Climax Time: The Top 12 Trends for 2012

Hold onto your hat, your wallet, and your wits.

After a tumultuous 2011 in which many of the trends we had forecast became headline news around the world, we are now forewarning of an even more tumultuous year to come.

While it would give us great pleasure to forecast a 2012 of joy and prosperity – all brought about by the wisdom and benevolence of our fearless leaders – since we are not running for office or looking to profit by gulling the people, we tell it as we see it in our 12 Top Trends 2012.

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Risk You Can Believe In

We understand that there is no aspect of life that is risk free. Beyond the obvious personal risks (mountain climbing, sky-diving, drug running, marriage), every human activity carries some degree of risk.

In the extended era of post World War II inflation, money has continually lost purchasing power. Therefore, just staying even involves risk at some level. For business owners and self-employed professionals, the safest and most satisfying investment will be to invest in yourself rather than putting your money in the hands of financial advisors. This means expanding or refining products and services with self-generated revenues rather than by taking on loans and carrying debt.

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Going for the Gold

It seemed as though everyone with functioning financial sensibilities was aware of and understood the many factors driving up gold. Everyone, that is, except America's top financial expert:

Bernanke Puzzled by Gold Rally

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Recovery? How About “Relapse�?

Three weeks later [after early June 2010] the celebrated property rebound, along with the stock market, ran out of bounce. After the hefty government tax credits that had propped up sales expired in April, May purchases of new homes fell 33 percent to a record low, the fewest sales since 1963. Note that the US population stood at 190 million in 1963, compared to 310 million in 2010 … a 60 percent increase.

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Recovery? How About “Relapse�?

Three weeks later [after early June 2010] the celebrated property rebound, along with the stock market, ran out of bounce. After the hefty government tax credits that had propped up sales expired in April, May purchases of new homes fell 33 percent to a record low, the fewest sales since 1963. Note that the US population stood at 190 million in 1963, compared to 310 million in 2010 … a 60 percent increase.

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Let Them Eat Losses

This had nothing to do with the so-called “Trickle Down� theory. This was “Gush Up.� In Bush/Obama economics, the richest and biggest that had lost billions through bad investments, or were in danger of going bust, had to be rescued. If the Über-Rich weren't saved, there would be nothing left to trickle down to the population below. By government decree, those taxpayers who had never felt any trickle to begin with, now had to finance the failed financiers.

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Laissez-Welfare and the Goldman Gang

 

[Editor's note: Trend forecaster Gerald Celente describes the events of 2009 as if he were writing economic history from the future. Read on to see how he portrays the fateful past year.]

Early in 2008, with the global equity markets in free fall and financial conditions rapidly deteriorating, most Americans were persuaded to accept the necessity of government bailouts of brokerage firm Bear Stearns and the Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac mortgage lenders. 

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