Cities Are Overpopulated, Small Towns to Rise Again

Across rural America during the last 30 years, agri-business monopolies put small farmers out of business, factories closed and once-valuable natural resources were all but replaced with alternatives.

And then the Great Recession of 2008 hit, dealing another crushing blow.

Just a generation ago, many urban areas, not rural communities, were cauldrons of poverty, crime and broken families. Today, the trend has reversed. America’s small, rural towns and their inhabitants are now in turmoil.

Measuring quality-of-life indicators that include stable families, educational attainment, teen births, reliance on welfare, unemployment, chronic disease and opioid addiction levels, among others, rural America is on a downward trend.

A Wall Street Journal report found that, in 2013, more people died in the most sparsely populated US counties than were born. Moreover, rural residents are dying younger than the rest of the population.

That hasn’t happened since comprehensive records began to be kept in the 1930s. Rural US population has declined for five straight years.

Overall, small towns in the central US are locked in a tailspin of unemployment, poverty and family breakdown that has long plagued inner cities.

As cities become overpopulated and too expensive, rural areas within striking distance of airports, major cities and surrounded by natural beauty will again become appealing, especially for young families.

States, cities and towns that develop new economic models to promote themselves as tourist destinations, attractive bedroom communities, specialized education centers or other niches can realize population and economic growth.

- Source, Gerald Celente via King World News

The Choice of Products is Killing the Markets

After years of consolidation, product choice has been sharply limited throughout the broad business spectrum… retail, manufacturing, services, communications, etc. As products are eliminated from shelves because they don’t drive profits hard and fast enough, and services fall victim to the same logic, new opportunities emerge for savvy Entrepreneurs who identify the underserved market gaps left by the “bigs.”

From grocery stores, whose mainstay brands like Hormel Foods and Campbell’s Soup have lost appeal with younger audiences, to clothing retailers like Macy’s and JCPenney, whose sales continually decline, major chains have sacrificed new-product development.

In the big-box world, profit pressures compel major corporations to repurpose, aggregate and target-market essentially the same product multiple ways. These pressures have pushed major corporations further away from aggressive research-and-development pursuits. After years of frantic nonstop merger/acquisition and corporate-takeover activity, the available pool of original products, services and content is greatly diminished.

And while struggling retailers may be closing brick-and-mortar stores and malls at a record pace, mom-and-pop businesses on Main Street will experience a revival. Entrepreneurs who understand how to create consumer environments with a personal touch and unique product lines will be on trend to stand apart from the bottom-line merger/acquisition culture so pervasive today.

Yes, online shopping will continue to grow, but not in all categories.

Brick-and-mortar businesses are here to stay. The boutique business model – a personalized business that reflects the quality and uniqueness of the market it serves – is the antidote to the slow death of giant retailers who fail to recognize emerging trends and fail to provide value that reflects consumer needs and interests.

The “bigs” took the style out of shopping. New generations of consumers, especially millennials, are craving a shopping “experience” that speaks to them.

In the 1980s and ’90s, many Main Street mom-and-pop stores were put out of business by malls, which became community gathering places for shopping, fun and dining. Today, that trend has reversed: The decline of malls will give rise to brick-and-mortar businesses on Main Street, especially in towns near major metropolitan areas.

- Source, King World News, Read More Here

Brick and Mortar Businesses to Rise Again?

Brick and mortar businesses, emphasizing quality and value delivered with a human touch, will grow stronger in the months and years ahead as chains continue their downward spiral…

The dramatic decline of shopping malls, a trend we forecast in 1997 when we warned that mall culture would degenerate in coming decades, often is attributed to online shopping’s rise. But as the Trends Research Institute has been forecasting, shifting demographics, a stagnant economy and an overbuilt retail sector – created decades ago for a thriving middle class that has dramatically shrunk – also have fueled the trend.

As the “bigs” struggled to survive during the last decade, mergers and acquisitions swept the retail landscape. Cutting costs to enhance profitability and focusing on a one-size-fits-all corporate strategy, rather than producing diverse and creative products, have resulted in a deeply homogenized retail landscape.

- Source, Gerald Celente via King World News

North Korea Wants Peace, Does America Want War?

The rising tensions between the United States and North Korea should have everyone worried. We are standing on the cusp of a nuclear war, the likes that this world has never before seen. Will tensions once again settle down, or is war inevitable this time around?

- Video Source, The Trends Research

Gerald Celente: Will Rising Interest Rates End Market Rally?

It is being predicted that the FED will raise interest rates in December 2017, will this be the spark that finally brings this bull market to an end? Is the bubble being set up to be popped, or will the market continue on rising higher, until the day it crashes and destroys the Western economies as we know it? Gerald Celente discusses this and much more.

- Video Source

Gerald Celente: Tax Plan Enriches Rich

Gerald Celente breaks down the recent tax proposal coming out of the US government and exactly what it means to you, the everyday man and woman. Will this tax plan help the man on the street, or will it simply be another bail-out for the fat cats on Wall Street?

- Video Source

Gerald Celente Says Gold Is Going To Shine In His Latest Report

Gerald Celente likes to say that his Trends Journal is history before it it even takes place, and for the latest edition of the Trends Journal, there is some interesting commentaries about gold.

As one can imagine, the commenting focuses on gold, the Chinese yuan, and the US dollar demise, dipped in oil.

In addition to looking forward on gold, Gerald hits several key topic areas this month including:

• Cryptocurrency
• European Union
• Interest rates
• Global move from the US dollar
• American war apparatus

- Source, Silver Doctors

This Is What Has The Elite Worried Across The Globe

Downward Pressure On The US Dollar

Gerald Celente: “The market was waiting for signals from the ECB and from the Fed on what they were going to do with unwinding their massive debt that they’ve accumulated with the bond buying schemes and the future of interest rates. Neither of those were addressed. All they did was blab. And that’s when you started seeing more downward pressure on the US dollar…

So looking at what the government knows and what they are telling us, they don’t know at a lot of levels what to do. And one of them is how to unwind this massive debt. You’re talking about just six central banks having over $15 trillion of debt that they’ve accumulated. How are they going to get rid of this debt? They don’t know how. So they are going to try to stop gold from going up every time they can, but they don’t know…

- Read More at King World News