The Right Scoop has Fox News’ interview with Trends Research president Gerald Celente, an economic prognosticator with a long history of prescience, in which Celente predicts an economic collapse for the US in the next few years. Despite his track record, New York Magazine pooh-poohed his predictions, calling them “pessimism porn” last February. Considering the direction of the economy since February, it seems that Celente at least has an argument:

This has been long in the making, but now it’s being accelerated, by these programs of stimulus packages, bailouts, buyouts, government takeovers. By the way, people are calling it — is it nationalism, is it socialism? The merger of state and corporate powers, according to Mussolini who knew a thing or two about it, is called fascism. So what we’re doing is we’re looking at the disintegration of the empire in terms of, “This used to be the entrepreneurial empire of the world.” And now, it’s become a place of the “too big to fails.”

Celente speaks a great deal of truth in this, but does that mean we should start building the bomb shelters, hoarding food, and stocking up on ammunition? The US has been through tougher times and not collapsed before now, although the 1930s took us in a direction that led us directly to this crisis, with government interventions and massive deficit spending on nanny-state programs. The entitlement crisis alone will create the need for a massive reckoning, as every Ponzi scheme does at the end, and thus far the US has done its best to run away from it — especially this administration.

I’m more of an optimist. The pressures Celente cites will create a push for political change, but that has much more chance of being beneficial, peaceful, and liberating, especially as the bills come due for decades of liberalism and “compassionate conservatism.” At least Celente provides a peek as to what could come if we don’t end our Hopium addiction.