Celente Predicts Revolution, Food Riots, Tax Rebellions By 2012

Trend forecaster, renowned for being accurate in the past, says that America will cease to be a developed nation within 4 years, crisis will be "worse than the great depression"

The man who predicted the 1987 stock market crash and the fall of the Soviet Union is now forecasting revolution in America, food riots and tax rebellions - all within four years, while cautioning that putting food on the table will be a more pressing concern than buying Christmas gifts by 2012.

Gerald Celente, the CEO of Trends Research Institute, is renowned for his accuracy in predicting future world and economic events, which will send a chill down your spine considering what he told Fox News this week.

Celente says that by 2012 America will become an undeveloped nation, that there will be a revolution marked by food riots, squatter rebellions, tax revolts and job marches, and that holidays will be more about obtaining food, not gifts.

"We're going to see the end of the retail Christmas....we're going to see a fundamental shift take place....putting food on the table is going to be more important that putting gifts under the Christmas tree," said Celente, adding that the situation would be "worse than the great depression".

"America's going to go through a transition the likes of which no one is prepared for," said Celente, noting that people's refusal to acknowledge that America was even in a recession highlights how big a problem denial is in being ready for the true scale of the crisis.

Celente, who successfully predicted the 1997 Asian Currency Crisis, the subprime mortgage collapse and the massive devaluation of the U.S. dollar, told UPI in November last year that the following year would be known as "The Panic of 2008," adding that "giants (would) tumble to their deaths," which is exactly what we have witnessed with the collapse of Lehman Brothers, Bear Stearns and others. He also said that the dollar would eventually be devalued by as much as 90 per cent.

The consequence of what we have seen unfold this year would lead to a lowering in living standards, Celente predicted a year ago, which is also being borne out by plummeting retail sales figures.

The prospect of revolution was a concept echoed by a British Ministry of Defence report last year, which predicted that within 30 years, the growing gap between the super rich and the middle class, along with an urban underclass threatening social order would mean, "The world's middle classes might unite, using access to knowledge, resources and skills to shape transnational processes in their own class interest," and that, "The middle classes could become a revolutionary class."

In a separate recent interview, Celente went further on the subject of revolution in America.

"There will be a revolution in this country," he said. "It’s not going to come yet, but it’s going to come down the line and we’re going to see a third party and this was the catalyst for it: the takeover of Washington, D. C., in broad daylight by Wall Street in this bloodless coup. And it will happen as conditions continue to worsen."

"The first thing to do is organize with tax revolts. That’s going to be the big one because people can’t afford to pay more school tax, property tax, any kind of tax. You’re going to start seeing those kinds of protests start to develop."

"It’s going to be very bleak. Very sad. And there is going to be a lot of homeless, the likes of which we have never seen before. Tent cities are already sprouting up around the country and we’re going to see many more."

"We’re going to start seeing huge areas of vacant real estate and squatters living in them as well. It’s going to be a picture the likes of which Americans are not going to be used to. It’s going to come as a shock and with it, there’s going to be a lot of crime. And the crime is going to be a lot worse than it was before because in the last 1929 Depression, people’s minds weren’t wrecked on all these modern drugs – over-the-counter drugs, or crystal meth or whatever it might be. So, you have a huge underclass of very desperate people with their minds chemically blown beyond anybody’s comprehension."

The George Washington blog has compiled a list of quotes attesting to Celente's accuracy as a trend forecaster.

Source: propagandamatrix.com

Video: youtube.com

How it all started: a brief history of money

A brief history of money and why its value is really worthless. Thank you to Johann from the hello entropy blog for sending me the link.

Why do we need money at all? The barter system had plenty of attractions – it can't be taxed, for one thing. But it's inefficient. Say I sell spades, and you sell dressing gowns. For any deal to happen you must want a spade at just the moment I happen to want a dressing gown. So even the most primitive societies developed some kind of payment system, or money, that was accepted by everyone in exchange for goods and services.

Money has to have two qualities. It must be portable and it must have a purchasing power that lasts, so it can be used at a later stage. Shells, cocoa beans, even feathers have been used over the years as money. At one stage Roman soldiers were paid in salt, from where we derive the word 'salary'. These early forms of money were 'commodity money'.

Gold and silver were widely used. Their rarity gave them value – a great deal of worth could be stored in a single gold coin – as did their immutability. Gold doesn't tarnish. You could dig up a gold coin buried in the ground a thousand years ago and it would be more or less intact. And just as gold preserves over time, so does its purchasing power. An ounce of gold would have bought a Roman Senator a jolly decent toga and perhaps a pair of sandals; today the sterling equivalent (£500 or so) would buy your local MP a respectable suit and shoes.

To facilitate trade, gold was turned into coins of a certified weight and purity by goldsmiths. The goldsmiths, who had built vaults to store their gold safely, also began to store the gold of their fellow townsmen, issuing a certificate as receipt for the gold deposited. Over time these certificates were used in the marketplace as if they were the gold itself. World trade had slowly moved from a 'commodity money' to a 'representative money'.

Seeing that very few depositors ever removed their actual gold, instead using their certificates for trade, goldsmiths realised they could make money by lending out certificates against depositors' gold. Despite the inherent duplicity in the scheme – lending what is not yours to lend - it worked. The depositors did not lose anything. As long as there was no bank run, their gold was all still safe in the goldsmith's vault.

Depositors, however, soon wanted their share. Rather than taking back their gold, the depositors simply demanded that the goldsmith, now in effect their banker, pay them a share of the interest. The goldsmith paid one rate on deposits and then lent at a higher rate.

But in times of panic some borrowers would demand their real gold back, instead of the paper certificates. Before long, you had the dreaded run on the bank, with the banker not having enough gold and silver to redeem all the paper he had put out. It would have been straightforward to outlaw this new lending practice, but the large volumes of credit the bankers had created had become vital to the success of European commercial expansion, so, instead, the practice was legalized and regulated. The monetary system had moved on from representative to debt.

Bankers agreed limits on the amount of loan money that could be lent out, limits still much larger than the amount of gold and silver on deposit. Usually, the ratio was nine loaned units to one actual unit in gold and these regulations were enforced by surprise inspections. It was also arranged that, in the event of a run, central banks would support local banks with emergency gold. Only if there were runs on a lot of banks simultaneously would the bankers' credit bubble burst and the system come crashing down.

The root of our current financial crisis

Over the twentieth century, this fractional reserve system, where you need only hold a fraction of the money you lend out, became the dominant money system of the world. But, at the same time, the fraction of gold backing the paper money steadily shrunk. With the Bretton Woods agreement of 1944, which established monetary order between the major industrial nations after World War Two, the USA was the only nation left with a currency backed by gold, and the dollar became the global reserve currency. But in 1971, under pressure from the French, who were demanding gold instead of dollars, and faced with the rising cost of the Vietnam War, President Nixon removed this backing. Now, for the first time in history, no currency on the planet, nor any small fraction of any currency, was backed by anything tangible. The basic nature of money had changed again.

We were now in an era where money is money by government edict - by the law. In the past, people had the choice to refuse privately created bank credit notes, but now legal tender laws declare that citizens must accept this government edict money – or fiat currency - as payment. Their value is determined by how they trade against other fiat currencies on international currency markets. Belief in the integrity and competence of the central banks and government that issue a currency is essential to its success.

And that's where the problem lies. As Winston Churchill put it: "All previous attempts to base money solely on intangibles such as credit or government edict or fiat have ended in inflationary panic and disaster."

Sound familiar? The greatest credit expansion in history was only made possible under this post-1971 system of currency by government decree. But now it's unravelling. Fears over Fannie and Freddie and the integrity of the US banking system are pushing the dollar – the world's reserve currency - down to record lows against the euro (it's even fallen against the pound, which shows just how bad the market fears things could get).

Investors are losing faith in the most important form of paper money in the world. What will take its place? One thing's for sure – even if we don't return to a commodity-backed currency, for as long as the financial turmoil continues, gold, the oldest and most consistent money in history, is likely to be a benefactor. If you don't own any, I suggest you get down to your local coin shop and buy some.

Source: Moneyweek.com

THE PEACE TAX CAMPAIGN

In the UK there is a dedicated group of people, who can only be described as true heroes. These people refuse to pay 10% of their tax for they feel it goes to paying for wars around the globe.
We need more people like the Peace Tax Campaigners. Well done! Keep up the fight.

The conscience THE PEACE TAX CAMPAIGN campaigns for the legal right for those with a conscientious objection to war to have the military part of their taxes spent on peacebuilding initiatives.

Peace Tax is the term we use to describe the alternative to the current War Tax which we all have to pay - whether we like it or not. Up to 10% of our taxes pay for the military in the UK. In 2003-2004 the UK government will spend £36 billion on the military. This money pays for nuclear weapons, aircraft carriers, battletanks, submarines, cluster-bombs, subsidies to private weapons dealers and pays for all the other requirements of the armed forces. Instead of pouring money into 'false security' this money that could be spent on a whole host of well tried effective peacebuilding initiatives designed to promote a real, lasting and meaningful peace - not simply a gap between wars.

Conscientious objectors refuse, on moral grounds, to take part in war and killing. We believe that conscientious objectors to war should not have to pay for war.

Conscienceonline.org.uk
http://www.peacepays.org/