‘There's Going to be a Major War at the End of 2012’

Good news for people who love bad news.

Sure we’ve got the disaster in Japan and the crisis in the Middle East, and we’re staring down the barrel of a mind-numbing election campaign. But in the belief that you can never get enough bad news, The Mark Newsroom would like to bring something to your attention: We’re headed for World War III.

Or so says former Goldman Sachs financial analyst Charles Nenner. He’s not the only one either; trend-watcher Gerald Celente predicted something similar a few years back, and between the two of them, they have foreseen the 1987 stock market crash, the dot-com bust, the collapse of the real estate bubble, the 2008 financial crisis, and a bunch of other really bad things.

As the U.S. economy worsens “an economic and political rationale for war is easy to come by,” Celente wrote in 2008, “for if the Keynesian doctrine that government spending is the only way to lift us out of an economic depression is true, then surely military expenditures are the quickest way to inject ‘life’ into a failing system.” Celente says this obviously doesn’t work, but that won’t stop desperate U.S. politicians from trying it.

To fulfil Celente’s prophesy, an extremely idiotic person would have to take over the U.S. government in the near future (the Republicans have yet to choose a presidential candidate, by the way). The idea that a war could save the U.S. economy is absurd, considering that the two-and-a-half conflicts the country is already in have it on the road to bankruptcy.

Nenner’s statements are a lot more vague, and therefore more likely to be true. He said this month, “There’s going to be a major war starting at the end of 2012-2013.” Where or between whom he doesn’t say, but smart money would be on Pakistan to be at the centre of the next global conflict. Rogue factions of its security services are currently fuelling the war in Afghanistan, and are believed to be behind the 2008 Mumbai attacks directed at long-time rival and fellow nuclear power India. With the central government exercising tenuous control over groups intent on violence, it’s not unreasonable to imagine a much larger conflict in the region.

Now, both Celente and Nenner have made a career out of being doomsayers, and the vagueness of their predictions makes them difficult to discuss seriously. However, it’s been 60 years since major powers engaged in a catastrophic conflict, a long time in historic terms.