An anonymous reader writes: Futurist and trends forecaster Gerald Celente, director of the Trends Research Institute in Rhinebeck, NY, predicted the 1987 stock market crash, the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1989, the Asian economic implosion of '97, the decline of the dollar beginning in 2005, the meteoric rise in gold prices in an age of currency volatility, and the turn of events that may be the blessing of our era, the subprime mortgage crisis.
Because of this habit of prescience, Celente has appeared regularly on CNN and Fox and MSNBC, his "Trends Reports" widely quoted in newsprint, on Oprah Winfrey, on Good Morning America.
Now in his Report for 2008, issued in mid-December, he carried the news every thinking American already knows. "The United States of America," Celente pronounced, "has gone from first class to third rate." It's a "nation on the skids and heading down."
Celente projects economic and political crisis in the coming year. "In 2008, Americans will wake up to the worst economic times that anyone alive has ever seen," he wrote on December 17. "Just as they didn't see 9/11 coming and were frozen in shock when terror struck, [Americans] will be frozen in shock when terror strikes again." He predicts "failing banks, busted brokerages, toppled corporate giants, bankrupt cities, states in default, foreign creditors cashing out of US securities...the stage is set, the big one is on its way."
