Harder Than Anything You’ve Experienced

Recently by Mac Slavo: The Coming Destruction of U.S. Pensions

In February 0f 2009, while on the Glenn Beck show, trend forecaster Gerald Celente was asked to comment on global events and extraordinary times in which we live. His response should have been a wake up call.

[It will be] Like nothing we’ve ever seen in our lifetime or I would say anyone’s life time.

Since then we’ve seen not billions, but trillions upon trillions of dollars committed to bank bailouts, toxic asset purchases, stock market liquidity infusion, so-called job creation programs, tax breaks and mortgage modifications. The Obama administration has taken every opportunity to tout these programs as evidence of success.

On the one hand, we’re told that the recovery, albeit slower than expected, is in full swing. We were also told in late 2008 that this was a recession. Any discussion about the possibility of another Great Depression was taken off the table by government, media and mainstream economists. The idea that America could enter another depression was simply not possible, and anyone who spoke of such thing was a fear mongering pessimist.

Yet, it seems that we were on the very brink of complete meltdown in 2008. So close, in fact, that administration officials now claim the President’s policies are responsible for avoiding the very scenario that was completely denied as a possibility three years ago:

The American economy was falling off the cliff in the fall of ’08 and the first months of this administration. And he put in place the most creative, the most forceful set of economy measure we have ever done as a country. And because of that, we’ve prevented a second Great Depression and the economy has now been growing for more than a year and a half.

~ Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, Meet the Press, July 10, 2011

At the same time Mr. Geithner explains to us how saddling us with trillions more in debt and expanding government intervention into every aspect of our lives has avoided depression, he warns that things are going to remain tough for the average American. His words are eerily reminiscent of Gerald Celente’s 2009 forecast:

I think it’s going to take a long time still. This is a very tough economy. And I think for a lot of people it’s going to be – it’s going to feel very hard, harder than anything they’ve experienced in their lifetime now, for some time to come.