The financial fields replete with sprouting “green shoots” should be viewed with suspicion, if not alarm. They are not a mirage, but they are ephemeral.
Field Marshall Ben Bernanke and his Green Shoot Brigade have fertilized the economic landscape with trillions of sweat equity dollars extorted from today’s public and the public of generations to come. Regardless of how depleted the land, heavy doses of dollars spread so thickly over the financial and government territories, will force “green shoots” to grow. But the fundamentals of the economy remain unsound. They will not be corrected by forced fertilizing barren acreage.
“Green shoots" may sprout, but they will not flower. The economy cannot be coerced back into growth with tons of money manure. As the ancient parable puts it:
“A sower went out to sow his seed: and as he sowed, some fell by the way side; and it was trodden down, and the fowls of the air devoured it. And some fell upon a rock; and as soon as it was sprung up, it withered away, because it lacked moisture. And some fell among thorns; and the thorns sprang up with it, and choked it. And other fell on good ground, and sprang up, and bare fruit an hundredfold. And when he had said these things, he cried, He that hath ears to hear, let him hear.” – Luke 8:4–8
Now hear this: it is inconceivable that the “green shoots” are signs of sustained economic recovery.
No one could have forecast that the government would not only intervene in the markets by pouring unprecedented trillions into bailout schemes, but that they would commandeer the whole free enterprise system.
The 800-pound gorilla has ridden the elephant into the Oval Office, and they are there for all to see. But few will call a spade a spade. Benito Mussolini described Fascism as "The merger of state and corporate power." He suggested that, more appropriately, it should be called "Corporatism." By whatever name, Corporatism or Fascism, what it’s not is Free Market Capitalism, much less Democracy.
“Green shoots” can only be brought to harvest through real productivity. Pumping gigantic sums of money into too-big-to-fail financial institutions to jump-start the lending/borrowing cycle is to perpetuate a failed economic model. (See “The Greatest Depression.")
We can extrapolate creatively from data, but cannot prophesize wild cards, such as acts of God, acts of nature, or acts of man that can only be described as "schemes undreamed of." While there have been warnings since the founding of the United States, no one, but no one, could have predicted the mega-merger of Wall Street and Washington that is now a fait accompli.
With so much money being dumped into the system, there will be money to be made … and lost. The agile and the knowledgeable may be able to reap “green shoots” while they’re sprouted. But beware!
“The Greatest Depression” – that we forecast would begin to set in by the end of this year – may have been postponed, but it has not been averted. When it does set in, it will do so with enhanced intensity and at a pace accelerated by complex financial finagling … all under the guise of nation-saving action. Rather than let the failing industries fail and the failed banks go bankrupt, the government is deliberately bankrupting the nation.
The lesson to be learned from the financial crisis that began in the summer of 2007, is that nothing succeeds like failure. The greater their failure, the bolder they become. The more they lose, the more they take. The greater the chaos, the more control they exact. The bigger they fail, the harder we fall.
No act is too unthinkable or measure too draconian for the Washington–Wall Street Mob to concoct in order to maintain power, make money and cover their losses. While it is impossible to second-guess what the government will do next, it is absolutely certain that they will stop at nothing.
The “green shoots” will wither and conditions will deteriorate. Those who are prepared for the worst will not have been taken by surprise.
May 11, 2009
Gerald Celente is founder and director of The Trends Research Institute, author of Trends 2000 and Trend Tracking (Warner Books), and publisher of The Trends Journal. He has been forecasting trends since 1980, and recently called “The Collapse of '09.”
