times the amount and what has it done? It's only enriched the equity markets. In China, however, the equity markets have not recovered from their 2008 highs. That's why people invested so much in real estate. So the real estate bubble in China, I believe, has for all intents and purposes already burst.

Anthony Wile: You're not a fan of US economic policies any more than you are of its military ones. Remind us of your perspective regarding the Bush administration. Didn't Obama run under the idea of "changing" Bush policies? How come those policies seem to remain in force?

Gerald Celente: Go back to our Trends Journals in 2007 and 2008, prior to the election. We knew Obama was a fraud. And I'm a political atheist, I look at things the way they are and not the way I want them be. We called him Backtrack Barack back then. He had no credentials. He was a community organizer who organized nothing. He was another front man. And by their deeds ye shall know them. That's what he was. Nothing that he said he would do, he did. He's one of the greatest frauds. After winning the Nobel Peace Prize he then started a war against Libya and helped destabilize the entire region. I shouldn't call it a war. They called it a humanitarian mission and a time-limited, scope-limited kinetic action. How dare I call it a war? He's a fraud, another con-mander in chief to follow all the others. There's been no one of any credibility in my lifetime that's called themselves commander in chief of the United States.

Anthony Wile: Given that nothing seems to change in the US economically or politically, how long will people continue to support the system?

Gerald Celente: It's amazing that they keep supporting the system. When you turn on the television now, every other day you see an interview with Dick Cheney – it's a disgrace. And not only him but also Wolfowitz – one fraud, liar, megalomaniac, psychopath, sociopath after another. The people who brought us the Iraq War are now telling us what to do next and the presstitues keep pumping these people up as though they're legitimate human beings without severe mental defects. And the people keep saluting and rolling out the red carpets, whether it's for their congressmen, senators, presidents, vice presidents or cabinet members. It puzzles me how the people could keep believing these lies coming from politicians but they keep doing it and there's no greater evidence than the recycling of Dick Cheney as an expert now on what the US should do with Iraq.

Anthony Wile: Do you see a tipping point?

Gerald Celente: I don't believe there's going to be one in the United States. Again, in calling some of my forecasts wrong, I thought the people would be out in the streets a long time ago. And one of the ways I got it wrong – when you go back to the Great Depression there were bread lines. You know why you don't see any bread lines? Food stamps. They're keeping people off the streets. And not only food stamps – they can buy any kind of crap they want. Look at the photos of poor people back in the '30s and look at them now. Now, the poor are the most obese, always with the excuse that crappy food is cheap. Compare that to rice and beans. It's a lot of baloney. It's not true at all. Of course, we're talking about different levels. The United States has more prescription drug use and antipsychotic drug use than anywhere else in the world. And we're the most obese nation. So they're out of their minds and they can't get up on their own two feet. There's not going to be any revolution here.

And then when you do go out and fight, the cops will beat the hell out of you. Look at that woman who's serving time in jail, Cecily McMillan – she elbowed a cop in the eye and now she's doing jail time, and a three-week trial. So if you get out of line in America, you go to jail. And if you really get out of line they kill you with drone strikes because the United States Supreme Court has ruled that it's legal for el Presidente of los Ustades Unites to take out any suspected "terrorists" – suspected. You're not charged, you're not tried and you're not convicted of anything. They can kill you. The writ of habeas corpus is gone. Even the Magna Carta in this country is dead, let alone the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. So no, you're not going to see any real revolts in the United States, I don't believe.

Anthony Wile: You wrote at length in the Spring issue about uprisings around the world, saying, "Beneath the surface, they share a common thread: With nothing left to lose, people are losing it." So why this is happening in Europe and elsewhere, but not in the US?

Gerald Celente: In Europe, the people are more closely knit. In the United States the people are very separated. The cities are usually bustling but the people are very disconnected. When you go to Europe, even in the cities there are neighborhoods within those cities and you don't have that here. You have the sprawling suburbs.

And number two, there's still a cultural unity in Europe and in other regions that does not exist here any more. We've splintered into nothingness. When you talk about Miley Cyrus and Justin Bieber and even put the word "pop culture" into it, it becomes an oxymoron. There's nothing about culture in any of what's going on in America's mainstream entertainment. What I'm saying is there's no glue in the United States.

In addition, people are more educated in terms of current events forming future trends in Europe. Having said that, they still fall for the same boloney. It's only a minority that rises up. The masses in most countries still follow their leader and believe the lies that they're fed. Otherwise there wouldn't be austerity measures, there wouldn't be privatization, there wouldn't be massive unemployment and there would be no eurozone if the people really rebelled against the multinationals and the central bankers that have taken over the government. So it's only a small minority.

Regarding the recent elections, I think the two to look at, where you saw the most success, is the United Kingdom Independence Party, UKIP, and Le Pen's party in France. Other than that, they didn't make it in Italy. Spain has some marginal parties coming up under the surface but they're very radical in terms of what they're looking for, so I don't see those going mainstream. But I don't see them stopping, either, in Europe because as we're looking at all the economic data, the greatest data coming in, as I mentioned earlier, is that despite all these trillions of dollars in stimulus and low interest rates, there's no recovery. So the unemployment levels are going to remain high as will the anger and frustration. When people are out of work and they're hungry, they're going to keep rebelling. And then, you also have a large youth population with astronomical unemployment rates among them. So they're juiced up with testosterone, they're angry, they see no future – those are the ones you're going to see in the streets more and more. But again, don't forget, whether it's Ukraine, whether it's Italy, Spain, Portugal, Ireland, there's a lot of older people joining in because you have a lot of older people who've worked all their lives and now they see the end coming and they don't have anything to get them there. So it's multigenerational.

On another note, go back to our Trends Journal, to a Trend Alert in February of 2011 when the so-called Arab Spring hit Egypt and Mubarak resigned. We said it wasn't an Arab Spring, nothing would happen, meet the new boss, same as the old boss. And that's who you have in there now, the old boss.

Anthony Wile: In "Washington Is Driving the World to the Final War," Paul Craig Roberts makes the point that overseas meddling has gotten worse as neoconservatives continue to dominate US foreign policy. Is the US deliberately destabilizing the Middle East and Northern Africa? Is it possible there are forces in the West that are doing their best to foment increased religious tensions between East and West and have been doing so for years and even decades?

Gerald Celente: I don't think so. I think you just have a bunch of ignorant people making ignorant decisions. When it comes to the Ukraine, of course, it's a neocon agenda, which is very different, and that is to weaken Russia and expand US power worldwide. Maybe at lower levels there's instigation and the United States fomenting differences between opposed religious sects and cultures but overall, it's just failed policy. Go back to Vietnam, go back to Korea, go back to Afghanistan, go back to Iraq. They're losers and everything they do, everything they touch, whether it's in war or peace – the government is made up of losers. Look at the education system, look at the health system, look at the military – name me one thing that the federal government has done where they can say, wow, what a great success we've accomplished. They're losers and no one wants to call a spade a spade. We've got a bunch of ignorant morons, psychopaths and sociopaths in charge and everything they do they destroy, at a very high cost in lives and money.

Anthony Wile: Is it even possible at this point to purge the neocons from United States government, especially looking back to Rumsfeld, Cheney, et al. back as far as the 1970s?

Gerald Celente: It's not only Rumsfeld and Cheney. Read Hillary Clinton's comments leading up to the Iraq War. Read Kerry's. Read all of them. They're no different. Look at the destruction that Bill Clinton caused during his presidency. Look at Yugoslavia. Look what he did to Yugoslavia. Look at the mass murder he committed in Iraq with his sanctions. You remember that famous quote of Madeleine Albright, the secretary of state, on "Sixty Minutes" being interviewed by Leslie Stahl. Leslie Stahl asked whether the Clintons' sanctions imposed upon Iraq that were responsible for the lives of over 500,000 children under the age of 5 were worth it. Madeleine Albright said, "Yes." Ah, if only women were in charge. That's a lot of crap. I'm sick of hearing that. It has nothing to do with men or women, nothing to do with race, creed, color or religion. It only has to do with the human soul of each one person. It has nothing to do with gender or race or anything. When you look at the words and deeds of men and women in high places it's disgusting. Remember Hillary Clinton in the interview about Qaddafi – "We came, we saw, he died … hehehe," she laughs.

So what I'm saying is, look at the destruction under Bill Clinton. Remember the no-fly zones? Remember right after he got elected he bombed the hell out of Baghdad? It's not only the neocons. It's a bunch of sick people that call themselves senators and congressmen, cabinet ministers and commanders in chief, for both parties. They're the Bloods and the Crips and I don't say that sarcastically. They're murderers and thieves. How many more millions do they have to kill and how many more trillions do they have to steal until people have the courage to say that they have psychopaths and sociopaths leading them and they believe their crap?

Anthony Wile: So what should individuals of conscience be doing in the US?

Gerald Celente: What we're doing, one of the things, is our building community. We're initiating a project called OccupyPeace.us. So when you said US, you nailed it. This is not for foreigners. It's only for American citizens. And it's based on three words: No foreign entanglements. Those are the three words spoken by the Founding Fathers of this country. Here in Colonial Kingston I'm a stone's throw away from the 1777 Senate House. It's the oldest public building open to the public in the United States. We have the most historic intersection in the United States, the only place on each corner where a pre-Revolutionary War stone building is on each corner.

We want to rebuild America and the way we want to do it is we're working to build an OccupyPeace movement based on no foreign entanglements and we're working to push the United States more in line with a direct democracy like Switzerland. You want to go to war? Let the people vote. You want a defense budget? Let the people vote on it. You want to bail out the banks? Let the people vote. If we can bank online we can vote online.

Could it be corrupted? Of course it can, just like the voting is now, but it could be more open than any other system in the world as well because of the skills of the high-tech world and the knowledge of algorithms. If it was a completely open system, as soon as there was any kind of trying to fix it, it would be readily available for everyone to see how it's being corrupted.

The argument that people will give is that if you have everybody voting it would be mob rule. Well, guess what you've got now? The mob is ruling. They call themselves Republicans and Democrats. They're a mob. And you've got to be a member of the mob to be in the club.

So that's what we're doing. I keep going back to it over and over again. I've been at this business since 1980 and I've come to the final conclusion that nothing will change until the individuals change. You don't look for a leader to change you; you change yourself. And that's what has to happen, as I see it. The change has to happen from within. So what does that change mean? People have to get in shape, physically, emotionally and spiritually. They have to find courage, self-respect and dignity within themselves.

It goes back to your question: When are Americans going to see through the charade? Right now they don't have the courage, dignity or self-respect to do so. They don't want to admit they've been conned by their con-manders in chief. They don't want to believe they bought the lies of hope and change you can believe in. So it comes back to the individual. When individuals get courage, dignity and self-respect, only then, I believe, will it change. And it's more than just internal. They say you can't tell a book by the cover but you can tell a person by their actions – how they dress, how they eat, how they speak, how they behave in public, how they speak in public. Those are all part of the package. When you look at the package now, I don't know.

Anthony Wile: Further to that point, you've announced your new "community of change" initiative in the Trends Journal and end your letter to readers saying, "And most of all: Prepare, Survive, Prevail." What kinds of new material will readers find there to help them do just that, and how is the community growing?

Gerald Celente: I used to go onto Facebook and Twitter and I found out I was burning empty calories. At one point I had nearly half a million people following my Facebook posts. And I realized I want to bring it back to the Trends community. So we're not doing Facebook and Twitter. We're bringing it into the Trends field rather than driving revenues to other companies. We're not saying that to drive revenues to ourselves but in the sense that this is the community of trends, not the community of Facebook. So people can submit questions, they can interact and we're going to keep expanding it and expanding it and expanding the Trends-focused world and we're doing it on our new website. It already has a brand new look compared to what it used to be. I love the way it looks right now, and just about everybody else who's commented on it thinks so, too.

We're really in a very, very fast growth cycle. We brought on board as our CEO Derek Osenenko and he is literally an icon in the newspaper business. He was the editor, at one time, of Gannett News Service and he's been in top positions in the newspaper business for over 35 years. He just resigned his position with a chain of newspapers here once owned by Rupert Murdoch and now owned by Gatehouse Media. He came to us because he's a builder. He's really building our business. He loves what we're doing. We are the fourth estate. We're doing what the fourth estate, the newspapers, used to do and no longer do, so we have with us one of the top people, a highly respected man in the newspaper publishing business, who's now running our business. We're very, very pleased and honored to have him. If I could have picked anyone in the entire world it couldn't have been better than Derek Osenenko. So he's broadening the whole scope, bringing in the knowledge of the newspaper world as it was to now bringing trends in the Internet world to where it's going to be.

Anthony Wile: Thanks for the interview.

Gerald Celente: My pleasure. Take care.

After Thoughts

Gerald Celente mentions his new project, OccupyPeace.us, which seeks to bring direct democracy to sociopolitical issues via the Internet. We recently received a feedback that pointed us to a video about EndPartisanship.org, which alternative journalist Ben Swann is involved with.

Swann wants to break the duopoly of US political parties, a worthy cause. There are many other private efforts as well to change or redefine the current system, especially in the US. We anticipate similar movements, of course, in Europe. It's part of what we call the Internet Reformation, an evolution of Hayek's spontaneous order that helped create the Internet in the first place.

Hayek was an "Austrian," and he understood better than most how voluntary, private efforts work to build prosperity and have throughout history. It's somewhat ironic that those who attack Austrian economics – now that it is once again big enough to pose a threat to the established order – do so using a facility that Hayek explained so eloquently.

Celente also addresses legalized marijuana. He is likely correct in observing that "it's going to be an entrepreneurial opportunity in the beginning but then, just like you see everywhere else, the multinationals and the large corporations will take all of the action and freeze out the little people." Those who are going to succeed will do so by being first in and then by reaping the benefits of that quick action as the industry begins to consolidate.

This is just one of the insights that make Gerald Celente a celebrated trends analyst. We have our own perspective on trends, which we analyze via dominant social themes, but Celente has been practicing his craft for a long time, and quite successfully. He is that rare person who perceives clearly some of the world's major problems and is willing to try to do something about them. That takes courage in this day and age, especially, and we wish him well.