Local Luminary: Gerald Celente

by Christina Kaminski, November 25, 2008

Gerald Celente is a historian of the future. The author of several books, including Trend Tracking (1990, Warner Books), Trends 2000 (1997, Warner), and the memoir What Zizi Gave Honeyboy (2002, HarperCollins), he is also the founder and director of the Trends Research Institute and the editor and publisher of the quarterly Trends Journal. Celente also spent many years in politics—he managed a campaign for a mayoral candidate in Yonkers, served as executive assistant to the secretary of the New York State Senate, taught the nation’s first course in “American Politics and Campaign Technology,” worked as a government affairs specialist—and then declared himself a political atheist and moved to Rhinebeck in 1977. Since then, Celente has dedicated himself to the analysis of how current events form future trends. In order to be able to make his predictions, Celente spends four to six hours a day reading a slew of different print and electronic news sources—Haaretz, Al Jazeera, the Guardian, BBC News, the New York Times, Bloomberg, and USA Today. In general, Celente’s methodology for economic forecasting is to build the global picture before examining its smaller segments. He predicted the last two recessions, the booms in bottled water and organic and local produce, and the dot-com bust; more recently, he has predicted a “new depression,” a swelling criminal-industrial complex, and “dragflation” [the decline of wages and benefits against increasing inflation].

The economy is a disaster. Is there a way out?
No. There isn’t a way out. Because what people are missing is that what’s going on in the markets is merely a symptom of a much bigger trend. And that’s what they can’t grasp: We’re not number one. We don’t win place or show anymore in education. We don’t win place or show in quality of life. The gap between the rich and the poor is the widest in the United States out of any of the industrialized nations. And it’s not the same country it used to be. It’s the decline of Empire America. And for people to think that here are federal geniuses out there that are going to rescue them...they’re living in a fairyland.