Originally published December 1 2008
Health Ranger Offers Thirty-One Predictions for 2009 - Health, Economy, Terrorism and More
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, NaturalNews Editor
(NaturalNews) Making public predictions about the economy, terrorism, politics and health care is always risky business. There are too many variables to track with much certainty, and nobody has a crystal ball that really works. But by looking at the big picture and monitoring trends, we can make some educated guesses about what's likely to happen in 2009.
The list that follows describes my best predictions for 2009. They are based on the honest observation of reality combined with the intelligence to see patterns in the chaos. As usual, most of these predictions will seem outlandish right up to the day they occur, at which point they will seem obvious.
Disclaimer: Do not make financial decisions based on this information. All financial decisions involve risk. I make no warranty about the accuracy of this information, as they are just educated guesses.
Prediction #1 - Big Pharma will begin to implode
Confidence in prediction: 90%
Big Pharma is headed for tough economic times in 2009 and beyond. In fact, I predict a long, steady contraction in the pharmaceutical business from here forward, and in the 2009 - 2011 timeframe, you'll see several large drug companies undergo mergers, acquisitions or layoffs.
There are several big trends to pay attention to here. First, Big Pharma's research pipeline is scarce. They don't have any more blockbuster drugs that would help them cash in on disease in the years ahead.
Second, the Big Pharma scam is finally starting to be understood by more and more people, including some journalists, scientists, lawmakers and even many doctors. They're realizing that the Big Pharma / FDA conspiracy is based on fraud, not science, and that most drugs simply don't work on most people!
The third big trend that's bringing down Big Pharma is the internet. Through truth-telling websites like NaturalNews, consumers are learning the truth about the dangers of pharmaceuticals and the promise of safe, natural remedies that cost a fraction of the price. The more people who get online and read journals like PLoS (or websites like NaturalNews), the more customers the drug companies lose.
In essence, the pharmaceutical industry has been a fraud, and the fraud is on the verge of being uncovered by the mainstream. When that happens, you can expect a sharp contraction of the pharmaceutical industry, followed by a similar increase in the sales of natural health products and nutritional supplements.
Big Pharma can only survive at its current size by doing three things:
1) Achieving legal immunity for all its products (which could be decided soon by the U.S. Supreme Court)
2) Outlawing natural health websites (there is an effort underway to accomplish this, too)
3) Eliminating the competition by outlawing nutritional supplements (this is the whole point of Codex)
If those three fail, Big Pharma will suffer a prolonged contraction as more and more patients say no to drugs and turn to safe, natural remedies to enhance and protect their health.
This brings me to prediction #2...
Prediction #2 - The U.S. Supreme Court will grant legal immunity to Big Pharma
Confidence in prediction: 75%
I predict the U.S. Supreme Court will rule in favor of Big Pharma in a pending court case, betraying the American public by taking away its right to sue over dangerous pharmaceuticals that harm or kill.
The victory will be short-lived, however, as a Democratic-controlled Congress will pass new legislation in 2009 that will reestablish the right of consumers to sue drug companies for dangerous products that cause harm.
Prediction #3 - Wave of commercial bankruptcies will bring down retailers, malls and commercial real estate companies
Confidence in prediction: 80%
This prediction is already well underway, so perhaps it's not a fair prediction to include in this list, but I did publicly predict this in early October, 2008, in my Financial Preparedness and Health Safety audio seminar, which took place long before the commercial bankruptcies started to take place (http://www.truthpublishing.com/Health_Ranger...).
For 2009, I predict the post-Christmas economy will see accelerating bankruptcies of even more retailers and shopping malls, and many commercial real estate holders will go belly up, causing a liquidity crisis in the commercial markets just like we say in the private homes real estate market.
The only retailers immune to this will be the low-cost, "value" retailers like Wal-Mart and Costco.
Prediction #4 - Real inflation on food will hit 20 - 40 percent before the end of 2009
Confidence in prediction: 50%
All the trillions of dollars the Fed has been dumping into the money supply will start to cause noticeable inflation by the end of 2009. Food prices will spike 20 - 40 percent compared to December, 2008 prices, and the cost of other goods (clothing, services, etc.) will increase somewhat less. By 2010, food prices could be 50% higher than they are right now in late 2008.
A related prediction on this matter is that if food prices get too high, the Obama Administration will likely put price controls in place for basic food items like milk and bread. Although this may not take place until 2010 or 2011, when it does it will result in widespread food shortages, setting off a humanitarian crisis as poor families in America face starvation for the first time in many generations.
Who will bail out the hungry? Too bad the Federal Reserve can't print food, huh?
Prediction #5 - Melamine scandal widens, envelops meal replacement products
Confidence in prediction: 60%
The melamine scandal will widen in 2009, and trace amounts of melamine will be found in popular meal replacement products, all of which are essentially "adult infant formula" made by the same companies that make the infant formula now found to be contaminated with trace amounts of melamine.
Manufacturers will resist recalls, and the FDA will be under increasing fire to revoke its 1ppm "safe level" announcement, replacing it with a decision based on science, not business interests.
Sub-prediction: Eventually, it will be discovered that the melamine contamination is caused by animal feed used at dairy farms. Although this discovery may not come until 2010 - 2012, it will result in calls for widespread changes in the feed practices of dairy farms. Sales of milk products will plummet temporarily, then recover steadily as American consumers forget about the scandal and keep chugging contaminated cow's milk.
Prediction #6 - At least three U.S. cities and states will announce their bankruptcy
Confidence in prediction: 90%
The U.S. financial crisis isn't just national, it's also local. (Or should I say loco?) Before the end of 2009, I predict at least three U.S. cities or states will declare bankruptcy (or the equivalent of bankruptcy).
California is already in a huge fiscal crisis, and several major U.S. cities have asked for bailout funds to continue their operations. The problem, you see, is that city and state governments all ramped up their spending in the midst of the lucrative housing bubble, during which record property taxes were flowing into their coffers.
But with the housing bubble implosion came the sudden loss of property tax revenues (and sales tax revenues on property sales, in some states). And that has landed these cities and states in a financial situation from which there is no escape other than reduced spending or higher taxes.
And that brings me to the next prediction...
Prediction #7 - Taxes will be raised for virtually all Americans
2009 will see new taxes explode across America. Cities, states and the federal government will all initiate record tax increases in an effort to stave off financial collapse caused by excessive spending.
But rather than cutting the spending (because government hates to cut spending, since that means it would have to shrink), government authorities across the nation will resort to record tax increases in order to meet budgetary requirements.
All this brings up an interesting question: Why couldn't states just whip out a printing press and print their own money? Couldn't California declare a new currency called the "California Dollar" and simply print a hundred billion dollars and use that to finance its operations?
That would be stupid, of course. The currency would eventually be worthless and anyone investing in the currency would lose money. You might even call it counterfeiting, right?
And yet, think about it: That's exactly what the federal government is doing on a much larger scale, to the tune of over seven trillion dollars. It's the greatest counterfeiting scandal that's ever been witnessed in the history of money!
By 2012, if the United States government even exists by then, you can expect taxes to have risen so sharply that for many people it will no longer make sense to even hold a job. With government confiscating as much as 70% of your paycheck, what's the point of working at all? You might as well do nothing and collect welfare.
That's where the U.S. is headed. As taxes sharply increase, you can also expect a ballooning black market economy, where cash, barter and gold are the primary means of exchange.
Prediction #8 - Stevia will be GRAS approved by the FDA
Confidence in prediction: 85%
This isn't really a difficult prediction to make. Now that Coca-Cola and PepsiCo are behind stevia, it's only a matter of time before the FDA approves it. (In fact, its approval may arrive before the end of 2008, although there's no certainty of that.)
Once stevia is approved, a wave of stevia-sweetened products will be unleashed. You'll find stevia used in "diet" products, "diabetic" products and "natural" products covering everything from low-sugar breakfast cereals to zero-calorie gelatin treats.
It will be a boon for consumers and diabetics who will now finally have a safe, natural sweetener to replace aspartame, sucralose and saccharin.
Prediction #9 - The credit rating of the U.S. Treasury will be downgraded
Confidence in prediction: 25% by 2009, 60% by 2012
The only reason the United States is still able to get cheap money loaned to it by other countries (China, Japan, UK, etc.) is because it somehow manages to keep a relatively high credit rating.
This effectively allow the U.S. Treasury to pay lower rates of interest on the debt it owes the central banks of other countries. Even then, the interest on the national debt is somewhere in the neighborhood of 25% of the federal budget right now.
Well, folks, it's about to get much, much larger.
Why? Because the Moody's credit rating of the U.S. Treasury will be downgraded before 2012, and possibly even in 2009.
Currently, Moody's continues to give the U.S. Treasury an "AAA" credit rating. This rating, of course, is complete nonsense in my opinion, and it has most likely been enforced with some kind of threat. Any honest assessment of the U.S. financial situation would immediately result in a declaration of "junk bond" status.
But Moody's, like most other conventional credit rating companies, seems more interested in protecting the power of the United States than in telling the truth to investors, and thus the U.S. Treasury remains at a ridiculous "AAA" rating.
In fact, I defy Moody's to produce any financial logic or criteria by which the U.S. Treasury could possibly have a triple-A rating. With the nation now $10 trillion in debt and bleeding another $7.7 trillion in bailout promises, with its economy now well into a depression and its manufacturing base all but gutted, it would be nothing short of a Biblical miracle to see the U.S. ever pay back its debt.
And yet the AAA credit rating somehow persists. Like I said, I must be enforced with threats of some kind, because it sure isn't enforced based on honest accounting.
In any case, 2009 could very well be the year that even Moody's can no longer lie about the U.S. Treasury, and it could downgrade the credit rating to something more realistic. After all, even Moody's must realize it's losing credibility each and every day it claims the Treasury has a triple-A credit rating. If this continues, investors will eventually realize Moody's can't be trusted, and the company's entire business could collapse sort of like Arthur Anderson in the wake of its own accounting scandal.
Should the U.S. Treasury rating be reduced, that's a sign to head for the hills, because it means the U.S. debt will, from that point forward, suffer from escalating compounded debt. Imagine owing $100,000 on credit cards and paying 25% of your monthly take-home pay just to meet the interest payments on what you owe the credit card companies, and then suddenly the credit card companies double the interest rate on you. Your monthly payments skyrocket. And since you can't afford to pay any more than you've already been paying, you start taking out cash advances on those cards, even while you're losing ground on the interest payments.
Now you're paying interest on the interest of the debt, and the debt continues to multiply in a hellish geometric pattern until you're so deep in debt that every penny you earn is spent just to keep the creditors away, and you have nothing live on: Nothing for food, medicine, clothing or even a house. Eventually, you'll have to do exactly what the U.S. Treasury will do: Declare itself bankrupt, abandon the dollar and tell the creditors it will no longer make payments at all. And that will be the beginning of the end of the U.S. government.
That day is coming. It probably won't happen in 2009, but certainly within the next 20 years if something drastic doesn't change with U.S. government spending.
Prediction #10 - Psychiatric doctors will be caught up in yet more scandals
Confidence in prediction: 85%
Throughout 2009, yet more psychiatric doctors will find themselves caught up in financial scandals for failing to report their financial ties to Big Pharma.
This year has already seen stories about Dr. Joseph Biederman (http://www.naturalnews.com/023408.html) and other psychiatric doctors being caught with their hand in the drug money cookie jar. Amazingly, none of these corrupt doctors have yet been fired from their jobs! (Which just goes to show you that the industry remains incapable of policing itself.)
In 2009, we'll see at least one major breaking scandal involving drug money and psychiatric doctors, and it will add to the growing consensus that the psych drug industry is based almost entirely on fraud and corruption.
Prediction #11 - Big Pharma will push for mandatory medication policies, starting with mental health
The push for mandatory medication of the population will gain momentum in 2009, thanks to Big Pharma efforts to criminalize citizens who say no to medication. They'll focus on mental health first by pushing for mandatory mental health screening programs that will force children, expectant mothers and adults to be medicated with expensive, mind-altering pharmaceuticals.
Those who refuse such mandatory medication efforts will either be sent to mental institutions or forcibly medicated essentially at gunpoint (with the threat of arrest). Those with children will be threatened with having their children taken away by C.P.S.
Related prediction: Although this may not happen in 2009, sooner or later some citizen is going to use firearms to protect themselves from medical tyranny. You can expect to see a case where a mom or dad trying to protect their children from vaccines or chemotherapy ends up shooting medical personnel or law enforcement authorities out of self defense. The case will be all over the tabloids, and the jury will find the defendant guilty of murder (because jury members are all medicated, too, and violence is no way to solve this problem...)
Prediction #12 - The American Dental Association will abandon mercury
Confidence in prediction: 40% in 2009, 70% by 2012
The day is coming, and I think 2009 might be the year for the American Dental Association to finally abandon mercury fillings (which are deceptively called "silver fillings" by the way).
The evidence of mercury toxicity is simply too great to continue ignoring, and even the ADA is finding it increasingly difficult to keep lying about mercury. It's not just the toxic effects on the patients, either: It's also the severely damaging environmental effects of the thousands of tons of mercury being swept into the environment each year due to dental work.
The American Dental Association will eventually lose all credibility if it does not cut ties with mercury and abandon its decades-long promotion of this highly-toxic, poisonous heavy metal. After the decision, the ADA will appear foolish for having not made it sooner.
Prediction #13 - Terrorists may strike New York or Los Angeles
Confidence in prediction: 20%
In 1999, I predicted terrorist attacks on New York and Washington. Today, I'm predicting the small possibility of a terrorist-style attack on either New York or Los Angeles. And rather than attacking national symbols like the World Trade Towers, these new terrorist attacks would likely focus on economic targets.
Why? Because terrorists no doubt realize the U.S. economy (and banking system) is on shaky ground. It's no exaggeration to say that Wall Street is just one dirty bomb away from collapse. So the most likely action on the part of terrorists would be an attack in New York that would impact Wall Street, or an attack in Los Angeles that would likely target the shipping container port.
Note: I have no specific information to back up this prediction. That's why my confidence level on this one is only 20 percent. It could be that an Obama presidency helps repair international relations and diminishes the risk of terror-related events in the United States. But if he fails to repair international relations, we could experience yet more terror events in 2009 and beyond.
If an attack takes place in New York, the most likely targets, in my estimate, would be:
• A dirty bomb being set loose on Wall Street
• A chemical attack in the NY subway system
• An EMP attack designed to shut down computers on Wall Street
• A hacking attack designed to shut down the stock exchanges
There's also an outside chance that an attack could be waged on southern oil refineries in an attempt to clobber the economy by shutting down the fuel pipeline. If waged, such an attack would likely be pulled off with either chemical explosives or airborne biologicals, rendering the oil refinery work areas uninhabitable.
(Note: Please, readers, don't send me hate mail claiming "You just gave the terrorist ideas!" If I can figure this out on my own, so can the terrorists. And you can bet the U.S. government already has contingency plans for each of these scenarios. You can find these exact same plots in a fiction novel. All this stuff is fairly obvious, actually. I'm mentioning this here in the hope that we can PREVENT these attacks from ever taking place. And if we can't, I at least hope the citizens will be PREPARED to survive the days following such an attack.)
An EMP attack would be the most devastating to the economy, probably, as it could destroy computer equipment in a fairly large radius from the point of detonation. A dirty bomb, on the other hand, would create more of a humanitarian disaster and a much larger fear factor, so if the terrorists are looking to create maximum terror, they would opt to use dirty bombs. But there's more of a risk of being caught due to the radiation emitted by dirty bomb devices. It's the radiation, after all, that makes them "dirty," and there are already radiation scanning devices being used at U.S. ports in an effort to thwart precisely such an attack (thank goodness, too).
Straight chemical explosives are not likely to be used in an attack on Wall Street because their blast radius is too small to wreak the degree of chaos the terrorists are hoping to achieve.
If an attack takes place in the Los Angeles port, it would most likely be a dirty bomb attack that's detonated immediately after a container is offloaded, before it's screened for radiation. This capability is well within the technological grasp of well-funded terrorist groups. I don't know if Homeland Security has radiation detectors that work at a distance of anything greater than, say, 100 meters. I doubt they do, and that means dirty bombs can get well into the port area without being detected.
This is one prediction, by the way, that I hope I'm completely wrong about. Why? Because such attacks tend to concentrate power in Washington, giving presidents the popular support to wage wars and pass new laws that destroy the freedoms of U.S. citizens. Thus, from one point of view, it is actually in the interests of the power holders in Washington to see such attacks take place (although they would never admit that).
Bush took full advantage of the 2001 terrorist attacks to gut the U.S. Constitution and pass new domestic surveillance laws that cause your phone lines and emails to be surveilled right now. The ghost of 9/11 continues to haunt the remaining freedoms of Americans today.
I cannot say whether Obama will take the same opportunistic approach to grab power in the wake of terror events, but if there's one thing that seems to be universally true about governments, it's that power always breeds the desire for more power. Rarely, if ever, has any government in the history of the world retreated from the centralization of power and given control back to its people.
So what can we do as a nation to stop such terror attacks against the U.S.? I completely disagree with those who say we need more national security, more military personnel walking the streets, more surveillance and more police state tyranny. I think what we really need is to stop pissing off the enemy when we bomb their civilians with weapons of mass destruction. That would be DU (Depleted Uranium), which the U.S. military has been using against civilian targets in Iraq and Afghanistan.
DU pollutes the ground for 10,000 years, causing radiation poisoning and genetic mutations for generations. It is an illegal weapon that's been outlawed by the United Nations, yet the U.S. military continues to use it on civilian targets like hospitals and civilian infrastructure buildings such as water treatment plants, television stations and manufacturing shops. I know the U.S. military doesn't intentionally target hospitals, but for some strange reason, a whole lot of DU shells end up there. (Firing blind, anyone?)
Think about it: If some foreign nation invaded the U.S. and dropped a few million tons of highly radioactive DU on your back yard, killing your children and poisoning your land for 10,000 years, you might get a little angry, too.
The source of terrorism in this world is not that people hate the USA for its "freedom" (as Bush likes to say), but rather that people hate the USA for being an outlaw, imperialist, war-mongering nation that kills innocent civilians using weapons of mass destruction and fights wars to protect corporate interests. People hate the USA because the nation acts like an international bully (and that's saying it politely). Want to know the real history of the imperialist USA? Read "A People's History of the American Empire" by Howard Zinn. It's an illustrated, comic-book-like guide to the true history you were never taught in school: http://www.amazon.com/Peoples-History-Americ...
My apologies to the fine soldiers who read NaturalNews, by the way. I know you can't wait to get out of the military, and I don't mean anything against you personally. You're good men in a bad war, and I wish you a safe return to your own home. You may not know this, but a few years ago when the economy was better, I personally donated $5,000 to a Disabled American Veterans group in Montana so that they could buy a transportation van to take WWII vets to the VA hospital for medical care. I've always supported veterans even though I've never supported war.
Other predictions
Confidence in predictions: Varies
Some of the following predictions are "no-brainers" because they happen automatically, every year, as part of the traditional disinformation efforts pursued by Big Pharma and the mainstream media. Others are more insightful. The success of these predictions will vary. I'm not staking my reputation on these predictions, I'm just offering them as possible insights into what may be headed our way:
• The press will attack antioxidants and vitamins, declaring them to be worthless. (No brainer.)
• New laws will limit junk food advertising to children. They'll be bogus "compromise" laws, of course, and they'll leave all sorts of loopholes for the big food companies to exploit. It will all be a finely choreographed song and dance designed to paint food companies and lawmakers in a positive light while the children continue to be poisoned.
• Drug companies will engineer yet another "miraculous" finding about statin drugs or other pharmaceuticals and use it to push for the widespread medication of the population.
• Obama will call for new gun control measures and the Democratic Congress will pass new laws restricting the gun ownership rights of U.S. citizens. (No brainer.)
• Another food contamination recall will occur that involves salmonella or e.coli contamination of fresh produce. The FDA will once again attempt to propose mass food irradiation.
• Another study will denounce any link between vaccines and autism. And yet, at the same time, drug companies will continue pushing for more mandatory vaccination policies, even as autism rates continue to escalate. (No brainer.)
• The anti-Federal Reserve movement will gain power, and Ron Paul will continue to play a pivotal role in the financial education of U.S. citizens, and if he's not arrested first, he will serve as one of the key revolutionary figures following the demise of the U.S. government. His new nickname? "Ron Paul Revere."
• Beyond the Bisphenol-A and melamine scandals we've already witnessed, 2009 will see yet another food contaminant chemical surface, possibly a solvent chemical or some other food processing element. The FDA will once again declare it to be perfectly safe.
• The raw foods movement will continue to grow, but it will shift away from its hippy drug-culture past and move into more mainstream circles where the term, "plant-based diet" will be used.
• More studies on Vitamin D will tout the incredible health benefits of the nutrient, but the American Cancer Society and the AMA will continue to avoid recommending it as a way to prevent cancer, since the cancer industry is so incredibly lucrative.
• Municipal water fluoridation will meet with increasing resistance in 2009 as better-educated citizens fight back against mandatory fluoridation policies. Fluoride proponents, of course, will continue their efforts to poison the population, relying on disinformation and false authority to try to crush dissent.
• Well-known freedom personalities like Alex Jones, Jeff Rense, the Health Ranger and others will continue to be attacked on public message boards by covert workers who are paid for each negative post. It's now a well-known fact that most of the negative comments directed at freedom champions are the result of a well-funded internet disinformation campaign that pays people to post negative comments on message boards, news aggregation sites and in article comments. Virtually all the hatred directed towards Alex Jones, for example, is fabricated. (You don't think the enemies of freedom play fair, do you? They have HUGE budgets and lots of free time to pollute the internet with false information...)
• Moxxor, the direct sales company that makes a potent marine omega-3 oil supplement, will reach 10,000 distributors. It is currently at 2,500, which has happened only since early October. NaturalNews is an active member of Moxxor. See http://www.naturalnews.com/moxxor_health_ben...
• Monavie, one of the most successful direct sales health product companies, will actually see a decline in total membership due to the widespread availability of competing, lower-cost acai berry juices. The company won't disappear, but it will begin trending downward unless it can reinvigorate its product line with something new and exciting. Its flagship product was once new and exciting, but now acai berries are hardly exotic. Even its most recent product, Monavie Pulse is hardly exciting. Plant sterols? That's it?
• Speaking of direct sales companies, I anticipate a surge with ShopToEarn / ShopToEarth, which is an affiliate portal through which members get paid multi-tier affiliate commissions when others shop for health products like Dr. Bronner's soap, Nutiva hemp seeds, Delicious Greens superfoods and many others. It's a no-brainer organization that's easy to join and easy to introduce to others, since nobody has to buy anything new. Contact [email protected] or call Suzy at 209-710-8299 to learn more.
• The FDA will be sued over its censorship of truthful health claims for nutritional supplements. Although I can't predict the outcome of such a lawsuit, the very idea of it taking place is significant. It will be the first time the People begin fighting back against the oppression of the U.S. government's Food and Drug Administration.
• The ocean's dead zones will continue to spread as pesticides, agricultural fertilizers and pharmaceuticals continue polluting the waterways. Expect the number of ocean dead zones to grow by another 5% in 2009.
• Massive health care reform efforts will be underway in 2009, but real reform laws won't be passed until 2010 or later. A universal care system where the government pays for all health care won't be passed. Rather, it will be some sort of compromised hybrid system that keeps health insurance companies profitable and employers penniless. In other words, the new reforms will be nothing more than a new rip-off that puts money into the hands of the ultra rich while soaking working-class citizens with higher taxes and higher costs of employment (which translate into lower wages). Expect to see mandatory health insurance laws put in place, turning you into a criminal if you don't buy expensive health insurance.
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