The Greatest Depression Is About to Begin -Gerald Celente

The Greatest Depression Is About to Begin -Gerald Celente

There are two official positions on the Strait of Hormuz this week, and they cannot both be true. President Trump says the US Navy has notified him that all mines have been cleared in international waters at the strait. Iran’s deputy foreign minister, in a televised interview, says the strait remains closed, calls reports of ships passing through “baseless”, and states that it will not open except through Iranian arrangements — adding that Iran remains “in a state of war”, and that Tehran and Muscat have reached an understanding to begin technical talks on an alternative route. Gerald Celente, publisher of the Trends Journal, spent this week’s broadcast on the gap between those two statements. The timeline is the part worth keeping: • 1 March — the war was to be over in four to five weeks. It is now approaching its sixth month. • 30 March — absent a deal, and absent the strait opening for business, the US would “completely obliterate” Iran’s electric generating plants, oil wells and Kharg Island. • 1 April — the phrasing was “blasting Iran into oblivion”, back into the Stone Age, if the strait stayed closed. It stayed closed. The transmission into prices is direct. By Celente’s figures: • Gasoline: $2.94 before the war, $4.09 now • Diesel: $3.67 to $5.62 — the number that matters, because it prices everything moving by truck or ship On the financing side, Stanley Druckenmiller has cast doubt on whether the Treasury’s recent bond market manoeuvres will work at all. Celente’s reading is blunter: that the operations exist to prop up markets and pull mortgage rates down ahead of the midterms. Scott Bessent has said the general account could supply $1 trillion toward bond repurchases, against a national debt of $40 trillion. The consumer data underneath is not cooperating: • Dick’s Sporting Goods fell 30% on disappointing results • The top 10% of earners now account for roughly half of all US retail spending • August consumer confidence came in below expectations, forward-looking component weakest • Canadian household debt has set a record at C$2.6 trillion, against a worsening US-Canada trade dispute Celente’s own positioning has not moved. He still expects a dot-com-style unwind in overvalued technology, and remains “very bullish” on precious metals, particularly gold and silver. On the day he recorded he marked gold up $72 at $4,657, silver down 31 cents, and bitcoin closing near $78,512 after touching $81,000. Two closing notes from the same broadcast: polling now shows a majority of Americans believe the president’s family has profited inappropriately from crypto; and on tariffs, his summary of the decade runs — the business of America is war, the business of China is business.