 This weekend, we welcome the always-engaging Gerald Salente, the well-known trends forecaster and publisher. Join us as we discuss the second American Revolution, thankfully intellectual, the latest from Ukraine, the recent European elections, and how oligarchs have come to rule America. Welcome to Mises Weekends. I'm Jeff Deist, your host. We're very, very pleased this weekend to be speaking with Gerald Salente. I'm sure most Mises.org viewers and fans of the Mises Institute already know who Gerald is, but for those who don't, Gerald, we're going to make you sit through a brief introduction here, and you can confirm or deny as you see fit. The first, I guess first and foremost, you're a publisher, correct? You're the publisher of the Quarterly Trends Journal. Correct. Gerald is also the founder of the Trends Research Institute, which if memory serves, you've been involved with or involved in the prognostication business since perhaps the 1980s. That's right, 1980, yeah. And of course, he's a very frequent commenter and guest on the whole alphabet soup of networks, shows, his articles appear across the broad spectrum. I personally, Gerald, have read Trends Journal off and on because I'm a big fan of one of your one of your main writers, Paul Craig Roberts. And also, people may not know this, but the Trends Research Institute is based in upstate New York, apparently about 100 miles north of New York City in a town called Kingston. And Gerald, perhaps you can elucidate a little bit. It sounds like you own some historic buildings there, is that correct? Yes, Kingston was the first capital of New York State, and has more historic, more pre-revolutionary war buildings here than any place else in the country. And I came back from Berlin in April of 2012, and I was looking to leave the country. I was down in Uruguay, Argentina, Chile. I had enough of this fascism that's taken over here. People say it's a problem with capitalism. Capitalism is dead. The merger of state and corporate powers is fascism and too big to fail sums it up in four words. And it's become a militarized zone here. I mean, the cops are blowing away people. It's every day on the news. There's some not on the news. You have to find it. And so anyway, I came back from Berlin and I realized that Berlin was probably Germany was at the height of Western civilization in the 1930s. And culturally, scientifically, you go down the list philosophically, and you think of the great German names, Bach, Beethoven, Wagner, Goethe, all throughout history. And I'm of Italian descent, the same thing. Italians, Puccini, Rossini, Michelangelo, and world leaders and their leaders and the people destroy their countries. And I came back and I said, you know, I realized that Berlin was grander than Paris before it was bombed out. I said, how could this keep going on year after year after year? So I came back to the States and there was a four sale sign when I went away that went up during my absence on the Franz Rogenhaus, 1750s Franz Rogenhaus, with a beautiful garden right next to my building where the trans research institute is headquartered. And I came back on April 27th. I put a binder on it on April 30th and I took possession of it June 1st. And the reason I bought it and ended up buying the other two is that I said I can't run away. There are two bit freaks everywhere. This is my country. The seeds of democracy was sown in this area. And I've had it with these people. Love it or leave it. No, you leave it. You get out of here. You're destroying it. You know the Supreme Court yet two days ago ruled that you can't get close to protesting a president because we have to protect the president, but his friendly people could go near him. Where does that say that in the Constitution? We have people listening probably to this broadcast. Who are these jerks? Who anointed these people? So to make it really clear, the reason I bought these buildings is I want to see the second American revolution, not one of violence, one of the morality, one of spirituality, and I don't mean in the New Age sense, an intellectual revolution. So that's why we did it. And that's why we're doing it. And I'm starting a new movement, by the way. It's called Occupy Peace. And it's based on three words. Again, when the foundation upon which this nation was built on, no foreign entanglements. George Washington. This is a guy, you know, that fought in battle, not one of these little boys, these little chicken hawks with big mouths, your little Sarkozy, your little Halan, your little Cameron and Bush, and Obama and Clinton, guys that couldn't fight their way out of a paper bag, sending everybody else to go get their brains blown out, and then calling it the ultimate sacrifice. So Occupy Peace is no foreign entanglements, rebuild America, every other country is on your own. So that's it briefly. Well, so it sounds like Kingston, New York is the epicenter of the Second American Revolution. You know, I love this, this concept you have of being a political atheist and, and, you know, talking about the folly of political activism. And I think that that's right in the wheelhouse for most of our Mises listeners. You've written about how the 2014, excuse me, the 2016 presidential election is more like a presidential reality show. And, and when you talk about having a revolution of ideas as opposed to a political or God forbid, a violent revolution, I think that's something that, that strikes home with our listeners. Well, you know, I look at the Swiss model as the one that works direct democracy, let the people vote. You want to go to war, let the people vote with the ones that fight the war with the ones that pay for it. You want to bail out banks, let the people vote. Look, they just had a referendum in Switzerland. They were going to buy the government said they should buy 22, you know, jet fighters from Sweden. And the people said no. They said they wanted to raise the, the minimum wage was it's a $24 and 64 cents. The people said no, let the people vote. We don't have a representative form of government. That's the kids. The only people they represent the politicians are the people that give them a lot of dough for the campaign contributions. That's, they call it. We call it bribes and payoffs where I grew up in the Bronx. They call it campaign contributions. They're flunkies for the multinationals. And, and people say, well, you know, Switzerland's a small country. It doesn't make any difference. You know, whether you, if 7 million voters, 70 million vote, you're voting on an issue. If you could bank online, you could vote online, open it up to total transparency, let everyone look at it. You'll have the algorithms. You will really know if there's any kind of fraud. Anyway, that's what I believe in. And you know the motto of the Trends Journal, think for yourself. So that's just the way I see the thing. Well, when you say think for yourself, I guess that's the, the, the wholesale independence that you sort of bring to the debate. Let me ask you this. If we didn't have a Fed financing, let's say Iraq and Afghanistan, those two wars, if George W. Bush had been required, as you suggest to go to the American public and say, hey folks, we're going to vote on invading these countries. And guess what? We don't have the money. Every household in America has to kick in 200 bucks a month or 500 bucks a month or something like that. I think we can, we can both posit that the, that would have been a pretty quick and clean vote. That's right. And one after another like that. Do you know that the Fed bailout, oh, I shouldn't say anything wrong about it because Timothy Geithner, little Timmy Geithner, the former treasury secretary came out with his new book. I love these guys. You know, after they screw up everything, they get these huge book, book contracts. And he said, quote, it was morally right thing to do. Hey, don't, isn't it wonderful that I got a clown like him telling me what's morally right? And they actually print this crap. Morally right, you sell out 500 to one people were against the bailout, 500 to one. And they shove it down our throat. This is not democracy in America. It's fascism. And you can see it in the Supreme Court rulings. And with the bailouts. So in hindsight, would you agree with David's document that the so-called Blackberry Panic of 08 would have been restricted or sort of constrained within Wall Street and the laymen brothers of the world, and it would not have infected Main Street, so to speak? Of course it wouldn't have. No, I agree with him 100%. They asked him, what would it do? He said the same thing that you're doing now. The economy would look like it's looking now because the only people that are benefiting from it are the hedge funds and private equity groups, the Vulture Capitalists. You have interest rates at record lows for the longest time ever in history. And who's it fueling? It's fueling the mergers and acquisitions. It's fueling the money junkies, the gamblers. And we, the people, are getting screwed every day. They're raising taxes. I love the term. I mean, have it over there in Europe or austerity measures. Who made that lineup? How about taxing the people more, taking their pensions and benefits, and increasing their retirement age till after they die to bail out the bondholders and the people that made bad bets? And they did the same thing in the States. They just have a different line for it and quantitative easing. Who are they kidding? Look, when I was a kid, they had this arcane thing. Used to put money in a bank and it was called a savings account and you get an increase in interest rates above inflation so that when you got older, you'd have a little nest aid. No more, no more. What do you get? 0.25 or 1%. You get nothing when you put it in the bank. So I agree with David Stockman on your percent. Well, let me ask you this. In terms of forecasting, in terms of future trends, I mean, how do you see the dollar end game? How do you see it all unfold? Clearly, the Fed can't keep doing what it's doing. At this point, the only thing that's really propping up the US dollar is sort of a mixture of our waning military might and the fact that OPEC nations still price in dollars. So how do you see the dollar unraveling? Deflationary or inflationary? I see it as, it's tricky because it's really not inflationary in the sense that products cost more. You need more of your Zimbabwean dollars to buy a pound of coffee. That's the way I see the dollar going. You mentioned Dr. Paul Craig Roberts, who's a contributor and a friend of mine. There's no one more I respect for geopolitics and economics than Dr. Paul Craig Roberts. I mean, this guy's been around on the inside. Matter of fact, a quick story. He called me up, that was a couple of months ago, like 10 o'clock at night. He said, I figured you'd be up working. And I said, you know, Craig, I said, I'm looking at the New York Times here and there's Obama's national security team. This is interesting. And I said, are these the clowns making these decisions or is there something going on behind the scenes? Now remember, this is a guy that could call in the head of the CIA and question him on the oath. And he said, no, he said, these are the people making decisions and people don't want to admit that what they see is what they get. So I mentioned that also about Dr. Paul Craig Roberts, because he and I see this a bit differently. He was wondering why the BRICS haven't established a reserve currency of their own yet. And I agree with him. Why haven't they done it yet? So then you look at what's going to replace the dollar, certainly not the euro. And then you look at the problems that China's having. It's not going to be the yuan. I mean, China is doing the same thing the United States is doing in Europe with pumping and cheap money. They're just doing it differently. Instead of building the military and fighting wars and raping us of our future, what they're doing is building the infrastructure. But I read an article in the Financial Times. I only could repeat what I read. I don't know the truth behind it. The Financial Times said that in two years between 2011 and 2012, China used more cement in infrastructure and real estate development than the United States used in the entire 20th century. So they built a bubble till. So where are you going to go? You're not going to go to the yuan. You're certainly not going to go to the rupee. You're not going to go to the euro. I don't believe the dollar is going to decline until what Paul Craig Roberts says, this is where I agree with him, is that until the BRIC nations put their own reserve currency to counter the dollar. The other one is what Zolanic said in the World Bank a couple of years ago. And again, being a political atheist, it's not I like the guy, dislike the guy, World Bank. But to me, what he said made sense. A basket of currencies with gold included in it. To me, that's the way out. You know, let's make this a level playing field. Well, the fact that he even mentioned gold was almost heresy among his crowd, right? The globalist crowd tends to hate gold. Of course they tend to hate gold because, and look, now everybody knows, and I love the white shoe boy language they use in the press to describe the criminality. We just saw what happened with Barclays. You know, one of the traders made a misstep, misrepresented. How about high crimes in misdemeanor? How about grand larceny? No, no, we can never say that about one of the gang, you know? Anyway, we're all seeing now that gold is rigged. We know that the Forex is rigged. We know that the Libor is rigged. Hey, we know that the stock market's rigged. No, they're going to keep doing the best they can to suppress the price of gold because when the price of gold goes up, it shows what a fraud it is with the dollar, with the euro, the yuan, and all of the other currencies that are propped up by the governments that are feeding the multinationals and just shoving the money into the system to enrich the filthiest rich. Well, we certainly talked about this at Mises, the idea of gold as the canary in the coal mine that must be suppressed. But when we get back to this concept of mega trends, which can unravel pretty slowly, do you see something along the lines of a monster global currency imposed by the IMF in terms of special drawing rights, or do you see almost a reversion to hypernationalistic local currencies because people see that we can't have the whole world dependent on the dollar. We can't have the whole EU dependent on the euro. It really depends on the people. And we just saw the elections in the parliament for Europe. And Italy, they didn't do well at all. France, of course, they had a boost with Le Pen and the UK with UKIP. The Netherlands didn't do well. And Greece, I mean, they put in another flunky. He's pretending to be somebody else and he's not. He's still pro-European. It has to be the people that pull away and regain their national identity. To me, that's what has to happen before you see going back to the currencies that they used to have. I mean, if Norway can do it and Sweden can do it, why can't Italy and why can't France and why can't other countries in Europe rely on their own currencies? But it really has to go back to the people. And the people's will to me, here's a story that really puts things into perspective. Just came out today. Global obesity explodes since 1980. About 30% of the world population is now considered overweight or obese. The people have lost the fight for dignity, self-respect, and courage across the globe. They're letting a few rule and ruin their lives. The fight is gone. And I don't see it coming back until the fight returns or until we have a leader or someone, and then I get not a leader in the sense that, follow me, I know the way. I mean, someone to wake up the people to say, look at yourself. Look what you've become. Look what you're listening to. Look what you believe in. Why can't you think for yourself? You know, I have a definition of hell. And to me, it's taking that last breath in life and knowing that you lied to yourself and you weren't the person who you said you were or could have been. And when the people wake up, that's when they'll find the spirit of nationality again. No, there's nothing wrong with nationalism. It's not a right-wing racist identity. I love being Italian descent. We like to dress nice. It's our nationality, and I'm proud to be an American. Because if I was not an American, if I was not born here, I could never be who I am because of my freedom. So it's not racist. No, I don't want any more immigrants here. We can't take care of our own. And they had immigration laws in very strict in this country during the Great Depression up until recently, you know, in the 1960s. Because we couldn't take care of our own. So when people regain their identity, their spirit, every day I thank the ancestors for all they've given me. And in respect for that, no, not globalized, what? Oh, you like Walmart? You think that's great? You like shoving your mouth filled with GMO foods? GMO, globalization, modified organisms. So when identity comes back, that's when I see the change. Well, let me just shift gears a little bit. We'll touch on one more talk before we let you go. And that's, of course, what's heating up, what's going on in Ukraine. I'd like to get your thought on what our listeners might view as sort of the overarching takeaway from what's happening. In other words, do we now live in an era where we have to be completely 100% suspicious and that there are no longer organic revolutions amongst the people? In other words, whether it's the USCIA or some other foreign agent, there's no such thing as an organic revolution at this point. Well, your listeners know the story of Victoria Newland and all the rest of the, you know, I mean, what you see is what it is. It's interference in every country. And that's why I'm pushing for Occupy peace. No foreign entanglements. Now, the revolutions are, I mean, there's a story that just came out. I haven't had a chance to read it yet. That was leaked on WikiLeaks about US diplomats called newly elected Ukrainian president Poroshenko, a disgraceful oligarch. Yeah, I mean, yeah, no, it's, these are, there are very few really revolutions that are going on that organic. Some of them in South America, I believe in New York, Uruguay, you know, that happened as a result of an evolution of the people having a discuss of what was going on. But no, it's the multinationals. I mean, why are they, look, the Victoria Newland December 13, 2013, there she is at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., brought to you by with a sign over her shoulder, Chevron. You can't make this crap up. And then, oh, hunt the Biden. I let, you know, important people always have an initial in front of their name. Oh, hunt the Biden is, you know, Joseph Biden's son is appointed to the board of directors of Burisma Oil at Burisma Energy, the largest energy company in Ukraine. I mean, it should be an outrage. And then who else? Oh, oh, the ketchup king, John Kerry, the secretary of state, his, his, his stepson, Christopher Heinz, the heir to the Heinz fortune, his partner, Devon Archer, Devon, Devon Devon. He's also appointed to the board of a Burisma Energy. I mean, how could anybody not see what's going on? It's about, it's about the IMF. It's about the oil companies. It's about the multinationals. And of course, it's about the six psychopaths, the, the, the globalist morons, the neocons that keep wanting to spread their power so that the United States could be the military might of the world. It's a combination of elements, but psychopaths and sociopaths wraps it up for those who are making the decisions. Well, Gerald, I'm just thanking God that we don't have any of those pesky oligarchs here in the U.S. And with that, we thank you very much for your time and enjoy your weekend. We look forward to talking to you again. Thank you so much. Bye now.