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Erin: Welcome to T2A chat as we look ahead to 2009 with an expert on forecasting, analyzing and tracking trends. Gerald Celente leads The Trends Research Institute in New York. Celente predicts continued financial calamity, a new political age and lower quality healthcare, among other interesting speculation. ------------------------------- Erin: What’s the biggest prediction you’re making for 2009 and why? Gerald: They're both part of the same, one is the collapse of '09, we're going to see a financial collapse that's going to lead to the greatest depression. The financial collapse is going to come about as the result of the commercial real estate bust. We've already seen what's happened with Christmas sales, and the International Council of Shopping Centers is estimating a min of 140,000 stores closing this year, 2009. You layer that on to those that closed last year and all the bankruptcies that occurred with Linens n Things, Sharper Image, KB Toys, Bennigan's -- and look at closings of major retailers, add up the terrible sales of Christmas of 2008 and you're looking at a retail melt down in 2009. The question becomes who's going to rent all of that empty retail space? The answer is nobody. The sales of retail fell more than twice as much as forecast in December, 2008. So that's only on that sector. Now let's look at the other commercial real estate sectors -- all of the financial businesses that went bust or that are shrinking or collapsing are leaving behind millions of square feet of empty office space, then look at the industrial and corporate office parks and think of all the advertising agencies and small printers, all the support operations that were instrumental in the operations of the failing businesses, who will they sell their services to? Nobody, so a glut of commercial real estate space and the owners unable to secure credit to pay off their debt to service their mortgages and their loans. When this happens, this is going to be a much greater crash than the sub prime problem. That's peanuts compared to this....that will lead to the greatest depression with higher unemployment and the reason this depression will be worst than the last, is that in the last depression most did not own homes or have property taxes or school taxes -- no maintenance, insurance -- back then, people didn't have credit cards and they weren't into so much debt with homes, cars, credit cards -- back then the U.S. had a trade surplus -- we weren't 11.5 trillion and counting in the hole. Now looking at deficits of over a trillion yearly...cannot print our way to prosperity. Back then we also had manufacturing base, when World War Two began and the u.S. became the manufacturing engine that provided the world with what it needed to win and now no manufacturing base -- over 2/3 of gdp is consumer-generated so now with consumer going under it's clear to see that the nation goes under with it. ------------------------------- Erin: Group your main “good news” and “bad news” predictions. Gerald: The bad news has to do with the economy and geopolitics. Again as you look at the geopolitical situation now...we have a Trend alert today that the Israel-Gaza War, if it continues, this could strangle the economy if the OPEC nations do what they did in 1973, the only thing to do to stop Israel was to cut off oil and if that's done now, the global economy is impacted. There's also the Russia issue that we predicted last summer when George invaded South Ossetia and the U.S. condemned Russia for counter-attacking and that day the Russia stock market crashed so now we're saying that Russia wants to get even. One the good news note, something's dying -- what's bad for Wall Street is great for Main Street....Wall Street killed Main Street by deals that made it possible for Mall developers and big box stores and chains to group together to suck the life out of Main Street and the politicians were in collusion because they gave special tax breaks, loan guarantees, grants and infrastructure improvements, all at the cost of the little people and it's going on right now -- perfect Titanic situation...when it was sinking, the wealthy were given the life boats and the rest were locked into steerage without life preservers...from this, those who want to survive and thrive these terrible times are going to realize they have to take life into their own hands....we'll see cuts in consumptions in non necessary products and food, which brings us into the whole health healing and regenerative medicine. ------------------------------- Erin: What on earth is your Regenerative Medicine forecast and how realistic is it? Gerald: From what we're seeing it's becoming more realistic...we don't say it's going to happen this year but we see from our research that stem cell technology will become more and more of a reality. And of course we're also seeing that the government with a new administration is more open to research in this field, so you're going to start seeing hundreds or millions or billions of dollars being pumped into stem cell research....again, we're not saying this is the year that will happen but it's the year to watch -- just like with alternative energy... ------------------------------- Erin: Talk more about what you call Obamarama – and how you came up with this forecast considering you call yourself a political atheist…what does that mean? Gerald: It means we don't belong to any political religion...we call it as we see it. And you read our forecasts of the last 8 years and we've been in business since 1980 -- we look at Obama, which is really more of the same, just a different face...the Obama team has a lot of Clinton re-treads -- like the economic team including Larry Summers...we don't see any fresh faces. ------------------------------- Erin: Next, tell us about your College Crash forecast – does America need to prepare for fewer university-educated workers in the future? Gerald: They'll have all they need -- too many colleges teaching too many mediocre courses, producing mediocre graduates with mediocre talents -- if I'm wrong, show me the greatness they've produced, their achievements in art, science, philosophy, medicine, literature....I want to see it. ...so what we're going to see are 1) the colleges are geared toward producing workers that are well-suited for 20th century America and a corporate model that is breaking down. 2) People are not going to be able to afford to go to those colleges 3) Much of what colleges teach can be better acquired in the real world... ------------------------------- Erin: Give us examples of some your past predictions and how they came about – talk about the type of data used to make those forecasts? Gerald: Go to www.trendsresearch.com and there's a list of all our forecasts -- go back to our top forecasts of 2008 and you'll see the panic of '08 and an economic 9-11, we called it right on the money -- our system is called globalnomic, making connections between different fields...many trends have interconnecting relationships...it's also based on the understanding that current events form future trends...you can see the face of the future...this is true with the economy...many forget about current events or never see them, but we explore the current event and stay with it to assess implications. So for example U.S. retail sales declined for a record 6th month -- it broke a record -- Manhattan office vacancies most since 2004 -- It's what is, let the data speak for itself -- ------------------------------- Erin: Who is on the Trends Research team, what is their background and experience? Gerald: My key member is John Anthony West, Ex. Editor of the Trends Journal...he's the guy that taught me how to write...we've been together since 1983. John is in Cairo right now...he's resp for proving that the base of the Sphynx has been weathered by water damage, the importance of that is that it predates the Sahara which takes it date minimum 10-thousand B.C. -- we're taught through conventional wisdom and general consensus that we were hunters and gatherers back then...matter of fact, NBC look at this in 1993-94..using John's work with a team of geologists...what we do that's different -- there's a philosophical element -- we have a lot of hands of experience on the team, which is small -- ------------------------------- Erin: What 2008 trends will we likely see either continuing or repeated in 2009? Gerald: Technoslaves, people will become more enslaved in technology. In doing so, they're becoming less rather than more informed. If you only talk, you don't listen, if you're only doing, you're not learning. It's really a severe cultural breakdown. As technology continues to excel we'll see people become more addicted to technology. ------------------------------- Erin: Thanks Gerald. Gerald Celente leads The Trends Research Institute in New York. You can learn more here: www.trendsresearch.com That wraps today’s chat about forecasts for 2009. We hope you can come back Wednesday, January 21st at 1800 utc when we discuss the daunting challenges President Obama and his Administration face as they embark on an ambitious domestic agenda. We’ll talk with experts on the Presidency who explain how the President plans to “transform the U.S. economy to improve the lives of ordinary people.“ ------------------------------- | 
