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Jan. 12, 2011 - The Unexplained - Howard Hughes

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Edition 51 - Gerald Celente

This time – as 2011 dawns – a return visit from US Trendmaster Gerald Celente – as featuredon CNN, “Oprah” and tv and radio outlets worldwide.

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	Across the UK, across continental North America and around the world on the internet, by webcast and by podcast, my name is Howard Hughes and this is The Unexplained.
	Thank you for returning to the show, wherever in the world you are, and thank you so much for the flood of emails that I've had over the last month or so, especially within the last fortnight.
	From every corner of the world, new listeners mostly, thank you very much for finding this show.
	Please tell your friends about it and tell them about it in any way you possibly can.
	Even an old-fashioned letter, send them an email.
	Let people know that this show is independent and out there.
	The aim of this show is to do the stuff the big corporations don't do.
	As I've said before here, but I'll just say it briefly now, there are only a few people involved in this and you're one of them.
	So there's you, there's Adam Cornwell, my webmaster at Creative Hotspot in Liverpool, who made the website and gets the show out to you.
	There's me, who devised and puts the show together.
	And there's Martin, who made the theme tune.
	I've just counted four people there, and that is the entire sum total of everybody involved in The Unexplained.
	Quite amazing when you compare it with the stuff that's being done by the big corporations and how many researchers, producers, and people like that are involved.
	When you can do something like this and maybe get to the core of subjects even more, just on a few people, it is literally direct communication and it's a big thrill.
	Now, something that has been said by a lot of you in emails is you wish that we could do more shows, more subjects, and perhaps get a show out every week or even more than that.
	There is nothing in this world that I would more love to do.
	The problem I've got is there's only one of me and I've only got so many resources.
	So in order to eat, I have to do work.
	And then, of course, I indulge in this labor of love, producing the unexplained.
	But what I need is more support from you.
	If you believe in the show, and I know that you do because you tell me, please help me to take this to the next level.
	I really want to do it.
	Together, and it will be yours too, we can make this thing happen.
	I don't want to sound highfalutin, and I don't want to sound, as we say here in the UK, cheesy about it.
	But together, we could make something really big here.
	And that's the thing that excites me.
	Using new technology, new ways of communication, I can use my old-style radio skills to bring you a show that no one else is doing.
	So if you feel that you'd like to, and if you feel that you can, go to the front page of the website, www.theonexplained.tv.
	And if you want to, make a donation and help us take this forward.
	It's something that we can do in 2011 and develop through 2012.
	And I think it's enormously exciting, not only for me and for Adam, for the people directly involved, but for you at the listening end of it.
	We can make something different happen.
	Now, the guest this time round is a man who was on exactly 12 months ago on this show, the trend watcher Gerald Salente.
	He's never off CNN.
	In American radio, he's very, very well known.
	He's in the newspapers in America.
	Not so well known here in the UK, though.
	I have to warn you, as I warned you last year, his views on the world economy and on politicians who govern us are very controversial.
	You may not agree with everything he says.
	I certainly may not agree with everything he says.
	But is he interesting to listen to?
	Absolutely.
	Might he have a point somewhere along the line?
	Possibly.
	It's for you to decide.
	So Gerald Salente coming soon.
	Edition 50 turned out to be a little delve into the archives, bringing you some information that has not appeared online before.
	Hope you enjoyed that.
	And the reason we did that was because the big name guest we had lined up for edition 50 was not available.
	I am still trying to get him on here.
	It is still a strong possibility that we will get him.
	He is a name who is world-renowned and well-known.
	So keep your fingers crossed wherever you are, and I'll keep mine crossed.
	And hopefully we'll be able to get him here at some point.
	The fact that we get anybody on this show, the fact that people who are those with reputations and well-known in whatever field they're in, is quite amazing if you consider this is an online radio show.
	It's not on some big AM-FM transmitter somewhere.
	It's not produced by a big corporation.
	We don't have researchers and armies of producers and people like that.
	There is only me.
	So the fact these people do this show must be saying something pretty good about it.
	Okay, let's get to East Coast USA now.
	Both Northern Hemisphere, both in the middle of this awful winter that we're in.
	We're hopefully going to come out of it quite soon.
	But let's get to Gerald Salente in the United States now, the Trend Watcher.
	And Gerald, thank you very much for making time to come on again.
	Oh, my pleasure.
	Now, listen, I came up on my way home by train today in London.
	I came up with a phrase I think describes you, a new name for you.
	I'm just going to try it out on you, see what you think.
	I think if you ever saw the 1970s movie Witch Finder General, I think you're the Trend Finder General.
	Because I'll tell you something, during last year, 2010, we did an interview in the January, I think it was, for The Unexplained.
	And over the year, doing my work in news in various places, I have gone back over and over again to that.
	And prophetic is a very heavy word, but I have to say time and time again, right up to the end of the year where we had student demonstrations in London and all kinds of trouble here, you called it one year ago.
	Well, if people could watch what's going on and understand the implications, that's all we really do.
	And we're political atheists.
	We don't have anything invested in the way things come out.
	We don't have an ideology to support.
	So we look at information for the way it is and not the way we want it to be.
	And we take a global view and we look beyond just one field.
	We make connections between many different ones under the understanding that all things are connected.
	So thank you for the compliment.
	It's a lot of, it's just continuous study and reading virtually everything available.
	And I guess the thing that you've just said.
	You know, the thing that you just said, I think, is right on the money.
	And I think it's a point that many politicians and analysts and journalists, I have to say, being one of those myself, miss.
	Things in this world are connected.
	And if you miss that point, maybe you've missed the bus.
	Yes, because when they look at economics, for instance, they look at it one-dimensionally, to virtually every issue.
	And they also take a very parochial view.
	They look at what's going on in their world and not the world around them, particularly here in the States.
	You think the World ended at California and New York.
	And there's a very, very, very limited understanding of what's going on outside the United States.
	And then from the people outside the United States looking back to see what's going on in the United States, where are they getting their information from?
	They're getting it from what?
	You know, the mainstream news.
	And the mainstream news, as I know and I work in it, doesn't always tell you the whole truth.
	It's not deliberately trying to lie, I don't think.
	It's just that we take snapshots.
	And sometimes those snapshots, over time, create an inaccurate picture.
	And also what they're doing is they're all telling the same story.
	And they're all telling it the same way.
	So, for example, now in this internet age and this new broadcast age, if there's a conflict, for example, that breaks out between North and South Korea, you know, I'm reading now the Global Times out of China or going on CCTV to watch the Chinese news or Russia Today, RT, to get the information from other sides.
	And that's what most people don't do.
	Something breaks out in the Middle East, I'm reading, you know, the Israeli Jerusalem Post, aha, that's.
	Or then I go to Al Jazeera and whatever country they're fighting with.
	So if it's Lebanon, I'm reading all the Lebanese news.
	And you know what I think this comes from, Gerald, and this is a problem that I've seen develop, and I think it is a problem over the years.
	The fact of the matter is that we are all as journalists taking our views and our opinions and our insights on things from the same sources.
	In other words, you will see the same British wire copy appear on the BBC and on other news sources, and it's all emanated from one wire agency.
	It's one view only.
	Exactly.
	And that's why we're talking about it.
	So that's why with the internet age, you know, it's a whole different one.
	And that's really important today.
	And when you look at the events going on today, it's you think most people in the United States know that the Chinese and Japanese have pledged to buy up all that bad European debt to keep the Ponzi scheme going a little longer?
	I mean, no.
	And so it's those, or you think people are really interested in learning about that?
	No.
	And there's stuff that you hear from time to time that raises your eyebrows.
	Look, I filled in on a national radio station doing the news over the Christmas holidays, just between Christmas and New Year.
	And I have a good friend in the city of London here, the Financial District, a guy called Justin Urquhart Stewart, who is a well-known commentator, never off CNN.
	And I've known him for years, and he's helped me out many times.
	And he said, Howard, there is a piece of financial news, because it was very, very quiet on the day when I called him, that isn't really being talked about and will have very, very big implications for everybody.
	And I don't think anybody reported it over here.
	I don't think it even made the financial papers here because it was a holiday time.
	But the Chinese, if I read this aright, raised their interest rates over that holiday period.
	And Justin said that this would have a knock-on impact for everybody, but it was a story that had been missed.
	Exactly.
	And the other things, too, that happen, often stories are released or occurred during holiday times.
	And people are tuned out.
	They're in a vacation state of mind.
	So that's the other thing.
	It's continual.
	One of my lines is, if you missed three days of trend forecasting, it's like walking in on the second act of a play.
	It's a continuous stream.
	So there's never really any rest from it.
	All right.
	Let's look back very briefly at 2010.
	You made a lot of forecasts here.
	You talked about a lot of stuff that turned out to be so.
	How would you encapsulate the way that year turned out?
	What kind of a year for the world was it?
	Well, it was a year on hold.
	People are still waiting for, and there's the realities, of course, like what's happened in Ireland and Spain, and Ireland and Greece, rather, and now is about to happen in Spain, Portugal, Italy, and Belgium, that there's a collapse on the way.
	Ireland's in a depression, you know, when you really look at it, and it's seeping over.
	And what's happened is just a stalling effect.
	And it's because of all, look what the European Monetary Union.
	They've gone back on the Maastricht Agreement, the Lisbon Treaty.
	They were never going to bail out anybody.
	There was no such thing.
	It wasn't allowed.
	Oh, now they weren't going to buy up bonds and they're buying up everybody's bad debt.
	And then you look at the Federal Reserve here in the States.
	Under the table, they funneled to banks backdoor loans at virtually no interest rate to banks all over the world, in England, in Japan, in South Korea, Netherlands, Spain, France, Ireland.
	You know, you name the country, Canada.
	And then they also gave money at low interest net or no loans, no interest loans or very low interest loans to companies like General Electric Verizon, Harley-Davidson.
	So what they're doing is this would be a year on hold.
	So the cracks are showing, but they're being papered over.
	Well, it seems to me the politicians don't actually get down to the issues.
	Before I came to do this little recording with you, I was on air in London, and we carry on the radio station that I was on a Prime Minister's Question Time here.
	It's a weekly event during peak times here, not during holiday seasons.
	They have a break, these MPs here.
	But they all get together in Parliament around the green leather benches, and you have the opposition on one side, and you have the government on the other side, David Cameron, the Prime Minister, versus the new leader of Labour, Ed Miliband.
	And they were going at it today, let me tell you.
	Hammer and tongs.
	What about?
	Well, two things principally.
	Number one, who was to blame for allowing the financial crisis in this country to happen?
	And number two, the issue of bankers' bonuses and the excesses thereof and each party accusing the other of not doing enough to clamp down on them.
	And it just seemed to me as I sat there listening to this material, broadcasting it to London, these guys were missing the point.
	Well, they're politicians.
	And these are the same people I tell all, I make this clear all the time.
	Remember in high school and college, there was somebody that wanted to be the class president or the head of the student council.
	They were the brown noses, the suck-ups, the gladhanders.
	They thought they were better than everybody else and insincere, overly ambitious.
	Now they're your politicians, they're your legislators.
	That's all they are.
	They weren't bright then, and they're not bright now.
	All they knew how to do is get what they wanted.
	And what they want to be is in control.
	So we have the same jerks you couldn't stand before now telling you what to do.
	Yeah, meet the old boss, same as the new boss, isn't it?
	Or meet the new boss, same as the old boss is the same.
	What do you think these politicians all hate WikiLeaks for?
	It's exposing what a bunch of backbiting, lowlifes most of them are.
	Well, listen, I'm not sure about WikiLeaks, though.
	I mean, we can briefly get into this right now because Mr. Assange, of course, is fighting extradition.
	They want to talk specifically about him.
	But the whole principle of leaking stuff in this way, I'm not sure personally, and I am yet to be convinced whether en masse leaks of this sort are a good idea, whether there still does need to be an element of control for everybody's safety and security and for the stability of the world.
	What do you say?
	No, not at all.
	They say this is the same line they throw out all the time when they came out with wiki leaks about Afghanistan and Iraq showing the atrocities.
	It's always the same line.
	Oh, we won't be able to do business in an orderly way, or our people are being compromised.
	There's no evidence that anybody got killed.
	The real evidence is how they're screwing us.
	All right, let's get on to the economy now because this is always good to talk about, and we need some clarity here, I think.
	A couple of things I'm seeing here.
	One that made the news today is growing discontent, it seems, according to a survey that I looked at today, but also stuff that I'm hearing.
	People are getting discontented, unhappy, and upset at the returns they're getting on their savings.
	People are starting here in this country to turn around and say, okay, through my taxes, I had to bail out the banks.
	That job is done now.
	You know, we're not going to get that money back in a hurry.
	So we've done that.
	But now the banks are back on an even keel.
	Look at the disgusting interest rates I'm getting on my savings.
	In my own case, my life savings, I went to look and see what it earned in the year 2009 into 2010.
	It was a joke.
	And a lot of people now are looking at their statements and saying, why have I bothered to help these people out?
	Because you didn't want to.
	You were forced to, number one.
	And number two, the reason they're keeping interest rates so low is they could keep the Ponzi scheme going.
	And they're forcing people to take risks in equity markets such as the FTSE or the Dow or the Nikkei or the CAC, whatever.
	And so that's part of the game.
	Well, isn't that funny?
	Because we've had the Prime Minister here saying recently we want business to be entrepreneurial.
	We want business to start taking risks again.
	We also had Bob Diamond, the boss of the biggest bank here, Barclays Bank, defending his bonuses and the bonuses paid to senior people at that bank before a big commons committee, big parliamentary committee yesterday and saying, you know, we want to get back to the stage where a bank can be a bank and usefully take risks again.
	That's drive talk.
	You know, again, you know, that's to quell the anger.
	You or I go busting our business.
	Nobody's there to bail us out.
	All these people screaming about, you know, capitalism.
	This isn't capitalism.
	It's called fascism.
	Mind you heard the banking corporate powers.
	Sorry to interrupt for just half a second.
	The one thing he did say that I was impressed by is that he said, well, two things.
	Number one, no bank is too big to fail.
	And number two, if a badly run bank is in trouble, it should be allowed to go down.
	What do you make of that?
	Well, that's what they say, but it never happens because the bigs are getting even bigger.
	Again, this is for public consumption.
	Here in the States, for example, 30 years ago, the 10 largest banks only had 20% of the action.
	Now they control 80% of it.
	And you look at every sector, pharmaceutical, retail, communications.
	Pick one, anyone.
	They run by a handful.
	The whole world is turning into an oligopoly.
	Again, the merger of state and corporate powers, by definition, is called fascism.
	And that's what's going.
	They talk about the small business person and the entrepreneur, and they're the ones that are getting taxed the most.
	They never get any breaks of building or buying anything.
	And they get regulated to death.
	The big regulators, the big companies are off limits or politically connected.
	You know how many times the FDA is busting little companies, little egg producers, little artisan cheese companies?
	They're regulating the little people to death.
	All right, so do you think, it kind of sounds like you do, and we may have been around this territory before on the couple of times we've spoken before, but do you think that it is not just the law of the market that we're seeing here when companies agglomerate with other companies and they just get bigger and bigger and bigger, and that's economics.
	You think there's a conspiracy?
	It's not a conspiracy.
	For example, Wall Street has hijacked Washington.
	Look at the people that are in the office.
	Who was the Treasury Secretary under George Bush?
	Oh, Henry Paulson.
	Where was he from?
	Oh, he's a CEO.
	See, he came from Goldman Sachs.
	He was a CEO.
	And who was the one under Clinton?
	Oh, that was Robert Rubin.
	Where did he come from?
	Oh, he came from Goldman Sachs.
	He was a COO.
	And where did he go afterwards?
	Well, what he did when he was with the Clinton administration, they deregulated the Glass-Steagall Act, which prevented banks from becoming these criminal groups that they become.
	And they could become these huge one-shop-stop financial supermarkets.
	Oh, so he went to Citigroup, who bought up Smith-Barney Brokerage, and they owned Traveler's Insurance, and then they bought Citibank, and they conglomerated into one.
	Oh, he made a couple of hundred million dollars with them.
	Oh, and who did Obama just bring in as his chief of staff?
	Oh, Daly.
	Where did he come from?
	But isn't this just because these people...
	He's the chief lobbyist at JPMorgan Chase.
	Sure, but isn't it just because...
	I think he's a few years old.
	Yeah, it's Harvard, Princeton, Yale, bullets, bombs, and banks.
	You know, again, you know, this is not a...
	And it's the kings and queens of commerce.
	It's no different than it's ever been.
	The nobility have just changed their names, and we've become the new peasantry for them.
	How do we fix it?
	That we're educated and we know the deal.
	And that's why you're seeing angry students all over the world.
	Well, we're seeing certainly anger, and I did want to get onto that.
	Let's do it now, because the first manifestation of all of this was where people in France, where they have pretty good conditions of life and better working conditions than most of us in the US or UK, but they went out on the streets because of plans to change the retirement age there, part of the French way of life.
	So that was first off the blocks.
	Then we got those scenes of the students here who are worried about free education here or, you know, cheaper education here protesting because they don't like government policy.
	Do you think this is the shape of things to come?
	Keep going with it.
	Then go over to Italy.
	Same thing.
	What's going on?
	Current events form future trends.
	How about taking a look at what's going on in Tunisia?
	Who's rioting?
	Who are they?
	And why?
	Students.
	No jobs.
	And they know that the rich are getting richer and the game is rigged and they can't get into it.
	So yeah, this is going on.
	Greece, the same thing.
	You're going to see it worldwide.
	You're seeing these are the protesters.
	You see, when the 60s protests happened, and I'm a bit of an authority on it because I'm 64 years old and lived here, and I was prime draft age, you know, why were the students out in the streets?
	It was because of the Vietnam War.
	They were getting drafted.
	And now you don't see any protests about the wars going on because people's lives aren't on the line.
	Why are these young students protesting?
	Because their lives are on the line.
	They're losing it in a different way.
	So, yeah.
	And that's it.
	When people are affected personally, that's when you see the kind of anger.
	And again, it's just a different time.
	It's a different aristocracy.
	It's the kings and queens of commerce.
	When do you ever see people making hundreds and millions, $50 million in salary?
	Who made this kind of stuff up?
	But what can be done about it, Gerald?
	Apart from a revolution that we don't have those anymore, what can be done?
	You have to break up the bigs.
	They did it before in this country.
	They had the trustbusters at the turn of the 19th into the 20th century.
	And it has to, the governments are so corrupt.
	Again, you mentioned the Cambridge and the Oxfords.
	We have the Harvard, Princeton, Yale.
	It's the same club.
	You know, the Eaton boys, you know, fighting their way to the top or sucking their way up, one or the other.
	And until the system opens up and becomes more egalitarian, it's not going to change.
	And in the UK, for example, I mean, you know, class warfare still exists.
	Nothing much has changed.
	Well, I guess there are people over here who would say it's even more so now.
	And those protesting students, one of the points that they were making, and I can quite understand why they were making it, I can see their argument.
	You know, I can comprehend it.
	They are saying that poorer people are going to be less able to go to university.
	That means that only richer people are going to get on, and that's going to make things the way they were 40, 50 years ago.
	Exactly.
	What if they raised the tuition rates, 200%?
	Well, it's up for, what, 6,000 or £9,000 for tuition fees.
	I don't know what that is in dollars, maybe $15,000.
	That doesn't sound like a great deal in the U.S., though, does it, where you've got to pay for your education anyway.
	Well, these kids, you know, they're indentured servants.
	You can't get out of your debt.
	The lowest range is they're in $25,000 worth of debt.
	These kids are in $150,000, $250,000 in debt.
	And then you can't get out of it.
	You have to pay.
	You have to pay.
	You're not going to get out of it.
	Because Joe Biden, the vice president of the United States, former senator from Delaware, the loophole state, they pushed through these draconian bankruptcy laws.
	So these kids are in it for life.
	And what happens then?
	Do you think they will wake up and smell the coffee and call for changes in the system?
	If we call for changes in the system...
	You're so beaten down and you don't, you know...
	And they've been beaten down here.
	The kids are mommy's boys.
	When they're little kids, they were told they were special.
	When they got older, they were told how amazing they are.
	And now they're living at home because they can't get a job.
	Over here, we've got a real problem, I think in the UK, probably in the US too, where we are told by our government here, we've got to charge these students more because we simply don't have the money because we're not raising it and because we bailed out the banks.
	Also, of course, they've raised the tax on goods and services here, a thing called value-added tax VAT.
	Went up from 17.5%, where it had been for years in January, a couple of days ago, went up to 20%.
	Everybody's still up in arms about that.
	Fuel duty on gasoline has gone up to ridiculous levels.
	So a liter of gasoline here in the UK costs a small fortune by your standards.
	We're paying through the nose, as we say here, for so many things, and there seems to be no end to it, and there seems to be no answer to it.
	And then you get a guy like Diamond saying he's worth, what did he get, $50 million last year or something?
	Well, yeah, big bonus.
	I think in the past, though, he was telling this committee that in previous incarnations he'd forgone bonuses, but the one thing he wouldn't talk about before this committee, because he said he didn't know, is the level of his own bonus offer, whether he takes it or not, and the level of bonuses being considered for other senior people there.
	No, I'm sure he doesn't know.
	Well, he said those things had not been discussed yet, and he also said...
	Do you find it interesting that he, in his position, said to this committee that shareholders of the bank were not involved in those things, had not asked any questions, and had not made any requests of, for example, him to forego any bonus?
	Do you think that's astonishing?
	Yes, I do find that astonishing.
	But again, look at what's going on here that we're even talking about this.
	This is how out of whack the whole system has become.
	It is.
	When you take time out, when you just stop for five seconds and think about it, Why, in a situation like this, where most of us, you know, our backs are against the wall now, life is costing all of us more, we're all wondering how the hell are we going to get through this year, and yet we still have this situation where bankers, some of them, are going to be paid both sides of the Atlantic huge bonuses.
	And a lot of us are saying, because, you know, we're not financially savvy, for what?
	And it's not exactly.
	They're not producing anything.
	They're just doing deals.
	And we are financially savvy.
	The only reason they're making it is because they're, again, Harvard, Princeton, Yale, bullets, bombs, and banks.
	They're in the club.
	They're not that smart.
	They have the inside information and they're all doing deals with each other.
	Screw everybody else and we pay for their mistakes.
	All right, what do we do about it then?
	As ordinary citizens like you and me, walk in the streets with the students the next time.
	Start protesting.
	Start making your voice heard.
	I just got off the radio before I was on with you with a congressman.
	You know, and I make it really clear.
	I mean, this guy's just another guy sitting across the table from me.
	Take the name off, Jack.
	You know, it doesn't do it for me.
	And, you know, and save your baby talk for the kiddies.
	You know, I'm past that age.
	And people have to regain their dignity and strength and stop bowing down to his Lord or Mr. President.
	I mean, again, that's why they hate WikiLeaks.
	These people put their shoes on one at a time, just like we do.
	Maybe they don't.
	They have somebody to help them put them on.
	And do you think the power of peaceful protests, I'm sure you wouldn't advocate the violent demonstrations that we've seen here, and that's been the problem with them.
	They have got out of the middle of the world.
	I believe that there are Asian provocateurs out there.
	They've been doing it all along.
	These are peaceful protests that they turned dirty so they could clamp down on them.
	And look what they just found.
	There's one guy that's an environmentalist.
	They just got him.
	He shows up at all these environmental things.
	Another Asian provocateur.
	They do it all the time.
	Of course I'm for peace.
	You know, you're not going to win a battle against goon squads.
	All right, so we go out on the streets and demonstrate.
	I say we, I mean people go out and demonstrate on the streets of London and New York or wherever.
	The politicians see this, and we hope that the demonstrations are peaceful because that's what a democratic society is about.
	What is that to achieve, though?
	What change do you think that will bring about?
	To bring back regulations that were in place before that prevented this kind of atrocities from continuing to happen.
	What does a Nuremberg trial do?
	It cleanses the system.
	It makes a Germany a very different Germany than it was before the war.
	And that's the kind of things that are needed.
	These politicians have to get off their high horses.
	Again, you have those hearings about the Iraqi war.
	I read about them.
	I see how the game is rigged.
	I see who the people they put in charge to run them.
	It's the same old thing.
	We have it here in the States.
	Every time they have a commission or anything, they bring in the same old crowd to talk about it.
	And things have to break down to this free trade is not free trade.
	People have to start, you know, made in England, made in Ireland, made in Norway.
	We have to start supporting each other and stop this consumption.
	That's the other thing.
	Stop buying crap that you don't need and find your own greatness.
	That's really what's going to change it.
	When people find their own individuality and understand who they are and what they could become, they'll no longer accept mediocrity.
	Okay, well, that's very constructive, and I think a lot of people would back that one.
	The fact that there are calls both in this country and in your country and in other countries that I've heard to get back to home production, actually making things, not buying them from other places, and supporting your own community.
	And there are, it seems to me, small shoots of this beginning to appear through the ground, only small ones.
	Right, but what happens is they beat them down.
	We just had a law that they passed here in the States, a draconian health regulations on the farmers.
	On paper, oh yeah, these look like great regulations.
	But the reality is that they're only going to bust the family farmers, and the big guys are exempt from them.
	They get the free ride.
	And do you think that's a deliberate thing?
	Yes.
	Because you see the people that lobbied for the bill.
	Kraft, General Foods, the snack food industry, all the big companies, all the big concerns, the Grocery Manufacturers Association.
	So yeah, so it's a concentration of power virtually in every field.
	And they exempt the big meat and poultry manufacturers that are the equivalent of the turn of the 19th century when they wrote about Sinclair, Upton Sinclair wrote about it, the jungle.
	So that's what they're doing.
	Every time that the local movements pop up, they start pushing them down.
	Sounds like a problem.
	One thing that inflames people here, maybe it inflames people there, maybe you don't have it to the same extent that we have it.
	But so many facets of business in this country have been outsourced.
	Now, I have nothing against other parts of the world.
	I love travel.
	I love the people of the world.
	And, you know, I feel myself to be a citizen of the world.
	I love America and everywhere, really.
	But if you get a phone contract over here and you phone the company, you get a call center in the Philippines or somewhere a long way away where they don't understand.
	It's not the language.
	They're very clever people in many cases.
	In India, wherever they are.
	They're graduates in a lot of cases.
	But they just don't simply understand the product.
	Why?
	Because they're 10,000 miles away from it.
	A lot of people here are getting very incensed by that.
	And we understand why the economies of scale mean businesses have to do that.
	But a lot of us are starting to think this stuff has gone so far.
	Let me interrupt you on that.
	They don't have to do that.
	They have to do that so you can kind of get the kind of executive pays that we're talking about in all of the industries.
	And I'll give you an example.
	When I was a young man getting into the workforce, the difference between the CEO's pay and the average worker was about 40 to 1.
	Now it's about 500 to 1.
	So, no, they don't have to do that.
	They have to do it so they could get more money at the top.
	All right.
	And who's paying for that?
	Well, of course, as customers of all of these businesses, we are.
	Okay, in our final few minutes, Gerald, and I'm grateful to you for making time to talk to me here at the Unix Claim because we are one of these little cottage industries here.
	You know, we're the small guy versus all the big guys.
	Let's look at 2011, and let's go point to point now.
	Tell me what you think we're going to see.
	We've talked about street protests that you think will become more of a situation both sides of the Atlantic because people, ordinary people, will decide, I want to make my voice heard about this.
	So that's one thing.
	How do you think we will prosper or not during this year?
	This is going to be a very telling year.
	The Ponzi schemes, we believe, are going to run out.
	They can no longer keep pumping this digital money, not worth the paper it's not printed on, into the system.
	It's going to collapse at some point, particularly in Europe, whether it's Spain next.
	Spain's the big one.
	And then Italy and Portugal.
	Portugal's a small one, but that's going to go too.
	And yet I've heard economists say that the Spanish economy, which is a big one, is not going to go down because it's so diversified.
	The Portuguese are at risk, but the Spanish perhaps not.
	Look at the unemployment rate you have in Spain.
	It's a 20%.
	That's the official number.
	Among 18 to 26-year-olds, it's 50%.
	They have more bad debt in that country than they could ever deal with.
	All of that building boom that went on there, talk about the Americans being responsible for a lot of these problems.
	Look what they've done over in Spain, destroying that country with overbuilding everywhere.
	So now they have a lot of bad debt.
	It's so huge that they will not nearly admit how bad it is.
	And so Spain is going to be one of the ones that are going to be facing a lot of problems.
	And again, you look around the world.
	It's mostly Europe and the U.S. They're the two dangerous zones because of the huge debt donations.
	We have $14 trillion worth of debt in this country that we're carrying.
	You have college students that have debt that's greater now than credit card debt on student loans.
	So the debt problem cannot be solved by printing more debt to bail out old debt.
	And that's all they're doing.
	So we believe that in 2011, we're going to start seeing many, many more cracks in the economic foundation of the Europe and the United States.
	But over here, we have this mutual aid society called the European Union.
	And if one member has a problem, then the rest of the members, they may not like it, but they get together and they try and find a solution.
	We've just seen that case with Ireland having to take a bit of a bailout from us all.
	If Spain goes down the pan, that would be another example.
	But where does this stop?
	Do you think there will come a point where the EU itself may start to break apart, where the strong members start to say, we're not going to do this anymore?
	Absolutely.
	That's one of our forecasts.
	We could see not the EU, but the EMU, and the Euro going on, the Euro fading out.
	It's a real possibility.
	And everybody knows in Europe that since the Euro came on, inflation has skyrocketed.
	I mean, to try to believe that Greece and Italy are equivalent to Spain and Germany and France is ridiculous.
	And to have everybody on one level playing field, I got to write this.
	I mean, if it was, it's so out of the sight.
	Was it Lithuania just came on?
	I think it was Lithuania, just came on to the Euro.
	I mean, they're in this dire economic depression over there.
	So, no, it's going to break up at some point.
	And if that happens, then where do we go from there?
	What happens is you have, it's already beginning.
	We're in a currency war now.
	Listen to the Brazilian finance minister, Mantega.
	He's been yelling about it for a long time.
	And countries around the world are doing what they can to protect their currency from becoming overvaluated because they can no longer compete in the export markets.
	A currency war is beginning.
	Listen to Merkel.
	She's talking about a trade war.
	Currency wars plus just trade wars equal real wars.
	This is what they do.
	First, the economic collapse happens, and then there are the currency and trade wars, and then they lead you to war.
	And we believe that we're heading toward that kind of scenario if things continue in the direction they're heading.
	So you think there might be an actual shooting war?
	If there was, what do you think would be the real or imagined catalyst?
	Could it be Korea?
	It won't be Korea, we believe, because first of all, people should understand that if South Korea and North Korea get into a battle, you're going to see the annihilation of probably 50 million people or more.
	North Korea is only 100 miles away from Seoul.
	Seoul has 24 million people.
	They could turn Seoul into dust overnight.
	So we don't think it's going to happen there.
	We think the Middle East is still the powder keg, particularly the Israeli-Palestinian issue, Israel-Lebanon, Israel-Iran, Iran, and the United States.
	Those are really the hot spots to us.
	And what kind of time scale do you think we'll start to see the genesis of this within this year, or is it going to take a bit longer?
	What is the madman you have running the country?
	By the sounds of it, Gerald, you know, last year we were talking about a big shakeout and some bad stuff.
	This year, you seem to be talking about more of the same.
	This is not going to be a great year.
	No, no.
	They're just, again, they're holding this together with fraud.
	That's the only way to say it.
	Look what's happened here in the States.
	We just found out when you talk about fraud how they were foreclosing on people's homes fraudulently.
	They call it robo-signers.
	You know, signing off on documents one after another.
	Not robo-signers.
	It's criminal fraud.
	You know, It's all it is, criminal acts.
	And now the courts are stopping it.
	But that doesn't make the problems go away.
	So, what's happening now is that, again, the options of more monetary easing are just not in the cards anymore.
	The EMU could buy and the central banks, the European central banks could buy up all the debt they want.
	It's not going to solve the problem.
	And at the end of the day, as ordinary people going to work and trying to make a living and doing our jobs and trying to be reasonably happy through it all, what are we to do?
	What advice are we going to do?
	We're the ones that are taking it the hardest.
	As you mentioned, with the VAT tax, with the increases in tuitions, in licensing fees, in any way these dull, dim-witted bureaucrats could come up with, all of a sudden they become shining lights of creativity to come up with ways on how to get more money out of us.
	They're going to nickel and dime the people to death.
	And you're going to start seeing more and more protests.
	It's a fact.
	Let's wind it back to individuals then, Gerald, to close this out.
	And again, I'm grateful for your time today.
	Individual people like myself, like I say, going to work doing our jobs.
	How can we possibly try to be happy?
	Is it time to sell all our assets, get whatever money we can, and get out and live somewhere sunny while we have time to do it?
	Don't spend a nickel.
	You don't have to.
	Spend everything you do by quality and create beauty.
	Beauty is the antidote to fear.
	We can have a renaissance, and I really believe it.
	But people have to find their individual creativity and bring it to the highest level.
	Of course, you did say that last year, and it seems to me that when no...
	Well, yes, we are.
	We're seeing more and more of people turning to quality with foods and many other ways.
	It takes 20%, we believe, to turn the tide.
	And again, Renaissance followed a black death, where they say between a third to two-thirds of Europe was decimated, depending on whose numbers you believe.
	And the people that survived were the people that, you know, they were very intelligent.
	They did things to improve their health.
	They went to monasteries.
	They created after that a genius of a level we hadn't seen for a long time.
	And do you think that mass communication, Carol, just finally, mass communication, Facebook, Twitter, stuff like I'm doing here on the internet and many other people are doing now, putting power in individuals' hands, is that a good thing?
	Is that going to fuel that process?
	Yes, it's journalism 2.0.
	It's happening and will continue to happen.
	And that's the future.
	Enlightening, enlightenment.
	And again, it can change.
	And it's up to us to make the change.
	Every individual, the people that are going to survive are going to be those that are the strongest physically, emotionally, and spiritually.
	When you know that old saying, the Hindu saying, when the people are ready, the leader arrives.
	And so if the people could be ready for a Hitler, or they could be ready for something much greater.
	And what we're pushing for is the much greater.
	Again, you know, it's beauty and quality.
	You stay with those two, and you're sure to win at the end.
	Reminds me of a line I think it was from an American movie, Build It and They Will Come.
	Yep.
	Hey, Gerald, listen, nice to talk with you again, and I wish you well for 2011.
	Maybe we can talk again, perhaps a little sooner than a year, but I do think it's going to be an interesting one, isn't it?
	Yes, it will.
	It always is.
	Take care, Gerald.
	Thank you very much.
	Bye-bye.
	Well, I did warn you, the man is controversial.
	His name is Gerald Silente, and he's at TrendsResearch.com.
	That is, as you say in America, TrendsResearch.com.
	I find he puts a fascinating case.
	And if you take nothing else away from what he said and what we've been talking about for this last, what, 45 minutes or thereabouts here on the unexplained, perhaps you'll take away the thought that maybe we've reached the stage in our evolution where we have to take more responsibility for ourselves and we have to think more about communities and care more about each other at the end of the day.
	And maybe then there can be that thing that Gerald talked about, the Renaissance.
	And maybe in a tiny small way, this show and the work of other people who are doing what I'm doing is part of that.
	The fact that we are taking back control from massive conglomerates and we're actually doing something for ourselves, which I find exciting.
	Leave the politics out of it.
	Leave everything else out of it.
	But just that human side of it is what interests me.
	And maybe that's how you feel too.
	You know, we've got to start caring about each other again, perhaps in a way that we didn't before.
	Or is that too much philosophy for this time?
	I'm not sure.
	Thank you very much for being part of The Unexplained.
	Thank you for listening.
	Please keep the emails coming.
	Go to the website, www.theunexplained.tv.
	There you can send me an email.
	And if you would like to, and if you feel you can, please send the show a donation.
	As usual, thank you to Adam Cornwell, a creative hotspot in Liverpool, for getting this show out to you and for devising the new version of the website.
	Fabulous work, Adam.
	Martin, thank you for the theme tune.
	Happy New Year, my friend.
	And thank you, above all else, to you for listening to The Unexplained and for telling your friends about this show.
	Please keep your feedback coming.
	I wish you well.
	Take care.

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