The 'Everything Bubble' Has Popped: Why Stocks Will Fall 50% In The Next Few Months - Harry Dent

Financial author and demographic researcher Harry Dent returns to Kitco News to outline his case that the global economy is in an unprecedented "everything bubble" driven by 17 years of continuous government stimulus. Dent breaks down why he anticipates a significant market correction, pointing to the rapidly growing private credit market as the primary vulnerability, comparing its unregulated nature to the subprime mortgage crisis of 2008. He details his timeline for the markets, projecting that an initial stock market drop of 40% to 50% could happen rapidly.

Addressing the recent price action in the metals market, Dent argues that gold has joined the broader asset bubble and will not act as a safe haven during an initial liquidation event. Instead, he identifies long-term U.S. Treasury bonds and cash as the strategic vehicles for wealth preservation in the near term. Looking beyond the current cycle, he forecasts that India's rising urbanization and wealth will eventually drive a massive, fundamental bull market for physical gold. Finally, Dent explains his own decision to step away from the housing market, citing the aging Baby Boomer generation as a severe demographic headwind for real estate.

Recorded March 24 2026

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CHAPTERS:
00:00 Gold Defies Crisis
01:00 Meet Harry Dent
01:57 Everything Bubble Thesis
03:41 Stimulus Since 2008
06:28 Gold Joined The Bubble
12:24 Treasuries As Safe Haven
15:22 Central Banks And Reserves
17:06 India The Next Gold Driver
21:41 Crash Timeline And Speed
23:27 Private Credit Avalanche Risk
26:28 How Defaults Trigger Contagion
28:08 Private Credit Lockup Risk
28:37 Housing Bubble Ignition
29:09 Stimulus Fatigue Warning
30:16 Debt And Entitlements Timebomb
31:40 Why Bubbles Always Burst
34:31 Can Policy Stop Deflation
35:40 Get Out Of The Way
36:09 Crash Sequence Roadmap
37:30 Three Wave Bear Market
38:42 Millennial Boom Aftermath
41:43 Demographics And Australia
43:57 Where To Hide Now
45:57 Gold Cash Bitcoin Ranking
48:11 Treasuries As Safe Haven
49:25 Personal Conviction And History
50:23 Wrap Up And Viewer Callout

#KitcoNews #HarryDent #MarketCrash #Gold #Treasuries #PrivateCredit #Economy #Investing #RealEstate #Finance
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Disclaimer:  
The videos are not intended to provide trading advice, and the views expressed do not necessarily reflect those of Kitco Metals Inc. Kitco News, its anchors, producers, and reporters are not responsible in any way for the performance or actions of any sponsor, advertiser or affiliate of Kitco News. In no event will Kitco and its employees be held liable for any indirect, special, incidental, or consequential damages arising out of the use of the content in this video.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Kitco News in Focus with Jeremy Saffron.

SPEAKER_02 0:03

Welcome back up, Jeremy Saffron. Gold is not acting the way many investors expected. Instead of rising cleanly on war, geopolitical risk, and deep uncertainty in the Middle East, gold has been under heavy pressure here, trading currently around$43,000 to$4,400 range after a sharp drop from its highs just a couple of months ago. At the same time, another part of the market is flashing more stress. According to recent shareholder letters and reports, major private credit funds tied to firms including Apollo and AirAs have capped investor withdrawals after a surge in redemption requests. He argues the biggest artificial bubble in modern history is finally beginning to break. Is the timing right on this one? Harry Dent is a financial author, demographic, uh excuse me, demographic researcher, and of course, founder of a great letter called HS Dent. He's known for making long cycle calls on bubbles, debt, turning points in markets. Harry, welcome back to Kitco. Good to see you. Nice to be back, Jeremy. I appreciate your time because obviously the market is interesting here. Let's start on this gold. I mean, obviously it's down hard from its highs. Despite this major geopolitical crisis and this extreme volatility in energy, um it's I guess still up from last year. But what is the market telling us here? I mean, is is investors' confidence in gold breaking down? Is it simply forced liquidation where gold is one of the only liquid assets left to sell, as some have suggested?

SPEAKER_00 2:00

Well, you know, this is gonna sound funny, but what's really happening here, you gotta get this is the first everything bubble in history, okay? And the reason for this is there's natural bubbles. I mean, anytime the economy gets good or stocks have a really good run long enough, like in the roaring 20s or or you know, 1830s into 1835. I mean, all throughout history, stocks, you know, investments will overdo it and they'll get overvalued and they'll bubble up and then they'll crash, okay? What's unique about this is this is not an ordinary bubble, okay? We had our ordinary bubble um in the 1990s when the demographics were strong and and and all of my other cycles, my innovation and technology cycles, everything was was was going up together, economy was great, and we had a roaring 20s-like bubble, okay, from late 94, especially into early 2000, bubble in tech stocks, and then a crash. People forgot it. Back then, tech stocks went down 78% between 2000 and 2002. And what we've seen now, what happened in 2008, we had what I call a natural downturn uh come from the baby boom peaking their spending cycle. And that's something, Jeremy. I've been warning people back to the 1980s when I first did my cycle research and particularly got my first big breakthrough indicator called the spending wave, which just lags forward the birth index uh in any country for the peak in spending at 46 or 47, depending on the country, and tells you when you're going to see longer-term downturns. In 2008, the 22 was set to be that. And that's exactly what happened. Um, but this time and never in history, not in the Great Depression, no other major downturn, governments, especially the US, but around the world, governments said, no, we're not having recessions anymore. And they just pulled out the guns. Okay. Starting in 2008, especially in early 2009, after that crash set in, they just started printing money, running huge deficits. And that's the two ways you stimulate the economy. You can run the government can spend more than it takes in, and of course, borrow unlimited, especially in the case of the United States, to do that to fight a downturn. Or they can just print money, which they also did, and inject it in by buying their own treasury bonds. So they issue record treasury bonds, and then they buy them back with money printed out of thin air. So that's the two ways you stimulate. So we have been living, and I'm the only guy I know that's actually added this all since 2008 when we hit that inevitable recession, when the largest generation in history finally ran out of spending power, and and their kids had left the nest, and they're they're starting to save for retirement and all that sort of stuff. You know, we have this big crash, and and governments just started. Um they've been fighting the downturn ever since. And now the total$30 trillion. And we're still running deficits of$2 trillion. They finally pulled back some on the money printing, but still they they they've collectively$30 trillion. That that comes up to like 7-8 percent a year on average, they've been injecting in the economy, and we've had economic growth since 2008, weaker than average at 2-3% max. And imagine if we had not had all this money injected. So that's what's really happened. They they they decided to fight the 2008-9 crash. They thought it would just take a year of stimulus, they threw in the first trillion, thought that would do it, didn't. So they've been putting in stimulus ever since. And people have no idea that this wonderful economy we've had from 2008 to 9 to 2025 has been 100% stimulus. That's never happened before, and not for 17 years either. So now they're just put they pulled back on the monetary, okay, they dropped that 2.7 trillion. That's called the balance sheet. In other words, they they you know, they they stopped buying bonds and bought, you know, and and and and and and you know, sold some bonds back. In other words, they tightened a bit, but they're still running this$2 trillion a year deficit, which is still net stimulative, but that's enough for the bubble to lose momentum and start to break down. So here's the thing. I I the person I most debate is Peter Schiff, and I'm sure you've heard of him and interviewed him. He's saying gold is gonna be the safe haven when this but he sees the same bubble I do. He just sees it's it's gonna crash and gold's gonna be safe haven. And I'm like, hey, no, gold and silver, what gold and silver just did in the last three years in particular, they were bubbling with everything else, but they caught up with the extremity of the bubble. That gold went straight up in the last three years, and so did silver. And so, what that shows me is that this everything bubble has now finally sucked everything in. The one country in the world that's up and coming that hadn't bubbled as much was South Korea. Well, South Korea just caught up with the global bubble in the last three years. Gold and silver, again, have been going up, but really went extreme bubble just in the last three years. And that's what's telling me okay, the everything bubble has now bubbled everything. All major stock markets, you know, general bond markets, gold, silver, commodity, everything's bubbled, and now there's nothing left to bubble. And that's when you would expect this thing to finally be able to crash, even if they keep stimulating say, well, everything's bubbled so much. I mean, look look again, look how much gold's gone up. You know, thousands of dollars just in three years. Nothing can sustain that sort of trajectory, no matter how much stimulus you're putting in the economy. And again, they have not eliminated the stimulus, but they have pulled back substantially. That's what gives a window here in 2026. And my theory here, Jeremy, and this has never happened, so this is where I'm doing my best guessing, okay? That all we take is enough momentum down for this, for this everything massive bubble to start bursting, and then it's like an avalanche. It it's it's gonna have so much force going on that governments, by time they turn around and say, oops, oops, we got to stimulate again, we gotta go back to printing money, oh, we got to push that balance sheet back up, and we oh, we gotta, and they and then we go in and the economy slows down, we go into recession, which I think will happen pretty quickly, then the deficits will go up naturally from 2 trillion. That could double to 4 trillion. So I think the government's gonna be too late to respond. And next thing you know, we're in this downturn that comes faster than anybody would have thought against leading indicators and everything else, because it's not a normal economy, Jeremy. As people don't get and and and we're in this crisis and and it just falls apart so fast the government can't react fast enough.

SPEAKER_02 9:13

Yeah. I mean, you know, if each new round of stimulus is is producing less real economic growth. I mean, what does that tell you about?

SPEAKER_00 9:21

Diminishing returns. That's exactly what happens. It takes a lot of money.

SPEAKER_02 9:24

Where's the money going now? I mean, is it flowing into asset support? Is it debt service? Is it rollover rather than into productive growth?

SPEAKER_00 9:31

Well, when you print money, that money is injected into the financial markets directly. They buy their own treasury bonds and agency bonds, injecting new money, and that's more money to chase the same limited financial asset. So that's stimulated directly to financial assets. And when financial assets go up, particularly the top 20% of people that own it all, they spend more. And of course, that's been the hottest part of the economy. Okay. The other side is when you run deficits, when the government runs deficit, they're spending more, just like corporations investing in new capacity or people buying groceries at the grocery store and cars and houses. That stimulates the economy. And when the economy does better, then of course stocks and investments and real estate go up, and and so that just goes at it at a different angle. But again, like I say, we've had this massive 30 trillion injected, 7% a year on average now for 17 years to keep this bubble going, and now they're pulling back on that just enough, and the bubbles now have gotten is so extreme in everything that again, even gold and silver, which are normally considered more you know, the safe haven and usually run more counter to stocks. Um, that's what's happening. Now, the fact that they bubbled, say, well, how how I'm not I'm telling you the Peter Schiff people, how can gold be your savior, your safe haven here when it now has bubbled just as much as stocks and is just as overvalued as stocks? This everything bubble will crash. And I'll tell you, Jeremy, and I've said this from the beginning: gold was not going to be the savior because it was not in 2008 when stocks finally crashed the last time around. Gold held up at first, like, oh no, we're the safe haven, and then it went down. Didn't go down as much as stocks, didn't stay down as long, but but gold did finally cave in. Only the U.S. Treasury bonds went up like 40% in six months. They exploded into that downturn while everything else went down. Now, what's happened, and people are missing this in this whole recovery, and especially in the bubble of the last three to five years, treasury bonds have been the only thing that's gone down while gold, commodities, silver, even Korea, every you know, all stocks and things in real estate have gone up. And so what'll happen when the bubble crashes, that you know, the treasury bonds will go up as a safe haven, and gold will go down. And again, gold will not go down quite as much as stocks, but it will go down. And mark my words on this: if we have the crash that I've been saying for years now, and it's finally starting to show that it could burst here, if we have this, gold is not gonna go up after just streaking from 2,000 to 5,000 in the last three years. It's part of the bubble.

SPEAKER_02 12:26

Yeah. So, I mean, you know, this is good. I mean, we've got to talk about the T bills. I mean, if treasuries go up from here, what's the trigger that gets us there? Is it a collapse in growth expectations, a credit event, a policy pivot?

SPEAKER_00 12:37

No, yes. All it takes is for the economy to slow and go into recession, and that's when the treasury bond shines. See, people don't get that either. People would say, oh yeah, but that's gonna hurt the US dollar, or that's gonna make the government deficit's gonna go up. Oh my God, that's not good. No, 2008, all this happened, okay? Deficits went up, the economy went down, tax revenues went down, and the treasury bonds were the only, and that's what I'm trying to stress to people, only major asset that went up. Corporate bonds, even if they're if they're high quality, see some risk, and of course, junk bonds do almost as badly as stocks. So, so that's what you got to get. That that the only thing that got left in the dust, who wants to own low-earning, low interest, super safe treasury bonds when you can't lose money buying anything in an everything bubble? So when the everything bubble bursts, there's no place to hide except the treasury bonds. And there's a simple ETF. Now you can but the best thing to buy is a 30-year, the longest duration that will go up the most, as it did in 2008. But there's a simple ETF that it's called TLT, capital T, capital L, capital T, that combines half 10-year treasury bonds and 10 30 years. So it's an average like a 20-year treasury bond. I am projecting, and it already, you know, did it went straight up in the COVID crisis when everything else went down short term. I'm projecting that TLT could double or a little more in this crisis when everything else, including now gold and silver, uh, go down, and that'll be the play of a lifetime. If you can protect your assets, sell real I'm I'm my house is for sale right now, and I love my house, okay? But I don't mind stepping out of it for a couple years. We've already found a house at a third of the price just by going inland in Puerto Rico and giving up the ocean view. We got a house almost as nice for a third of the price. I'm gonna invest the rest of that money and guess what? Treasury bonds or short stocks. Short stocks is for the braver. But but this is the biggest shift we'll see in markets previous and the rest of our lifetimes. It is most comparable to 1929 to 32, which is still the biggest stock crash in history. This one I think will rival it down 80 to 90 percent. That's interesting.

SPEAKER_02 15:04

I mean, aggressive timing.

SPEAKER_00 15:06

So again, you can't you can't sit this out and say, well, we'll wait and see if people like Harry and Peter Schiff arrive. But the the difference between me and Peter Schiff, I'm saying buy the treasury bonds to protect yourself, he's saying buy gold. And and you'd be crazy to buy gold after it just tripled in three years.

SPEAKER_02 15:25

Harry, let's let's let's take this one layer kind of deeper because this is you know where Kitko viewers care a lot more about than just a chart. I mean, in stress market spot pricing and the real world physical market don't always move in lockstep, as you know, and now we're seeing reports that Turkey has at least considered tapping sovereign physical bullion to help defend the lira. Um, while more broadly, I mean there are fresh questions about whether some central banks could become more tactical with gold reserves in an emergency. I mean, if if central banks are being pushed towards mobilization mobilizing, you know, actual gold reserves to support the fiat system, why should investors read that as a weakness in gold rather than a weakness in fiat?

SPEAKER_00 16:03

Okay. Because this is what what what governments have already been doing. They've governments have been buyers of gold here as a hedge for themselves. When it goes down, they're gonna have to sell that gold or use that gold to help, you know, shore up their economies and stuff. So so so they've already done it. This is an everything bubble, and and governments have participated it as well. Pension plans, you know, have bought more and more stocks, bought more and more gold and silver. I mean, I've been preaching for years that that people don't use gold and silver enough as a part of a normal portfolio. They'll just have 5%. To me, uh precious metals long-term, even when you're bullish, ought to be 20% of your portfolio. They're great diversifiers. And I also remind people, and this is this is gonna be another giant surprise. Gold, once we crash here and come down to reality, that means gold goes down to maybe a thousand, two thousand dollars instead of fifty, six hundred here recently. Okay, when we come out of this, the country that's gonna lead the next great boom just is is gonna be just like China from 82 to 2025, is gonna be India. India is still only 30 some percent urban and will go towards 80% in the next four decades, just like China did. Just by urbanizing, emerging countries get three times the GDP per capita on on the rural person versus uh when they become urban. Okay, it's the biggest way to grow. That's how China became the greatest growth country in all this. They're still number two in the US, but they drove growth even more than the U.S. India is going to be that driver, and Indians spend three times as much on gold as the Chinese as a percentage of their income. So as India becomes rich, they're not going to have one of the greatest stock booms in history for four decades. They don't peak out until 2055 to 65, but they are going to give an extra push to gold. For the first time in history, gold will go up due to fundamental demand, both. Indians use it both for investment because it's easy to store for small amounts of money and they're not that rich, and it's also a small show of wealth for poor people who are getting a little better off. India is going to see drive the best bull long-term bull market in gold ever. But not now.

SPEAKER_02 18:39

Yeah, interesting. So, I mean, if if they're if if that's the next kind of long-term boom, and in Indian households are among the deepest cultural buyers of physical gold in the market, I mean, doesn't that cut against such an extreme long-term kind of bearish case on the metal? What are your thoughts?

SPEAKER_00 18:54

Oh, no, no, no. What I'm saying is gold, and largely because it's bubbled so much along with silver just in the last three years as a catch-up to the bubble. And again, South Korea. I've been over to South Korea. They are a booming economy, but they were not noticed. The the laggers just caught up, okay? When there's a crash, South Korea will crash, all stock markets crash, gold and silver will now. I used to have my target for a 50% crash in gold. Now, to get back to normal levels, it's gonna have to crash 70 to 80, okay? All this stuff's crashed. I'm saying when the crash is over, I want to buy the tech stocks in the U.S. because we're all still leading that and nobody's even close. I want to buy Indian stocks, and I want to buy gold is my choice in the commodity sector, because India is going to give an extra boost to gold in the next long-term boom. Because Indians love gold. Yeah, go to India, they wear it in places we wouldn't think of. I mean, belly buttons, you know, you name toes, silver, silver, silver too. Love it. Big buyer this year. Yeah. They they are poor people getting rich, and they're gonna get as rich as China. Um, and and when they do, they are gonna be spending more money on gold and silver than anybody, as again, as percentage of income. Remember, there's 1.4 billion of them, and they're gonna go to 1.7 billion, while China goes from 1.4 billion a day down to 800 million in the next four to five decades. Okay, China's gonna shrink, just like Japan's been doing, even more. India is gonna continue to grow and get go from 30% urban to 80% and be as richer than the Chinese today. That's a 4.5x for India right there, just to catch up with China. And China's still only a fraction of US and European standard of living, and they got that rich and expanded that much in the last four decades. So this is going to be a huge shift. China falls, India rises, is stronger, stronger than China did the last four decades. United States and developed countries kind of plateau out and live on productivity alone. And southern Europe and East Asia are the weakest demographically, and they will collapse even in the long-term boom. So there's gonna be huge changes between now, uh, especially for younger investors now, people that are just millennials that are just starting to invest, or the Generation X that are younger than the Billion Boomers and are maybe in their prime investing, they're gonna have a chance to buy India and gold and the best tech companies still in the US. That'll be the three places to focus in the next boom.

SPEAKER_02 21:44

So, I mean, obviously, Kiko viewers are gonna say, watch$1,000,$2,000 gold. What's the timeline for the move? Are you saying gold gets to a thousand or two during the first liquidation leg or only later after a failed rebound and a broader deflation?

SPEAKER_00 21:58

This will be in the next two to three years. But but the biggest hit, watch this also. I've also done, nobody's done this analysis either. It's just obvious to me. When there's a bubble crash, and I did every stock bubble in history back to the late 1700s when they started, the first crash is the fastest and hardest. Stocks will go down 40 to 50 percent in two to four months. In other words, it's they're gonna go down 80 or 90 because bubbles don't go down 50% like normal bear markets, long, you know, like the the the uh 72 to 82 crash, okay? That was more like 50 in stocks, okay? Bubbles are more like 29 to 32, 80, 90 percent. But the first whack will be the hardest and fastest. So people who wait to see, well, the stocks are still going up, I don't want to miss anything, they will get hit the hardest right off the bat. So that's one of the tricks you gotta know. If a bubble light's gonna burst, is uh there's a famous guy, I'm forgetting his name, famous old investor back from the roaring 20s. He said, I always got out a bit early. You know, that sort of thing. Um because that's because when bubbles burst, it's it they they go up faster, they go up twice as fast on the way up, and they go up twice, go down twice as fast. And even normal bubbles, the down, the down, the crash will happen on a normal bubble in in two to three years, and the bubble up will happen in five to eight years.

SPEAKER_02 23:27

So so crashes are faster and harder, especially coming out of I gotta ask you about uh private credit, too, because this may be the most important part of the conversation today. According to recent reports and shareholder letters, Apollo Debt Service uh solutions and area strategic income fund, both capital trial is a five percent after facing redemption requests above 11. So let me ask this directly too. I mean, is private credit the real hidden risk crack in this cycle?

SPEAKER_00 23:54

It it is. Every time there's something new. Last time in the last bubble burst or the last 2008 crash, it was the subprime mortgages, okay? They were they were giving mortgages to people who had minimal credit and zero to five percent down in many cases. I mean, that the Roaring 20s did not see a real estate crash nearly as bad as stocks because credit was hard to get. The roaring 20s, even people with good credit, 50% down in five-year duration. And then so that was the last thing. Subprime mortgages was the non-regulated new thing to come up and bubble up and create a lot of debt quickly. And then, of course, those were the first things that that defaulted and caused the problem. That's what private credit is now. It's going up to something like three or four trillion in a short period of time. Yeah, that all that's enough. That that doesn't compare to the total trillion on debt in the country, which is much higher, but that's the trigger. I mean, I think he put the nail on the head there. This is the stuff that was unregulated, and and and people can get a little more risky, and that's what everybody, that's the people in that industry do. And it's the stuff to crack first and get the avalanche going. And again, I'm telling you, nobody's gonna believe this until they see it. My thing is we've got an avalanche that's been waiting to happen for many, many years, and it just takes a private credit bubble burst to start the avalanche. And if you've ever seen anybody could stop an avalanche, I want to hear about it. Never. Once an avalanche starts, boom, there's too much force behind it. This is gonna be an avalanche because it's an everything bubble and it's a longer and bigger bubble. I can't even compare this to the roaring 20s bubble or even the late 90s bubble we had before. That was not stimulus driven or government driven. The government with massive stimulus to fight the baby bust downturn from 2008 to 22, which I predicted that decades before it happened, to fight that downturn and to keep the economy going and roaring, they had to create a bigger bubble. And now that bubble's got to burst, and it will be the biggest, fastest bubble in history. And that's why the government's gonna have a hard time stopping something that they created instead of the just the natural markets, like the again, like the 90s bubble or the roaring 20s bubble. Those were not artificial bubbles, they were just things were good and people got excited in overvalued assets. That's all. That's a normal bubble.

SPEAKER_02 26:30

Um, what exactly kind of turns this into, or I guess, from a contained kind of funding problem into that avalanche that you're describing? I mean, is it rising defaults? Is it forced markdowns, lenders pulling warehouse lines, investors realizing that the liquidity isn't even there?

SPEAKER_00 26:46

Yeah, yeah. No, no, it is that these, especially these new um private credit and stuff, some of these loans start defaulting, and then the more loans default, the more banks tighten up on giving new loans, and the more people look at all debt and say, well, what's the next default? It just that's what starts an avalanche. The problem is, in other words, you can't, if you don't want to have an unhealthy bubble burst, don't let the economy get so bubbly during a boom, okay? There will always be growing debt in a boom, and and no matter how good the economy is and how good businesses are, some businesses will make the wrong debts and their debts will fail, and you'll have failing debt. When you have a bubble, debt gets too big, everybody does it, and more people fail because it gets out of trouble. And that's why it's harder to stop that avalanche when it happens. That's so so it's very hard to start a bubble bursting, um, especially when, for again, I'm gonna stress it for the first time in all history, except for the Mississippi and South Sea's original bubbles, those were totally created by governments and pushed by governments. This is the only bubble that is not only everything, but a hundred percent caused by government stimulus nonstop for 17 years. I call it the markets on crack.

SPEAKER_02 28:05

Yeah, yeah. Okay, well, this is good. Uh again, for the viewers, because I'm gonna get written here. I just want to explain the anatomy of it because I know you know it. But you know, when you say crash, is is the mechanism is it really mass selling or is it freezing? Because I mean the concern across Wall Street today is that these private funds work fine when capital stays put, but the moment investors actually want their money, the system locks up. Meaning, you know, lenders pull back, refinancing, windows close. I mean, you know this fund gates, these withdrawals.

SPEAKER_00 28:32

Um, I guess my question is is Well again, you gotta remember everything clams up ultimately because everything's vulnerable. Everybody's too much in debt, okay? Yeah. And housing, housing, it's housing's going up unbelievably. Housing never's gone up this much in such a short period. This housing bubble makes the first one look not that big, and that was way bigger than any time in history. So it just takes something to start it, and then as things start failing, that failing, failing just gets everybody more sensitive. First of all, it means banks clam up, so people can't get new debt to buy house and stuff so easy, or or the rates go up because the risk is higher. So it just gets started, and at some point there'll be that that critical point where people will just lose faith in the economy, and that's when the government says, Well, we're gonna we're gonna do a new 10, 20 million stimulus program, and people say, been there, done that. Because what that's all we've done since 2008. Basically, we we we stimulate harder, we it's it falls apart, and then they just stimulate bigger the next time. You keep stimulating bubble bursts, create a bigger bubble burst. At some point, people go, wait a minute, we've seen this picture before. And then the government loses credibility, and they they will come in, they will have to come in and try to save this. I'm just saying this bubble is so big, and they've been so instrumental in causing this one. This was not investors that just went nuts. The government's uh debt is crazy all around the world, too. So, so the government doesn't have credibility, and therefore their efforts to go against this and print money and throw money in the economy uh and bail out company stuff will be too little, too late.

SPEAKER_02 30:15

That's my to your point. I mean, I we could talk about policy response. I was reading this morning economist Steve Hankey. He's a he's a guest on our show, and he argues that you know, if you include unfunded liabilities such as Medicare and Social Security, total U.S. obligations are far larger than the headline debt number. So, I mean, to your point, I'll wait.

SPEAKER_00 30:34

Let me add something to that. People look at the government debt, okay? The private debt is three times the government debt in our country and in most countries. And then, like you say, then there's all the unfunded liabilities that they don't even put on the books. So you're right, that this whole thing, there's no way you can have people living longer. When they started Social Security and Medicare and all these things, this was in the 60s and stuff, people didn't live that long after you know after they hit 65 or 70. Now, the typical, even men will live, the longer you live, the longer you live. So you can't even look at average statistics. People like me, I'm I'm in my I'm in my early 70s, okay? Well, I'm my chart says I'm gonna live to be 86. That's way longer than the typical male, they say, is 77 and female at 80. So so people are living longer and longer, and they and they're promising more benefits, and they're not raising the retirement age. So this whole system is out of whack. And again, that's another reason they don't show the unfunded entitlements because that would be even worse. I'm glad you brought that up. I mean, that's this this is just a debt bonanza beyond, and every debt bubble and every debt bubble in history has caused a financial asset bubble, and every financial asset bubble has burst. Period. The fastest was the Mississippi bubble in France that was up for two years massively, like 10 times in two years, and then crashed 99% in one year, half the time the crash of the two-year bubble, same ratio, stream bubble, only rich people in it, so it didn't it didn't kill the everyday person like today. But that's what happens, and and bubbles are predictable. People actually well when this is gonna crash, all these economists that didn't call it a say, oh, that was a black swan, baloney. There's nothing more obvious than a bubble. I got a chart, I hate to say this, I use my presentation partly as a joke. I compare bubbles to the Masters and Johnson's male orgasm. They they charted out back in the 1950s. They're exactly the same. I put that over any bubble, and it fits almost exactly. Go up, get more extreme, have the orgasm, ah, and then flash. That's what happens to men. After the orgasm, the men are dead. The women all want to cuddle and talk. No, the men, sorry. That's what bubbles do, they're extreme events. And the other thing I'll leave it that people say that people can come out to saying bubbles are bad. No, bubbles occur in the most pro and when the most important new technologies, from automobiles to the to the internet, and now AI and crypto and Bitcoin today, okay? They are a way these bubbles finance massive investment of these new technologies, and and these technologies will do the same thing. Nine out of ten companies will fail, but but the ones that succeed will get bigger market share and then bring these new things mainstream. Automobiles were only affordable by the rich by 1914, and by 1929, everyday people and citizens had one, and then by 1950s, every household had two. That's how technology works. So bubbles aren't bad, but as an investor, when you see a bubble, you better know how it ends. It only ends one way. And bigger the bubble, bigger the burst. And I cannot find a bubble this big.

SPEAKER_02 34:04

So, I mean, to your point, history repeats itself. Why wouldn't the state simply respond with more money creation, more intervention, and then you know, another inflationary rescue?

SPEAKER_00 34:12

Can you do it for they've been doing it for 17 years, Jeremy?

SPEAKER_02 34:17

Right.

SPEAKER_00 34:18

So the longer you do something, the more obvious. It's like a drug addict saying, Well, you know, I'm just gonna take a couple more drinks to get over the hangover and do it. Okay, we've heard that before. You end up being a drunk again. That's what I mean. So can policy the longer you do something, the more obvious it becomes.

SPEAKER_02 34:32

But can policymakers actually can they actually allow deflation to run its full course anymore?

SPEAKER_00 34:39

No, they can't. Oh, they they will fight deflation. They, by the way, they really did not fight deflation that much in the great they all these work projects is what they did building the dams and stuff and all these things. That didn't start until like 33, 34, after the bottom and after the 25% unemployment. So, so I mean, that's the best thing to do. When the economy is this bad, the government should take money, even if they do have to print it, and do projects which will be cheaper. And when things deplete, everything's cheaper. Labor's cheaper, materials cheaper, land's cheaper, you name it. So they ought to do these big projects. But again, those projects will come on a lag, they will take time, they will not stop this bubble burst. I'm just telling people, we don't know 100% what will happen this time in response because it will be bigger, everything bubble this time, but we do know it'll burst, and the only thing you can do, none of us are gonna stop it individually, and nobody can stop it at this point. All you do is get out of the way. You just sell your stocks and the real estate you're not gonna live in for the rest of your life. I'm selling my primary house. And I and I sold my vacation home years ago more because I didn't want to have a second home now that I'm in the Caribbean. I'm already in a second home place, is my primary home. So why do I need a vacation home, another vacation home? Where would I put it? Oh, in the Caribbean. Well, I'm already in the Caribbean. So I'm gonna be out of real estate for this.

SPEAKER_02 36:09

This is good. Let's make this, let's kind of make it operational for our viewers, you know. I mean, we we talked about a lot today. I mean, if if this is really a sequencing call, lay out the sweet sequence kind of out very clearly for the viewers. What wins first, what gets hit first, and when does the handoff happen from treasuries and cash back to gold and gold stocks? Okay, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 36:29

So so first of all, um the first hit will be the hardest of stocks because stocks are the most liquid and they're owned by the top, that they're 80, 80 some percent owned by the top 20%, and 40% owned by just the top 1%. Those people will respond faster. So you the first time you know that this bubble is starting to burst, stocks will suddenly go down 40 to 50 percent, maybe even more this time in just two to four months, which means if February 2nd, that's a possible top for the S ⁇ P 500 here recently, okay? If this is the if it if this is the top, then we could see this first crash by April, May, June. And it could be, you know, the biggest, sharpest crash we've seen all the time. That's gonna wake up people right away. That's the first thing you see. And then a lot of people will be back there, and then the stock market will immediately retrace about half of that back in a short period of time, and all the people that sold there will say, Oh, we're idiots, and then they'll buy back in. And then it'll go back down and it'll have the next wave. So, rule number one: any major bullish move or bearish move, and now we're going from long-term bull to bearish. The the every stock wave will go three waves. One one wave, a correction against that, a third wave, correction against that, a fifth wave, into the movement, up or down. So we'll see a three-wave downturn. First wave crash the hardest and fastest, probably into the summer if it's starting now. Then it'll bounce, say maybe into the summer, early fall, and then you'll see another wave come out that'll be at least that big, but probably not as fast. And then that'll bounce down the line. And somewhere in 2028, you'll see the last wave down. And and where there you look for extreme sell-off. A bubble, you're looking for it to be 80 to 80 to 90 percent down before you buy in. And this all the way down, people will be saying, Oh, look at all the times that you'd have bought a 50% crash. Yes, that wasn't a bubble burst. The 70s crash was not a bubble burst, it was not a bubble boom, strong boom, high value, not bubble. So you got to wait until stocks are really down, and that's when you buy long-term again. If I had to say when I think that opportunity will come, if we're peaking now, it'd be late 2028, early to mid 2029, where you could go back and buy for the millennial boom that will now not be hindered by all this baby boom debt and bubbles and stuff, and you'll see a millennial bubble, a boom, it won't be as bubbly from about 2028 or 09 into 2037 before that bubble kind of plateaus out for a long time. And the millennials are a unique generation. There are more people in the baby boom, but the height of their boom will not be as big and it will hit its maximum impact on the economy earlier and then plateau for a long time. So it goes up into 2037, plateaus into 2054 demographically before it goes down longer term. So that's a whole different thing. But but again, once this bubble crashes, there's gonna be an open runway, much like the roaring 20s or the 90s, for stocks to come back strongly and globally into at least 2037. That's when the millennial boom will have its biggest impact. And after that, America will never have one of these big generational booms again. That they just we just kind of like plateau out. Japan's when you know, Japan had their big boom and then then crashed in the 90s, and never until recently they've had a bubble, but they didn't go anywhere for decades because the bubble was over and their demographic expansion was over. Japan's only shrunk since then in population and will only shrink more in the future. Yeah, that's gonna happen to the whole developed world now. Developed world, I I have a quote in all my books that says it's particularly real estate will never be the same again. They will not be a bigger generation coming behind the the millennials who buy their big house, you know, a decade or so from now, to buy that house from them in higher numbers. There will be lower numbers competing for that house, so they will not see the appreciation, and the appreciation will not hold up as much. One of the big trends, baby boom caused all this greatest boom in history. Baby boomers from 2017 to 2041 are going to do the worst thing you can do for the economy, die. So it's one thing for people to go, wait a minute, real quick, it's one thing people go from spending the most in their life at age late 50s, 40s, early 50s, it may be 80,000 or 100,000, okay? And then go and then plateau and then eventually go down to 50 or 60 in retirement. Okay, it's another thing to die and go to zero from wherever you're at. Die and disappear. Baby boomers, the biggest generation, is going to do nothing but die. Started 2017, be over by 2041, and I will be one of them, and I'll be dead a few years before that.

SPEAKER_02 41:41

So, I mean, you know, let me I'll translate it. I mean, when you compare this to Japan, for instance, as you said, that key lesson for the viewer to kind of take is that even a large generation cannot create a lasting boom if the society is aging, debt's too high, and asset values have already been pulled.

SPEAKER_00 41:56

Aging means precisely that the generations coming along are not big enough. That again, we've never seen that. Every generation, back to the 1800s, you know, back when we started after the Revolutionary War, every generation's because of immigration and births, and people used to have four, five, six children, partly because half of them would die uh in some one way or the other. So, so yeah, every generation has been bigger. That starting with Japan and then Europe and then North America, and then eventually the emerging world will even see this out in the 2060s to 80s. Okay, that's a long way away. The only developed country, which I do a lot of speaking in, and I really like to go there, except it's Lomanic, Australia has a unique situation in that they have higher immigration as a percent than the US and other major countries. And we're considered an immigration magnet. They are more so, but the difference is they are getting higher educated, higher income people from Asia, they're not getting lower income people from Latin America, and even those only drive our economy up. But there's nothing better than highly educated, more fluent Asians flooding your country, and that's what Australia has and still has. And I when I'm lecturing, and I just did a thing for Australia uh literally yesterday. They, as long as they keep up their Asian immigration, they're the only developed country that looks more like an emerging country that will not see smaller generations following uh the larger ones. Their generations will continue to be larger and they will grow far more than the US and Europe in the coming four decades when China falls and India rises, and they're close to all of East, all of Asia, including India. And if I was in Australia buying real estate, I'd be buying in Perth on the far west side that is the closest by far to India, the new global star.

SPEAKER_02 43:57

Interesting. Well, uh, listen, our time always. Goes too fast. But I let me let me sum it up with this because you know then this I guess the actionable question is timing. Do you think investors should now reduce risk because that demographic support is already behind us? Are you saying that the real opportunity is to wait for the crash, then buy the assets tied to the next winners like emerging markets, gold, stocks?

SPEAKER_00 44:21

Okay, both, but you have to get out because all first of all, there's nowhere to hide, okay, except the treasury bonds. Okay. You have to get out of because everything is inflated. Anything you hold could go down 50 to 90 percent. You know, if it was a 20% correction or 10% like most, of course you can sit through it, rebalance, and do it financial advisor. That is what that is the right thing to do 90% of the time. This is not that time. Everything bubble and global on top of that, nowhere to hide except the treasury bonds. You get out of everything you can, you sit in them until this crack. And if it doesn't happen the next year or so, then I may even be saying, okay, let's get back in an assets and just be a little more careful. But you do that and then you buy stronger than ever in new areas. It won't be China. Yeah, China will be a bargain, but China doesn't have the growth in the future, okay? They've already built enough infrastructures to house the rest of their people that aren't urban forever. They will never grow like they did before. India will be the new China. So you put the money in India, you put the money in the tech stocks. We are still the leader in tech stocks, okay, in the technology sector. Um and and and and so that's what you did. And you buy emerging. EEM is an ETF. There's all emerging countries. All the growth, all the demographic growth from here out is going to be in the merging world. India will simply be the largest and best target, and scale does matter. China dominated the last round uh as the emerging world also did great, but did better than EEM because China was supercharged. Well, India's gonna be supercharged next time.

SPEAKER_02 45:58

Hey, one last one for the KICO viewer specifically uh as well. I mean, you know, if you were to kind of rank them or you were looking at maybe the next 12 months, and you kind of said this here, Harry, but I mean, rank these four in order of safety. Is it physical gold in your possession, not paper gold, U.S. Treasury cash or Bitcoin? What are your thoughts?

SPEAKER_00 46:17

Oh, that's easy. Bitcoin's the most dangerous, then gold, and gold used to be better. Gold is now bubbles, some of it's dangerous, and and and the cash is the the cash and the treasury bonds, are the only safe thing left. And cash will just preserve your money, which means a lot because that same cash will now buy assets that are 50, 60, 70, 80, 90% or more off, including gold if you love gold. Um, so so but the treasury bonds, because they've locked in higher interest rates before there's this deflation you mentioned, all interest, all risk-free interest, the risk-free interest rates will go down. Risky assets can go down even in deflation because they have default risk. U.S. government will not default because they can, they're unlike corporations, they can print money. And unlike a lot of countries, can't print money in a crisis, they'll their currency will be devalued, everything. U.S. and strong countries like Europe and United and Australia will be able to print money, but the US dollar will still be king. And and in 2008, the US dollar went up, and the U.S. Treasury bonds went up on top of that more. That was the play. When every and everything pretty much went down in 2008, including gold. So that's the best lesson. And this is just saying this is bigger, so you got to go more out of everything, and then you go back selectively next time into India, into gold for commodities, because gold will be the best commodity because of India, and then into the tech stocks in the U.S. That's the sector I want to be in the U.S. because there's no still nobody yet uh to challenge us uh in in technology until somebody shows that, and that'll happen in the next boom, too. But but at the bottom, the U.S., you want to buy, I want to buy the QQQ, the NASDAQ 100. That's the best representation of the tech sector in the U.S.

SPEAKER_02 48:09

Yeah, certainly has been in in history too. And before I let you go, I mean you brought up TLT. It's it doesn't sound like a safe haven trade, it's more of a strong duration bet.

SPEAKER_00 48:18

If oil stays high, it is the it is the safe haven trade.

SPEAKER_02 48:21

Safe haven't my point. Yeah. And so, I mean, if oil stays high and the market keeps worrying about inflation or oil will not stay high in a crash.

SPEAKER_00 48:28

It yeah, it's going up now because of the Iran conflict and other oil is very sensitive to economic activity because everybody uses oil. So oil is gonna go down again. Uh commodities are gonna go down, uh, and in this case, gold's gonna go down and silver, and so so that's why there really is nowhere to hide, but the treasury bonds, if you want appreciation, and if you can instead of not losing your money, you can actually appreciate on top of the money you pull out of the top of this bubble and then put it down in the bottom of the next boom. How could investing ever get better than that? It doesn't.

SPEAKER_02 49:08

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 49:08

I gotta ask you. It doesn't help to buy at the bottom when you've lost 70, 80, 50 to 80 percent of your assets and don't have much to buy with. It doesn't help as much. You gotta preserve what you have to take advantage of the buy opportunity of a lifetime, probably just three years away.

SPEAKER_02 49:26

It feels like you're also you know putting your money where your mouth is. I mean, you said you're selling your house and stuff. I mean, just from a personal perspective. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 49:34

This is the first house I really like. We got a great house in Puerto Rico.

SPEAKER_02 49:38

So, I mean, from your perspective, this is this is the moment. I mean, have you ever seen anything like this?

SPEAKER_00 49:44

Right? No, no, nothing like this. And I I study all the history. I'm not even telling you how much I study history. You'd be telling me to go find a girlfriend or something, okay? Um, I study everything in history, and bubbles have happened before, and technologies always drive growth, and population's always been growing. That will stop around 2100. It's forecasted global population will peak, but that hasn't peaked yet, and it's still growing in the merging world. That's why you got to be in the merging world to catch more of the next boom. And again, why if I'm gonna invest in developed countries at the bottom? I want the US technology because that's where we're the strongest. Interesting. All right, gives investors a lot to think about right now. Uh.com, I got a free newsletter. Get on that. I've got paid newsletters and stuff, but but but this would be a good time to get on my free newsletter and and keep getting an alternate point of view because everybody's gonna tell you this is okay and they're gonna be wrong about this. Except us.

SPEAKER_02 50:41

We keep we keep having guests like you. So I appreciate coming on. Uh yeah, HSDeck uh dentist, uh great newsletter. I love it.

SPEAKER_00 50:48

HarryDent.com is the where to get on the free newsletter. You just that's all that site is for. Just push the button, you're on our free newsletter. That's something. Beauty.

SPEAKER_02 50:56

Appreciate it, Harry. All right, thank you so much. We'll have you back and uh, you know, maybe towards the end of summer and look at what where we're at in the markets. Yeah, yeah, that's right.

SPEAKER_00 51:06

If we if we don't have a if this crash doesn't begin by then, then I gotta relook at some stuff.

SPEAKER_02 51:11

Yeah, and I'm sure you will.

SPEAKER_00 51:13

This is the most likely time for that first crash. And again, this is not something you can wait on because it will be bigger than you expect.

SPEAKER_02 51:20

Yeah, look at it for the two to three months. All right, appreciate your time. Thanks again. Okay, thank you, Jeremy. Thank you. All right, and thank you all for watching. Let us know in the comments where you stand right now. Physical gold, cash, treasury, something else. And do you think private credit is still the real crack that the broader market's underestimating? Make sure to subscribe to Kitco News. Turn on notifications so you never miss our interviews and market coverage. I'm Jeremy Saffron. We'll see you next time.

SPEAKER_01 51:45

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