Gerald Celente Unloads: “We Got Sick Bastards DESTROYING Our Lives and There’s Hardly Any Protests…”

Meanwhile, Scammers Exploit Pandemic to Peddle Fake Silver, Phony Collectibles


Mike Gleason Mike Gleason
Interview with: Gerald Celente
May 29th, 2020 Comments

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Welcome to this week’s Market Wrap Podcast, I’m Mike Gleason.

Coming up Gerald Celente of the Trends Journal joins me for an explosive interview on a range of topics, including the massive government failures in handling the COVID-19 outbreak, some alarming statistics about the virus that the legacy media are ignoring, and offers some incredibly valuable advice on what people should be doing to prepare for what he calls the greatest depression. So, stick around for my conversation with Gerald Celente, coming up after this week’s market update. Let me warn you though, this interview is NOT for the faint of heart.

Precious metals markets are trading mixed this week. Despite a significant drop in the U.S. Dollar Index which might have served as a catalyst for a big breakout week for gold and silver – futures traders had other ideas and kept metals prices relatively capped through Thursday. Today, however, we’re seeing a nice month-end rally in gold and silver prices.

For the week, spot gold is essentially flat to trade at $1,743 an ounce. Silver, meanwhile, sports a weekly gain of 3.7% to come in at $17.93 per ounce.

Silver’s outperformance brings the gold:silver ratio back below 100 after reaching historically high levels from the panicked market conditions of March. Although the ratio itself doesn’t trade on any exchange, some metals traders do try to profit off trends in the ratio by going long one metal and short the other. Long-term bullion investors also use the ratio as a measure of relative value when deciding whether to favor gold or silver in new purchases.

Right now, in terms of both relative value and near-term momentum, silver has the edge over gold. Although anything is possible near-term, including another spike higher in the gold:silver ratio, any reading in the 100s would represent an historically rare opportunity to nab some silver on the cheap. Even in the 90s, silver is still an extraordinary bargain, relatively speaking, given that the ratio traded in the 30s as recently as 2011.

Also looking cheap on a historic basis is platinum. Since 2008, platinum has gone from commanding more than double the gold price to less than half. Like silver, platinum has gained some ground in recent weeks. It is unchanged for this week, though, and currently trades at $846 an ounce.

And finally, palladium prices currently come in at $1,992, down 4.0% since last Friday’s close.

Meanwhile, the COVID-19 pandemic and the global economic lockdowns that followed have brought out the best in some… and the worst in others.

Some scam artists have cruelly used the crisis as an opportunity to prey on the hopes and fears of vulnerable people. Whether it’s peddling fraudulent coronavirus charities or fake cures for the disease, sham investment opportunities or counterfeit medical masks, crooks are finding creative ways of cashing in.

We’ve even seen increases in some types of fraud in the precious metals markets. For example, counterfeit coins are showing up in more places.

The Anti-Counterfeiting Educational Foundation warned this week that fraudulent advertisements for gold and silver coins are appearing on Facebook.

Some of the scam offers are for supposed numismatic coins that are placed in plastic capsules with phony certifications that appear to come from genuine coin grading services. Slabbing a coin with a doctored grade can potentially add hundreds or even thousands of dollars in artificial value.

The good news is that these sorts of fraud schemes can’t be pulled off on bullion investors who stick to common coins, rounds, and bars that are priced mainly on their metal content and not on their supposed rarity or collectible value or their fancy certifications.

Even genuine numismatic coins can be ridiculously overpriced and overhyped by dealers. Some have faced prosecution for consumer fraud in recent years, and other sketchy operators in this space have ramped up their advertising during the pandemic to try to lure people who want the protection of bullion into the weeds of high-priced and illiquid collectible products.

Sticking to low-premium bullion items is the first and most important way to avoid being scammed in the precious metals market. Always keep your eye on the actual melt value of the precious metal contained in the item you are buying. But even if you stay in in the realm of honest money, there are scams to be aware of.

According to the Anti-Counterfeiting Educational Foundation, as well as our own research, there are many fake one-ounce silver American Eagles being peddled in online marketplaces. The fakes are composed of cheaper base metals, often without any disclosure.

It may seem hard to believe that fraudsters would go to the trouble of creating realistic-looking phony silver coins given that they will sell for only a small fraction of what counterfeit gold or numismatic coins can garner. But perhaps they are exploiting the fact that bullion buyers tend to be less careful and less suspicious when shopping for silver.

You should never have to wonder whether what you’re buying is the real deal. That means never buying from disreputable or unknown sources. Naturally, illicit operators will try to tempt you away from what good sense dictates by offering what appears to be an unbeatable deal.

The reality is that anyone who wants to sell you gold or silver at prices that are too good to be true is trying to hoodwink you. Either the product isn’t genuine. Or it won’t come at all. Or it’s a bait and switch scheme designed to get you in the door, so-to-speak, so that a salesman can harangue into buying something much pricier.

When it comes to buying physical precious metals, only reputable dealers that specialize in what you actually are interested in owning deserve your business.

We are certainly proud of the reputation we have built over the years at Money Metals Exchange and will continue to work hard to keep it. And you never have to wonder about the authenticity of the products we sell as our rigorous and highly sophisticated testing equipment verifies every piece of metal that passes through our building.

Our reputation is on the line every time we ship out an item -- and we guarantee everything as being exactly what we are representing it to be.

In the meantime, we will also continue to keep an eye on shenanigans within our industry and the broader global market for precious metals – and report to you some of the things we are seeing.

Meanwhile, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission and Justice Department are engaging in investigations into price manipulation and other fraud schemes carried out by traders working for big banks. A handful of institutional futures traders can push paper prices for gold or silver up or down for no real fundamental reason on any given day.

But at the end of the day, long-term investors should ignore the noise and stay focused on the supply and demand fundamentals for gold and silver. As long as you stick to physical metal, the physical fundamentals will ultimately win out.

Well now, without further delay we’ll launch into this week’s exclusive Money Metals interview with the top trends forecaster in the world, and before we do that… a warning: the following interview does contain some strong language. As such, listener discretion is advised.

Gerald Celente

Mike Gleason: It is my privilege now to welcome back the one and the only Gerald Celente, publisher of the renowned Trends Journal. Mr. Celente has been a regular guest on the Money Metals Podcast over the years and is perhaps the most well-known trends forecaster in the world, and it's always great to have him on with us.

Gerald, thanks for the time again today and welcome back.

Gerald Celente: Well thanks for having me back again Mike.

Mike Gleason: Gerald, I'd like to start by getting your outlook on what lies ahead for the nation. Some states are easing the lockdown. Other places, such as California, are extending such restrictions. Regardless, there has been economic carnage.

It's difficult for a lot of us to determine just how bad the damage is. Lots of Americans are receiving more in unemployment benefits than they earned while they were on the job. The equity markets have been rallying relentlessly after getting pummeled back in March, so there seems to be plenty of people who are expecting a quick recovery. We aren't so sure.

It seems to us a lot of businesses that closed during the quarantine may not reopen and we haven't even started to see the waves of bankruptcies in restaurants, hotels, airlines and movie theaters that is likely coming, to say nothing about industries such as the shale oil producers, who will likely be going broke. What is your forecast for the U.S. economy in the months ahead?

Gerald Celente: Well, it's going to go up and down, but the trajectory is going to keep going down. We're in the early stages of the greatest depression. We’ve got these little jerks, these little slimy morons, these arrogant little boys and girls called governors, mayors, senators, whatever you want to call them, telling us all what to do without any scientific backing behind any of their decisions and nothing more than gross failure.

Here I am in New York, and they got little Andy Cuomo, another arrogant boy born on third base and thought he hit a home run. He'd be a nobody if daddy wasn't Mario Cuomo, the governor… so arrogant as a daddy's boy he renames the Tappan Zee Bridge after his daddy, telling us all what to do, and you look at what they've done.

Here they've closed down New York State, and it has the highest per capita COVID death rates in the world, so it's a total failure. The people that are dying, all the data in the Trends Journal, and others know it as well, that the majority are elderly people, chronically ill, in nursing homes. Yeah, like in nursing homes, chronically ill… they're going to be leaving very soon and go on a vacation. They're on their way out already.

Not that I'm saying this is great, but I'm saying it's reality. You what the average age, in Italy, the first one to lock down, the death rate? 80 years old. 80 years old, the average death of COVID.

So they close down the global economy. It's not going to bounce back. Oh, they're opening up. Oh, yeah, they're opening up restaurants and you can put your hands behind your back, because that's the amount of freedom they've given you. You're going to have to be socially distant. You're going to get served with people wearing masks and rubber gloves. Isn't that going to be fun? Oh, and by the way, the capacity could be down 75% to 50% in states, 25%. The restaurant business, even in good times, is hardly good.

And then there's the travel industry. Oh, it's going to be fun to travel as you get your temperature taken, and then they're going to pull you aside. What, are they going to arrest you if your temperature is too high? And what if you go on a trip? Oh, if you go on a trip are you going to go to the UK? How about the F-U-C-K? Yeah, how about that one? You get quarantined for two weeks.

This isn't coming back. We got sick bitches and bastards destroying our lives in front of us and there's hardly any protests. This isn't coming back. It's only going to go down. Look at all the trade shows that have been canceled. Look at all the concerts that have been canceled. Look at how kids aren't going back to college. Oh, those college towns are going to be booming, huh?

Hey, how about all that commercial real estate out there? We're going to work from home now. Great. How about all those businesses that are going to survive because people are going to work?

This isn't coming back, and we've been on this from the beginning. I am so sick and tired of hearing people now saying what's going to happen when they're swallowing the bullshit that was shoved down their throat from the beginning, the experts of where this is going.

Mike Gleason: Yeah. It obviously seems like the story changes in terms of the impact of COVID-19, in terms of how contagious it is. We get a different story it seems like every couple of weeks, and obviously Americans are unfortunately taking it all in and really have gone to a fear level that we never would have thought we would have seen before.

And on that note, has spending behaviors changed permanently? If so, what does this mean for brick and mortar retail and restaurants? You talked about that, commercial real estate. I mean I've seen polls where a meaningful amount of people won't even think about going to a sporting event, for example, for six months after a vaccine is out.

Gerald Celente: Exactly. I mean you're nailing it. You're saying the whole thing. Isn't that going to be fun to get vaccinated? I'm not going to get vaccinated. Hey, little Andy Cuomo, you want to vaccinate me? Come here and try and stick the vaccine in my arm. No, no, no. Leave your little boys behind, those tough guys that beat up innocent people. Leave them behind and you come here and try to put the vaccine in my arm, and that's what the people are going to do.

The news is now that Trump is going to end the Afghan war, a 19 year war going on, just like these little slimy murderous pieces of crap start wars with no exit strategy. They started the COVID war with no exit strategy. Politicians are sick people. Poli-tics, got it, many sucking the life out of us. They don't know anything. They're morons. They're arrogant narcissistic freaks. They have no way of getting us out of this, just like they get us into the other wars with no exit strategies, yet people are freaking out. They're buying the crap.

Again, the data shows who's dying. It's the elderly, chronically ill people… diabetics, obesity, lung disease, respiratory ailments, heart problems. Quarantine them.

Hey, how about that place called Japan? You want to see a densely populated city like Tokyo? How many people died in Japan? I think about 640, under 1,000 out of a population of 126,000,000.

Look at the obesity rates in America? Look at the crap people are shoving down their throats as they're locked in. Weight levels are going way up. Do you want more macaroni and cheese? Don't forget to go to McDonald's and get your takeout.

Has anybody talked about building immune systems up and staying healthy? And the facts are there that people that get this that are healthy, it comes and it goes. Again, you're looking at the numbers. 100,000 dead in America. Yeah? How about the 200,000 that died last year of air pollution related sicknesses? How about the 480,000 that died last year of smoking related disease?

Mike Gleason: There was a lot of outrage in 2008 when Congress bailed out Wall Street. We thought it would get a lot harder for politicians to send trainloads of free money to the most undeserving people in the world, and in a sense maybe that is correct. It isn't technically Congress that has been bailing out the banks this time. That dirty work has been done by the Fed, which is sending trillions to Wall Street. Jerome Powell and his crew don't have to bother with any awkward public debate on the merits of their programs.

But we can't help but be a little disappointed in the level of outrage amongst mainstream America. Granted anyone watching CNBC is probably not going to hear anyone challenge what's being done, but how do the people in charge keep getting away with this?

Gerald Celente: Just like they're getting away with the crap that they're doing to us now. What do you think wars start for? You heil Hitlter, you salute Stalin and you march to Mussolini. People are doing the same thing now. It's only a small minority that understands what's going on. It's criminal what the Federal Reserve is doing, buying junk bonds, pumping trillions of dollars into the repo markets. The whole stock market is a fraud.

And they keep getting away with it because the people don't know about it and the people don't care about it. My father, when I used to get upset like I am now, he'd say to me, "Son, take it easy. Stop." He said, "People have little minds." So what we're talking about is the masses with little minds. Just as you march them off to war, they march off to the COVID war. They'll follow anybody. They don't know anything that's going on with the Fed.

The reality is when the equity markets collapse, then people will realize the real dangers of the economic collapse ahead, and that's why you're seeing gold prices stabilize about $1,700. Because anybody with a brain bigger than George Bush's or Andy Cuomo's or Gruesome Newsom, any of these moron, imbecile, low life pieces of garbage/crap that has destroyed our lives, know it's a total fraud and the central banks around the world are pumping in trillions of dollars of worthless money.

So people with a half a brain are going into gold and silver and to cryptocurrency. That's why you're seeing Bitcoin in the 8,000-9,000 range, because they know the other digital currency, backed by nothing, printed on nothing, and keeps being printed... not even printed, digitized at just a flick of a switch, is a big sham, and at some point this thing is going to collapse real hard.

Mike Gleason: So how does this play out Gerald? There are clearly some major deflationary forces from business failures and debt defaults, and then the frantic money printing that figures to drive a lot of inflation. Talk about this push-pull situation here, and will the trend be inflationary or deflationary in your view. Talk about that.

Gerald Celente: It depends on the country. So, if you're in Argentina, if you're in Venezuela, if you're in Turkey, if you're in Brazil where your currencies are collapsing and you're already deep in recession and going in deeper, you're going to start seeing inflation because your currencies are deflating.

But the United States is staying above inflation because of all the product on line, of all the product that hasn't been sold, way more supply than demand. That's why you're seeing oil prices, as hard as they try to keep pushing them up, and you know, we're still seeing Brent Crude about $35 a barrel. It's dollar based, remember. So now if you're in another country that $35 a barrel is expensive, but in the United States it's not.

So, it's not going to bring down the dollar until the crash happens, so as long as the crash doesn't happen the dollar will stay strong, not because of the value of the dollar... and what are we going to be $4 trillion in debt this year it's estimated? It's because the other currencies are so weak.

You're looking now at the Chinese yuan now at a 12 year low. And that's very important to mention that by the way, because history is repeating itself. Remember, the yuan now is at a 12 year low, and you know how Trump keeps going on about they're lowering their currency because they want to export more product.

Currency wars, trade wars, Great Depression, World War II. Currency wars, trade wars, greatest depression, World War III. That's what's shaping up. When all else fails, they take you to war. That's why I am as angry as I am, because I am a futurist. That's my business. I've been at it for 40 years. I don't brag about my work, but I'll put my trend forecasting track record up against anybody in the world.

Show me the books you've written. Show me your years of magazine publishing. Show me your information and then come and say that you have a better track record than me. And I'm not saying I'm right all the time. I'm human. You're up and down, but my track record, I'll put it up against anybody's.

My concern and anger is these sick bitches and bastards that keep taking us to war, have taken us to the COVID war, which if it keeps going the way it's going it's going to launch into World War III.

Mike Gleason: Certainly a scary thought for sure, and yeah, I've heard you say that before, when all else fails to take you to war, and then we'd have to plan to watch out for that.

Talk about silver Gerald. We talk a lot about gold with you here on the podcast, but silver seems to have been the forgotten metal as the ratio has steadily been above 100 to one on the gold/silver ratio. So is poor man's gold down for the count, given the economic headwinds we're facing that will likely result in less industrial demand for the metal, or is there any hope there for silver? Give us your thoughts on that if you would.

Gerald Celente: Well you're right about the less industrial need for the metal. And I don't believe silver is going to start topping higher until gold really starts making a hard run, and I see that hard run when it breaks over $2,000. And my forecast for gold has been solid.

Again, you know what I've been saying. You know how bearish I was on gold for a long time, and it was not up until June 6th of last year, just about a year from now, when we came out with the Trend Alert, “The Gold Bull Run Began.” That was June 6th, and gold was $1,332 an ounce.

So when gold breaks over $1,740 and stays there for a few weeks, $1,740, $1,730, $1,780, $1,750, $1,750, $1,730, when it plays in that range for a while, my belief it'll spike to $2,000 and above. When it gets to $2,000 and above, then silver will start to follow, because people will become very desperate for safe-haven assets, and silver will still be one of them.

Mike Gleason: Yeah, that's where that substitution effect comes into play, that a lot of people are thinking will help silver eventually, gold leading the way and silver following, and then maybe outperforming once they do finally start to move.

Well, lastly as we begin to wrap up, what is an investor to do here Gerald? I mean there is likely to be some incredible volatile times ahead, and it's a scary world. So besides signing up with the great folks at the Trends Journal and staying up on the latest trends, give us some thoughts on how folks out there should be approaching these next few years as we begin to close here today.

Gerald Celente: The best thing to do, and I've had my ups and downs in life like everybody else has, is to get in the best shape you can… physically, emotionally and spiritually. Double up on everything that you're doing. It's really, really important to be in great shape.

I went through something, just about a year ago somebody really screwed me big time, somebody I put my trust in, hundreds of thousands of dollars, and really did a number on me, and I was really, really depressed seeing this happening, pathological liar that I trusted.

And what I kept doing rather than going down is I doubled up on my workouts, doubled up on my diet, doubled up on everything I could to get stronger, and I pushed out of it big time and rose to a higher level. So that's my suggestion, is to do what you can for yourself to get in the best shape you can, any way you can, because this thing is going down and only the strong will survive.

Mike Gleason: Yeah, very good advice. Well we'll leave it there for today. Thanks so much for your time again and for your great insights Gerald. Now before we let you go please tell the listeners about the Trends Journal and how they can follow you on a regular basis. Tell them about all that.

Gerald Celente: Well the Trends Journal is a weekly and there's no other magazine like it. Like I said, if anyone can show me one like it please let me know and I'll say I'm full of baloney. It's the only magazine in the world that tells you what's going on, what it means, and what's next.

So if you want to stay ahead and prepare for the future, the Trends Journal, TrendsJournal.com. It's only $129 a year. If you don't like it there's a 30-day money back guarantee. You have nothing to lose and everything to gain.

Mike Gleason: Well good stuff. Thanks again Gerald. We always enjoy the conversation, and I can't wait to have you again in the not too distant future as we discuss how this is all going to play out. Take care, stay safe and have a great week, my friend, until next time.

Gerald Celente: You too. Thank you so much.

Mike Gleason: Well that will do for this week. Thanks again to Gerald Celente, publisher of the renowned Trends Journal. For more information, the website again is TrendsJournal.com, be sure to check that out.

And check back here next Friday for our next Weekly Market Wrap Podcast. Until then, this has been Mike Gleason with Money Metals Exchange. Thanks for listening and have a great weekend everybody.

Mike Gleason

About the Author:

Mike Gleason is a Director with Money Metals Exchange, a precious metals dealer recently named "Best in the USA" by an independent global ratings group. Gleason is a hard money advocate and a strong proponent of personal liberty, limited government and the Austrian School of Economics. A graduate of the University of Florida, Gleason has extensive experience in management, sales and logistics as well as precious metals investing. He also puts his longtime broadcasting background to good use, hosting a weekly precious metals podcast since 2011, a program listened to by tens of thousands each week.