3 doomsaying experts who foresee economic devastation ahead

By Adam Shell
USA TODAY

Behind the mainstream Wall Street happy talk about more stable financial markets and an improving economy are grim warnings of tough times ahead from a small cadre of doomsayers who warn that the worst of the financial crisis is still to come.
Harry Dent, author of the new book The Great Crash Ahead, says another stock market crash is coming due to a bad ending to the global debt bubble. He has pulled back on his earlier prediction of a crash in 2012, as central banks around the world have been flooding markets with money, giving stocks an artificial short-term boost. But a crash is coming in 2013 or 2014, he warns. “This will be a repeat of 2008-09, only bigger, when it finally hits,” Dent told USA TODAY.
Gerald Celente, a trend forecaster at the Trends Research Institute, says Americans should brace themselves for an “economic 9/11″ due to policymakers’ inability to solve the world’s financial and economic woes. The coming meltdown, he predicts, will lead to growing social unrest and anti-government sentiment, a U.S. dollar with far less purchasing power and more people out of work.
Celente won’t rule out another financial panic that could spark enough fear to cause a run on the nation’s banks by depositors. That risk could cause the government to invoke “economic martial law” and call a “bank holiday” and close banks as it did during the Great Depression.
“We see some kind of threat of that magnitude,” Celente, publisher of The Trends Journal newsletter, warned in an interview.
Robert Prechter, author of Conquer the Crash, first published in 2002 and updated in 2009, is still bearish. He says today’s economy has similarities to the Great Depression and warns that 1930s-style deflation is still poised to cause financial havoc. Prechter predicts that the major U.S. stock indexes, such as the Dow Jones industrials and Standard & Poor’s 500, will plunge below their bear market lows hit in March 2009 during the last financial crisis. The brief recovery will fail as it did in the 1930s, he says.
2 very different viewpoints
If he’s right, stocks would lose more than half of their value. “The economic recovery has been weak, so the next downturn should generate bad news in a big way,” Prechter said in an e-mail interview. “For the third time in a dozen years, the stock market is in a very bearish position.”
These dire forecasts differ sharply with the brighter outlooks being espoused by the bulls, or optimists, on Wall Street. Recent stock performance and fresh readings on the economy also suggest a future that is less gloomy than the doomsayers predict.
The Dow, for instance, is in rebound mode and has climbed back to levels not seen since the early days of the financial crisis in May 2008. Tech stocks in the Nasdaq composite are trading at levels last seen in 2000. Data on auto sales, manufacturing and consumer confidence have been firming. Job creation is also on the rise. The unemployment rate dipped to 8.3% in January, its lowest level in three years.
As a result, stock market strategists such as Rod Smyth of RiverFront Investment have been raising their outlooks for 2012. Smyth raised his target range for the S&P 500 to 1250-1500. If the market hits the top of the range, stocks would have risen 10%. Similarly, Brian Belski, strategist at Oppenheimer, recently said he remains comfortable with his year-end 2012 target of 1400. That’s up 2.5% from here. Bespoke Investment Group published research that shows the market, which is closing in on a new bull market high, has done well in the past once it breaks through old highs.
Bulls are betting that Europe’s banking system will be stabilized, minimizing the risk of a severe credit crisis. Bulls are also encouraged by recent data from around the world that show modest growth and a pickup in economic momentum.
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A NASA rundown: 2012 Doomsday debunked

Near the end of the year in 2011, NASA representative Don Yeomans spoke at a press conference, listing out very clearly every easy to understand scientific reason why the Earth will not end in 2012 – since talks of this madness are once again boiling up, it’s high time we took another look at those claims. The first and most important point Yeomans made (since it’s being called up so often recently) is that just because the 365 day calendar the Mayans used had what they called a “long count” of 5,125 years long, this landing on the 21st of December 2012, it doesn’t mean that this is the end of time. It simply means that the next long count begins, just like a new year begins for us after the last one ends.


Yeomans exact position was (and is) manager of NASA’s Near-Earth Object program office at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. He knows his stuff, and his NASA badge is nothing to scoff at. The reason he gave the talk that Space.com reported was a simple one: after searching the web for “2012 disasters,” he said he got 35 million hits, noting “a lot of people are concerned about December 21, 2012.” Thusly he spoke in turn about the major theories (if you can call them major, that is,) that have been plaguing many over the past several years.

Planet X

There is a wild woman out there who claims to be in contact with aliens from outer space that have told her that a planet by the name of Nibiru or “Planet X” will crash into the Earth on December 21st, 2012. She also predicted this would happen in May of 2003, but changed her prediction to this new date when, lo and behold, life in this planet did not end in the third year of the 2000s. Nancy Leider, the woman in question here, spoke with aliens from the Zeta Reticuli star system, gaining this insight more than once, saying that this mystery planet is simply hiding behind the sun until it comes a’ crashing.

“There’s no evidence whatsoever that Nibiru exists. It can’t hide behind the sun forever, and we would’ve seen it years ago. [An in regards to any conspiracy,] there’s no way on Earth to keep astronomers quiet about anything,” Yeomans joked.

Mayan Calendar

Again, the Mayan Calendar supposedly ends on what we know as the 21st of December, 2012. Yeomans simply notes that this is as silly as saying that at the end of the day, the world ends as well.

“The short-count was 52 of our years, and the long-count was 5,125 years long. This long-count calendar is coming to an end on Dec. 21. Of course, a new calendar would start on Dec. 22. It would be like saying that our calendar ends Dec. 31, and that’s the end of time, the end of days, that’s it, no regard for how a new cycle would begin. The Maya never predicted the end of the world occurred at that time.” – Yeomans

Planets Align

Fears that the planets in our solar system will all line up in a row and crash because the gravity from each will cause a one gigantic attraction festival were slapped in the face by Yeomans. First of all, there is no planetary alignment on December 21st, 2012, he noted. That’s important. Then Yeomans reminded the audience that the only planetary bodies that have any kind of gravitational effect on the Earth are the Sun and our moon, these creating tides in our watery bodies. Nothing more.

Pole Flip

Another completely absurd claim is that the geographical and magnetic poles will flip on the 21st of December, 2012. First of all, the geographical poles cannot flip as the moon keeps our planet spinning stably – that’s quite simple. Then there’s the magnetic poles, which do indeed flip, but only once every 500,000 years, each time doing so over thousands of years.

“And there’s no evidence of a flip on Dec. 21, 2012. Even if it did flip, it would not cause any real problems, other than us having to change our compasses from north to south.” – Yeomans

Solar Storms

This is the only, and I repeat the only thing we should have any worries about, and it has nothing to do with the year 2012 specifically. What a solar storm entails is a torrent of energetic particles from the sun flying off and slamming into the Earth. These generally create auroras and can mess up power lines and satellites in space, but “nothing that causes lasting damage,” as Yeomans notes.

“There is no evidence that one will happen on Dec. 21 next year,” Yeomans said. It’s impossible to predict solar activity that far out, and even an extremely strong solar storm wouldn’t likely bring the apocalypse that some fear.” – Yeomans

Just such an “extremely strong” storm or “super storm” did occur, or at least there are some records of something very similar, here on Earth in the year 1859. Though records show that it did little damage back then, our whole world revolves around electronics these days – we’re talking Escape from LA business here, folks, fun!

In Summary

The world isn’t going to end inside 2012 barring an event completely unprecedented in science and physics in basically every way. It’s absurd to believe that the Mayan calendar predicts the end of the world because the Mayans never said nor indicated such a thing. Yeomans had a final note to ring out on, it sounding clear for all the citizens out there whose science isn’t exactly their strong suit:

Scientists really have their work cut out for them. We really have to do a better job educating people about science.” – Yeomans

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2012, Magnetic Pole Drifting

According to scientist  the Earth's north magnetic pole is drifting away from North America so fast that it could end up in Siberia within 50 years . The magnetic poles are different from geographic poles, the surface points marking the axis of Earth's rotation. The shift could mean that Alaska will lose its northern lights, or auroras, which might then be more visible in areas of Siberia and Europe. Magnetic poles have been known to migrate and reverse. "This may be part of a normal oscillation and it will eventually migrate back toward Canada," Joseph Stoner, a palaeomagnetist at Oregon State University, told a meeting of the American Geophysical Union (AGU) in San Francisco.

Wandering poles Previous studies have shown that the strength of the Earth's magnetic shield has decreased 10% over the past 150 years. During the same period, the north magnetic pole wandered about 1,100km (685 miles) into the Arctic, according to the new analysis. The rate of the magnetic pole's movement has increased in the last century compared with fairly steady movement in the previous four centuries, the Oregon researchers said. The Oregon team examined the sediment record from several Arctic lakes. Since the sediments record the Earth's magnetic field at the time, scientists used carbon dating to track changes in the magnetic field.

They found that the north magnetic field shifted significantly in the last thousand years. It generally migrated between northern Canada and Siberia, but has occasionally moved in other directions. Rate of change At the present rate, the north magnetic pole could swing out of northern Canada into Siberia. If that happens, Alaska could lose its northern lights, or auroras, which occur when charged particles streaming away from the Sun collide with gases in the ionosphere, causing them to glow. The north magnetic pole was first discovered in 1831 and when it was revisited in 1904, explorers found it had moved by 50km (31 miles). For centuries, navigators using compasses had to learn to deal with the difference between magnetic and geographic north. A compass needle points to the north magnetic pole, not the geographic North Pole. 2012 Doomsday Mayan Calender Pole Shift Pole Reversal Doomsday 2012 Doomsday.