Rate Cuts Point to Major Stock Market Decline

Coming up Gerald Celente of the Trends Journal joins us for an explosive interview on a range of topic, including gold's rise, the pending death of the dollar and why Gerald is more concerned now than ever that we're on the verge of World War III. In fact, he believes that it’s already begun.

So, stick around for a conversation with Gerald Celente -- a man who accurately predicted that 2024 would be a tremendous year for gold -- coming up after this week’s market update. And let me warn you though, this interview is NOT for the faint of heart.

In the wake of the Federal Reserve’s oversized rate cut, gold is zooming to fresh new records.

On Thursday, the monetary metal ran up to just shy of the $2,700 level. As of this Friday recording, gold prices come in at $2,666 an ounce – good for a weekly gain of 1.3%.

Turning to gold’s less pricey counterpart, silver came close to hitting the $33 level mid-week. It essentially matched a multi-year high mark from this spring. A decisive breakout above $33 could clear the technical path for a forceful move higher. Silver is pulling back today and now looks set to finish the week with a gain of about 1.4% as spot prices come in at $31.82 an ounce.

Platinum is getting a 2.7% lift this week to trade at $1,020. And finally, palladium is dipping 4.2% to bring its per-ounce price to $1,056.

The stellar run in gold and silver markets continues to be overshadowed by the stock market’s relentless gains. The S&P 500 rallied to yet another new record on Thursday while the Dow Jones Industrials surpassed 42,000.

Stock market bulls are riding a wave of euphoria on expectations that the Fed will continue lowering interest rates. Central bankers delivered a hefty 50 basis point cut to kick off their easing campaign this month.

Typically, the Fed doesn’t start cutting and doesn’t go that large unless it is alarmed by a major hit to the economy or fears the financial system is in trouble. History shows that rate cutting campaigns coincide with recessions – and ultimately significant declines in the stock market.

Maybe this time will be different. Maybe the Fed will pull off a soft landing without a hitch.

But perhaps in the process, the Fed will help reignite inflation pressures. Despite softening in recent months, inflation even by official measures never came all the way down to Jerome Powell’s 2% target. But he declared it was close enough.

Even throughout the Fed’s rate hiking campaign, massive injections of fiscal stimulus by the federal government gave GDP, and in turn the stock market, an artificial boost. Washington runs on the spend now, pay later philosophy as it runs staggering annual deficits of $2 trillion. There are no plausible plans in sight to bring them down.

This week, Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson cut a deal with Congressional Democrats and the White House to kick the can down the road once again on spending. The deal averts a government shutdown by fully funding the Biden administration’s spending priorities for another three months.

One Republican who is unhappy with the latest bipartisan deficit spending scheme is Senator Rand Paul. He took to the Senate floor to excoriate his colleagues and warn Americans that they may ending up paying the price through the inflation tax.

Rand Paul: Our national debt now stands at $35 trillion and grows with each passing second. To put that in perspective, each taxpayer's share of the debt is about $270,000. The government now spends more on interest to service our federal debt than it spends on our national defense. Right now, we spend nearly $2 trillion more per year than we bring in in revenue. This level of spending imposes a tax on every American. This tax is called inflation. When we borrow $2 trillion, somebody's got to buy it. Someone buys the debt. When the Federal Reserve buys the debt, they create currency, create new money out of thin air, which when it begins to circulate, causes your prices to rise. It isn't that things are more precious, it's that your dollar is losing its value.

The U.S. dollar has lost more than 98% of its purchasing power over the past 100 years. In the process, paper currency lost its gold backing, quarters and dimes got stripped of their silver, and pennies had their copper replaced with cheaper metals like zinc.

Pennies now cost three times more to produce than they are worth. They cannot practically be debased any further to solve this problem.

So, some members of Congress want to formally get rid of them. Representative Brad Sherman has likened pennies to “litter.”

Meanwhile, Chicago Federal Reserve President Austan Goolsbee recently proposed a novel solution of his own to the problem of the near worthlessness of the single cent. Goolsbee says the government should just declare that pennies are now worth five cents each!

Others within the government have proposed minting a one-ounce platinum coin with a face value of $1 trillion, then selling it to the Fed for that price. Such a coin would cost just a little over $1,000 to produce. It would give the U.S. Treasury a massive windfall for funding its deficit spending without having to borrow or pay interest.

The keepers of the fiat currency regime are now entertaining absurd proposals such as these because they refuse to admit to the inherent absurdity of money that constantly depreciates in value. Real money retains value.

As gold makes new records in terms of Federal Reserve notes, it’s worth remembering that the value of gold hasn’t actually changed much since it sold for $20.67 per ounce a century ago. An ounce of gold still represents a similar level of purchasing power in the economy. What’s changed dramatically over time is the value of the currency itself.

Well now, without further delay let’s get right to our exclusive interview with a renowned trends forecaster.

Mike Maharrey: Greetings. I'm Mike Maharrey, a reporter and analyst here at Money Metals, and I'm here today with Gerald Celente. Gerald is the founder of the Trends Research Institute and the publisher of the Trends Journal, and I can best describe him as a master trend forecaster. How you doing today, Gerald?

Gerald Celente: I am doing okay. We are having a Peace and Freedom rally on Saturday up here in Kingston, New York with Judge Napolitano, Scott Ritter, Max Blumenthal, Anya Parampil, and Mike Loria and others. But you asked me how I'm doing. I'm doing fine, but my heart's broken to see what's going on around the world.

Mike Maharrey: I am in total agreement with you and I'm glad you mentioned that event. I think it's very important. I think we need more people that are focused on trying to bring peace into the world as opposed to, what better word can I use than warmongers that seem to be intent on killing us all.

Gerald Celente: Yeah.

Matter of fact, a gentleman just came up from Orlando. They just came up here now, stopped by. So no, this is serious. I've been in the business now since 1980, bestselling books, Trends 2000, Trend Tracking: Far Better Than Megatrends, magazine, a weekly magazine, the Trends Journal. We have no ads in it. It's by subscription, so nobody tells us what to say and what to do.

I've never been more concerned about World War III and nuclear annihilation in my life, and we're getting closer and closer to that point. And just yesterday, Putin came out and said on Wednesday that if the United States sends in those long-range missiles and they start attacking deep into Russia, they go nuclear. He said it. It's right there for everybody to hear.

Mike Maharrey: And I don't think a lot of people really understand that Putin is not one to just say things on bluster. He usually means what he says. I think people probably ought to take him a little bit more seriously.

Gerald Celente: Well, again, people have no idea about... You go back to our Trends Journal 2014, Dr. Paul Craig Roberts wrote the article about the United States overthrowing the democratically elected government of Viktor Yanukovych in Ukraine. People have no idea about this and they don't have no idea about how the Ukrainians killed over 15,000 people, mostly Russians in the Donbas region. Because when they overthrew the government, the people in that region said, "No, we didn't vote for this government. This isn't our government. We don't want to be a part of it." Anyway, they have no idea. But did Taylor Swift have sex last night? That's the news.

Mike Maharrey: Right. Well, let's talk a little bit about the economy since that's kind of the focus of what our listeners are interested in. And on January 2nd, you actually forecast that this was going to be a golden year for gold and no doubt that you called that one right. And I think most of the focus has been on the Fed interest rate policy, and we just got the first rate cut in this easing cycle. And I think some people were surprised that they went with 50 basis point cut. Were you surprised by that at all?

Gerald Celente: No. Again, we wrote in the magazine that we weren't sure whether it was going to be 25 or 50 basis points. It was an outside guess. But we also have been saying that they're going to lower interest rates in the run-up to the presidential reality show, which people call an election, as we see it it's Minnie Mouse verse Donald Duck. And they want to keep the people in power in power. Look who our Treasury secretary is, the former Fed head, Janet Yellen. Shows you who's running the show. So they're going to do everything they can to boost the economy in the run-up to the election. So we said 50 basis point jump is very positive. And we also wrote that if they go 50 basis points, you're going to see gold skyrocket. And that's exactly what happened.

Mike Maharrey: Yeah, absolutely. And of course a lot of this is a function of dollar weakness. And what do you think this easing cycle... What kind of impact do you see looking ahead that this easing cycle is going to have on the dollar?

Gerald Celente: Well, the deeper the interest rates go, the deeper the dollar falls. The lower the dollar falls, the higher gold prices go up. This isn't rocket science. We've been saying this now for years. And the only reason the dollar's been strong is because of the high interest rates and the return you get. I mean, you go to the bank and you get your 4 or 5% interest on your dough and you go into their scheme. And now it's going... It's the beginning of the death of the dollar.

But we're talking about the... In Trend Forecasting, one of our sayings is opportunity misses those who view the world through the eyes of their profession. So when we're talking about gold, we have to also look at the geopolitical aspect. And what's going on now, as I started mentioning, World War III has already begun. And gold is the number one safe haven asset. That too is driving prices up. But they're not talking about that at all in the mainstream business media.

So people are very concerned around the world, particularly the central banks. I mean, look at the numbers that they're buying up in gold. They know how bad it is. Again, everything was artificially inflated when they fought the COVID war and they jumped in countless trillions of dollars to artificially prop up the economies. And now that's ending.

And so we are in the worst geopolitical and socioeconomic crisis to me in the history of the world, part one and part two. And again, when we're looking at gold and we're looking at interest rates and we're looking at what the COVID war did, nobody's talking about the banks that are going to go bust because of the office building bust. Go back to 2023, not ancient history. Signature Bank, First Republic, Silicon con man Bank went bust. Three banks. Markets went down, gold went up. You're going to see 300 banks when all these failures start happening with the office vacancies. And the office vacancy numbers are real. Even if you go by the mainstream media, you're looking at office vacancy rates, nobody in them in the major cities of the United States, 24%. How are they going to pay their loans? And the interest rates are higher and these are interest rate loans.

Now, let's go to the facts. About a month ago, Google it up, a building on 15th Street in New York City, Manhattan, Midtown Manhattan, it was sold for $320 million in 2006. Sports Illustrated had offices there, on and on and on. It went up for auction. They sold it for $8.5 million.

Mike Maharrey: I actually wrote an article about that.

Gerald Celente: So you know it.

Mike Maharrey: Yeah.

Gerald Celente: This is just the beginning. So I see gold... As I said, when we made this forecast and throughout the year we said gold could hit $3,000 an ounce this year and the sky's the limit when the banks start going bust.

Mike Maharrey: Yeah. Yeah, I agree completely. And it's interesting because as you mentioned, the mainstream doesn't seem to be paying attention to any of these things. They're just running up the stock market, I guess because they're excited about more money printing I guess, although my Facebook friends tell me it's Joe Biden that's giving us these record stock market prices.

Gerald Celente: Yeah, again, it's a rigged game. What do you have, three companies running the only S&P 500? BlackRock, Vanguard, and State Street. 88% of the S&P three companies own it. I mean, it's a gangster gambling unit. What do you have, 1% own 54% of all the stocks? 1%.

Mike Maharrey: Yeah.

Gerald Celente: 1%. You put it in at 10%, it's over 90%. So they control the whole game.

Mike Maharrey: Pretty amazing and a little bit frightening. I want to pivot a little bit and dig a little bit more into some of the geopolitical issues that are going on. You hear talk every once in a while. I've written about it quite a bit and you hear it a little bit in some maybe libertarian circles and other circles, but not really so much in the mainstream. But I'm talking about the weaponization of the dollar.

And actually back in 2019, I did an interview on RT, which got me called names, but I talked about how the US weaponizes the dollar. And I talked specifically about how the government uses the swift payment system as kind of a billy club. And I actually got fact-checked back then and I was told that I was false. But of course you fast-forward today and we see that this is exactly what the US did to Russia. They locked them out of the swift system.

What are your thoughts about the weaponization of the dollar and what are some of the ramifications that folks might not be aware of as the US kind of abuses its privilege as the issuer of the reserve currency?

Gerald Celente: Look what's going on with the BRICS and how many more countries are joining them.

Mike Maharrey: And Turkey just the other day said they wanted to join.

Gerald Celente: So you have the people are tired of the United States geopolitical and socioeconomic hegemony. They've had it. They're tired of it. And the United States became the country that our Founding Fathers fought against. Great Britain, sun never sets on the British Empire. We murder people all over the world. But you have to say it properly, Celente, watch your language, be proper like us. We could kill and steal everything we wanted. We won't stop. So what happened? They started war after war after war and then World War I. What happened after World War I? They ran out of dough because of all their wars.

Mike Maharrey: Right.

Gerald Celente: The pound died. The dollar came alive. Now the same things happened to America, war after war after war. Oh, great news today. The United States is sending Ukraine another $8 billion as our country rots in front of us. When you look at the numbers, they're probably up to almost $200 billion now to keep bloodying the killing fields.

I'm a New Yorker. Go into the city, look at all the homeless sitting, living on just about every scaffolding out there. Watch the people shooting up in the West Village where it's a higher income level. Look at all of the homeless people. How about the rotten roads? Look at the bridges. Why don't you take the subway in New York? It's a night in Calcutta. How about the rail system we have? Amcrap.

You go around the world, you look what they got and look at the crap we have here. The country's rotting in front of our eyes. More money for war. And now I'm going back to it, we became the country our Founding Fathers fought against. It's going to be the death of the dollar because of what they've done. And it's only a matter of time. And again, the lower interest rates go, the deeper the dollar falls, the deeper the dollar falls, the higher gold prices go because gold is dollar-based. Now the people in the other countries could buy more because their currencies have gone up a bit.

Mike Maharrey: If you're talking to somebody, you're kind of just average person that's out there and they're thinking, "Oh, I don't really care about geopolitics and I can't get involved in all of that stuff," what would you say to them to help them understand how these things are actually directly impacting their lives? Because I think a lot of people, they watch the news and they hear things like this, but think, "Well, it's not really impacting me." How would you very quickly pitch to them you need to be concerned about this because it's impacting your life?

Gerald Celente: When I was a kid and I just started learning things, my father said to me one time as I got all upset, he said, "Son, take it easy. People have little minds. You don't waste your time. It's a waste of time. As we'd say in the Bronx," you might have to bleep this out, "people don't know [Bleep] about [bleep]."

And the reality is it does not take a majority to prevail, but rather an irate, tireless minority keen on setting brush fires of freedom in the minds of men, this is Samuel Adams. The masses are going to follow. It's a waste of energy. I don't bother. You could tell them anything, facts don't matter. You got to entertain the people. I'm a real jazz fan. And that was one of the lines, one of the jazz songs. You got to entertain the people, you understand? As I said, they know about Taylor Swift, Justin Bieber, this one, that one, who got laid, who didn't, who got drunk driving. They don't care. It's a waste of time and energy. You have to unite the people that care.

Mike Maharrey: I think of the biblical verse, don't cast your pearls before swine.

Gerald Celente: Yeah, yeah.

Mike Maharrey: Yeah. I think that's wise. I think...

Gerald Celente: What is it again? What is it?

Mike Maharrey: Don't cast your pearls before swine.

Gerald Celente: Yeah, yeah. Perfectly said.

Mike Maharrey: Yeah. I feel like sometimes I'm guilty of that because I like to win arguments. But I think you have a lot of wisdom in what you say.

So here's a question I like to ask folks that are a little bit more plugged into things than others. What is something, and focusing specifically on the economic ramifications and things that are going on in the financial world, what is something that specifically that you see going on that you think the vast majority of the mainstream folks miss?

Gerald Celente: Oh, I'm telling you, the office building bust.

Mike Maharrey: Yeah.

Gerald Celente: It's incredible. It's incredible. And again, we write each week the facts. So they'll come out with a story, Amazon's telling its workers to come back.

Mike Maharrey: Right.

Gerald Celente: Okay. Goldman Sachs, all of the banksters want to get their people back because they know how bad it is. So then you look at the data, only 3% of the tech companies are demanding that their people go back to work.

Mike Maharrey: Oh, wow.

Gerald Celente: And then you look at the data. And the fact is very simple. Here, let's go back to 2020 when they launched the COVID war. "Can't go to work, get back in your house." "All right." Now people are staying in their house week after week, month after month. And they're saying to themselves, "I've been getting up at five o'clock in the morning to commute an hour and a half either by train or by bus or by driving. Got to be out of my mind. How the hell was I doing that? And I'm not doing it anymore. I'm not doing it anymore."

Now let's say I'm the guy that has 10 stories in an office building. "I got them sitting in cubicles. I don't see them anyway. Yeah, stay home. I can save a lot of money." So by the way, the first state to lock down, that little [inaudible 00:17:03], that arrogant little boy, Gavin Newsom, "My daddy worked for the Getty gang. How do you think I made it? The Getty's loaned me all my money." That's a fact. That little slimeball locked down everything while he's partying at The French Laundry.

Mike Maharrey: I know.

Gerald Celente: Anyway, your office vacancy rate in San Francisco, nearly 35%.

Mike Maharrey: Wow.

Gerald Celente: Yep. So now they're not talking about the implications. So the crap that they spew out is, "We're going to turn these offices into apartments." You know the one we're talking about that sold for $8.5 million, it's in the middle of a block. Ain't no windows on one side. Ain't no windows on the other side. Ain't no windows in the back. How do you turn them into apartments? And all these big ugly things that they build, the steel and glass, big empty spaces in the middle. What are you going to do with them? No windows. Nobody wants to live in a square with no windows. Buildings built in the last 50 years according to the data are non-convertible.

Mike Maharrey: Wow.

Gerald Celente: Yeah.

Mike Maharrey: I think another aspect of this that people aren't aware of is that the banks that are holding a lot of these what are effectively bad loans are small and mid-sized banks, that they're not on the too-big-to- fail list. So I could see a ripple effect that creates a tremendous banking crisis when things really start to fall apart.

Gerald Celente: Yeah, the big ones have it too. The small ones have more, but the big ones have it as well. And it's going to hit all of them. And again, it's not a word in the mainstream media. There's no media left. I call them presstitutes, media whores to get paid to put out by their corporate pimps and government war masters. I subscribe every day to The Wall Street Journal, New York Times. I call the New York Times.... They call themselves the paper of record. I call it the toilet paper record. It's only good to wipe crap up with.

And The Wall Street Journal's become crap. I mean, that used to be a great newspaper at one time. It shrunk to nothing. And the front page story, big pictures of a guy winning a vegetable contest in the UK with an onion that's 19 pounds and he's holding it. What are you telling me about this crap for? There's no reporters left. We've never worked harder in our lives. And I've been at this business a lot of the years. I've been publishing the magazine since 1991. We need data. We need data. And it's harder and harder to find.

Mike Maharrey: So I'm going to get you out on this one. What is something that gives you at least a sense of optimism? If there is anything. It's fair to say there's no optimism.

Gerald Celente: I'm doing what I can do. And I'm very grateful for the people that I know that are doing the same thing. It's a question of we have to unite enough people to make it happen. And you can't do without any money. Could you imagine if the billionaires gave a billion dollars to our Occupy Peace movement, which I started over a decade ago?

One of my tenants, I own three of the most historic buildings in America. I'm up in Kingston, New York. It's the only place with pre-Revolutionary War stone buildings on each corner. This was the third Dutch settlement. The British burnt it down after the Battle of Saratoga. The constitution, when this was the first capital, that was written for New York state, over 70% of America's Constitution comes from the constitution that was written here. And John Jay, he was a judge here.

Anyway, one of my buildings, the 1763 Dr. Jansen House, I rented it out to Warren Buffett's son. He has a foundation here. Never gave me a penny for peace. We have peace rallies here all the time. Buffett, how many [inaudible 00:21:45] does he have, over a hundred billion plus dollars? How about Musk? How about Gates? How about Bezos? How about Zuckerberg? Not a penny for peace. Billionaires could change this world, but all they care about... But they're a lot smarter than us because what they're going to do when they die, they're going to build these huge coffins and take all that money with them.

Mike Maharrey: Right. Well, good luck with that, right? So...

Gerald Celente: I'm telling you. So you asked me my part. It's up to the people. And again, the only thing to me that could change it is a renaissance. And the Renaissance followed the Black Plague where over 60% of Europe was wiped out because of the filth and stupidity of the people, dire sanitation. Just like we're killing ourselves now with all these forever chemicals and all this other crap. So when they began the Renaissance, they would say in Italian, [Italian 00:22:55], in the manner of the Romans and the ancients to describe the quality of their work. And that's what we need is a renaissance, to bring back when America was the country that everybody in the world wanted to come to.

Mike Maharrey: Yeah.

Gerald Celente: You look at New York at what it used to look like when their art deco was being built and these gorgeous buildings. And now it's a crap hole with ugly, stupid steel sticking up everywhere, all over, all over, all over, all over. All over America destroyed. Destroyed.

So we need a renaissance. We have to bring back a culture. And I had a wonderful French girlfriend, still very good friends, Marie Pierre, great artist. And she used to say, "Art is the way of finding the true meaning of the human spirit." And I believe that 100%. So to me, that's the only optimism I have is a renaissance.

Mike Maharrey: Well, that's very well said. Where can folks follow your work and subscribe to your work and find out more about what you're doing?

Gerald Celente: Trendsjournal.com, trendsjournal.com. The magazine averages about 180 pages a week. No ads. And unlike the media today, you pick up the toilet paper record, huge pictures in theirs because they don't have journalists anymore. We have one little picture to illustrate the article. And you can listen to it. It's in different languages. And you read what you want. If you want to read about geopolitics, it's there. If you want to read about economics, it's there. If you want to read about high-tech science, it's there. If you want to read about technocracy, it's there. If you want to read about AI, it's there. And we have special guest articles. You want to read about health, fitness, nutrition, on and on and on. And it's the grand total of $2.56 a week.

Mike Maharrey: That ain't bad.

Gerald Celente: Yeah. And The Wall Street Journal's $5 a day and on the weekend $6, and The New York Times is $4 a day, on the weekend $5 a day. This is $2.56 a week. And if you don't like it in 30 days, you get your money back.

And I'm not bragging, but there's no magazine like it in the world that gives you in-depth trends analysis and trend forecasts, geopolitics, and all the other fields that I said. We don't tell people... We say, "This is what's being reported." And we go around the world. So we talk about the Israel war. We subscribe, pay to go to Haaretz, the Israeli newspaper. We go to the Times of Israel, Jerusalem Post. Want to hear what they're saying. Oh, we also go to IRNA, ISNA, and Tehran Times, want to hear what the Persians are saying. Oh, we also go to Arab News, Al Jazeera, Middle East Monitor. We want to hear what the Arabs have to say. So we cover the world. It's not what we want, what we like, what we believe in, it's what is. And then we give, this is what they're reporting, this is our trends analysis, this is our forecast. And the bottom line, think for yourself.

So we're giving people everything they need in these times of peril ahead. One of my sayings is GC's three Gs, guns, gold, and a getaway plan. And the other thing I'm telling people, you better get in the best shape you can physically, emotionally, and spiritually. And to me, that's the only way it's going to change. When people get to the highest level they can within themselves, that's what changes it all.

And again, to make this clear, I pull a lot of crap in my life as a young guy growing up. It's part of life and learning.

Mike Maharrey: That's right.

Gerald Celente: I can't stop learning. And don't give me the crap, "No, I never abused any women." I'm not talking about that because that's the kind of crap to come, "What he did to me 30 years ago." It's like he said, "Never raised my hand to a woman unless she wanted to be spanked." All right, take it easy. It's a joke. It's a joke.

Mike Maharrey: Well, I really appreciate you and I appreciate you taking time to be on the show and I appreciate your insights very much. And I hope people will check out your work and subscribe because we need more. I think Americans tend to be very myopic, and I think having a broader view of the world that you're providing is very important. So I appreciate the work that you're doing.

Gerald Celente: Thank you. And everybody remember Occupy Peace and please donate what you can to it. It's cost a lot of money to put on and we got to get it bigger. We need peace.

Mike Maharrey: You speak the truth. And we need more of it. So I'm going to let...

Gerald Celente: Thank you so much for what you do. I appreciate being on with you.

It was so great to have Gerald Celente back on the podcast after several years, and I trust you enjoyed that as I did.

Well, that will do it for this week. Be sure to check back next Friday for our next Weekly Market Wrap Podcast. And don’t forget to tune into the Money Metals Midweek Memo, hosted by Mike Maharrey and airing each Wednesday. To listen to any of our audio programs just go to MoneyMetals.com/podcasts or find them on whatever podcast platform you prefer.

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