Harry Dent: We're Poised for a Cultural and Social Civil War

Harry Dent, author of The Sale of a Lifetime: How the Great Bubble Burst of 2017-2019 Can Make You Rich, joined Glenn on radio today to talk about the economic bubble we're in --- and how the government is only prolonging and worsening the inevitable.

"Governments are trying to prevent the obvious: A natural generational down cycle, like we saw from 1969 to '82 and from 1930 to '42. This happens every 40 years, and we shouldn't prevent these cycles. We should let them happen and clear the decks of debt and excess capacity and bad companies to get efficient and prepare for the next generational boom. And we're not doing that," Dent said.

The government's answer has been to interfere with endless quantitative easing, infrastructure spending and globalization --- but it's all starting to fail.

"Globalization has peaked. The second big surge from World War II into recently has peaked. Globalization has been a great productivity tool --- better trade, all this stuff --- but it has gone too far," Dent said.

Listen to this segment from The Glenn Beck Program:

GLENN: Harry Dent is a friend of the program. Glad to have you back on, Harry. He's got a book out, The Sale of a Lifetime: How the Great Bubble Burst of 2017 Can Make You Rich.

Harry, you and I kind of look at the world in similar ways: I don't buy into -- let me say it this way: I believe in seasons. I believe in the Kondratiev way. I believe in expansion and contraction and that patterns repeat. But everyone wants to deny those patterns even though you can go back, you know, 100 years plus and see that those patterns are there. Can you explain the -- the cycles and principles of bubbles?

HARRY: Yeah. You know, this is a part of the entire creation. There's just no question about it. Everything goes up and down. It's even Newton's third law of physics. And that's what I do, is I study cycles.

And in the '80s, I discovered demographic cycles, which economists and nobody else I know of, have much of a clue on.

The Baby Boom drove us up with their spending from 1983 to 2007, just a 46-year lag on the birth index. That's how complex that was.

In 2008 into 2023, they drive us down. And, of course, governments have been fighting that with quantitative easing, and now Trump is going to come in and do fiscal stimulus and cut taxes and build infrastructure. It's not going to happen.

So that's --

GLENN: Wait. Wait. Wait. You're saying it's not going to happen. This is so important.

HARRY: Not going to happen, period.

GLENN: If you can explain a little bit. Because when you said this to me a while back and we were talking about real estate and you explained, "Glenn, the day of the big house is over for quite some time," and you explained it because of the demographic bubble, I got it for the first time. Can you explain that?

HARRY: Yeah, two things: People buy their house a little earlier. The biggest house, the McMansion, if you can afford one, before their peak in spending at 46, at age 41. That's why the housing bubble peaked ahead of the overall economy that started going down in 2008.

The housing started going down a few years earlier. And in addition to that, for the first time in history, we have a small -- or slightly, in this case, slightly smaller generation. In many countries, a lot smaller, like Germany in most of Europe and Japan and east Asia, a smaller generation to follow. Houses last forever.

We don't ever need to build another house in this country. And you've got 8 million empty homes in Japan and also a bunch in Germany and more to come because as people die, they become sellers. When there's more Baby Boomers dying than millennials buying houses, then you actually have net contraction in the need for homes, as we're already seeing in many countries.

So demographics is very predictive. It's scientific. You can project it decades into the future, including inflation. Including overall growth and contraction, housing, potato chips, car buying. They all happen at different times in the consumer lifestyle, but I know when. You know, life insurance actuaries can tell you when the average person is going to die. It's 79.6 in the US. I can tell you when they're going to buy everything from cradle to grave. You know, from baby cribs to nursing home.

GLENN: So what is the -- what do those demographics now say about 2017?

HARRY: Well, they say, first of all, we've been in a desk graphic down trend. Biggest boom in history from Baby Boomers now turns into the biggest bust. And if it weren't for quantitative easing, we'd all be in a depression because we also have an 80-year four-season cycle as you know. The winter season, I said decades ago, would be 2008 to 2023.

We're in that season. It's just they're turning up the heat with endless quantitative easing.

The problem is, it's not working anymore. Negative interest rates started to backfire in Europe and Japan.

And so now, everybody is backing off of that. We were first. And now Trump is saying, "Well, then I'll just cut taxes, and I'll build endless infrastructures."

You can't -- we don't need more infrastructures. Aging people don't buy more of anything. They pay down debt. They don't drive more. They buy almost no real estate, except nursing homes that somebody provides for them.

We don't need more infrastructure. So this is all going to be wasteful spending. Governments are trying to prevent the obvious: A natural generational down cycle, like we saw from 1969 to '82 and from 1930 to '42. This happens every 40 years, and we shouldn't prevent these cycles. We should let them happen and clear the decks of debt and excess capacity and bad companies to get efficient and prepare for the next generational boom. And we're not doing that.

Japan is stimulated, ever since 1997, and guess what, they're in a coma economy. Never entered the next spring season. They're 15, 20 years ahead of us. And they've killed their economy. They've killed innovation. They've been growing at zero -- with zero productivity and zero inflation. And that's where we're heading. When Trump says he's going to create 4 percent growth, it's not going to happen. I would stake my life on that. More than a quarter or two and people get excited because our workforce is no longer growing.

It's actually shrinking a bit in the next several years. Productivity is back from 3 to 4 percent, down to zero, because old people don't get more productive, they get less.

And Baby Boomers continue to retire from 2000, all the way to 2024, '25. So that's going to take more people out of the workforce and make us less productive. So we're going to go from zero to negative. We're going to be lucky to grow above zero for the next two terms of his administration. And I hate to say this, Glenn. It's nothing against Donald.

I predicted today, got elected, he wouldn't last the first year. Will not last the first year is my likely prediction.

GLENN: Wow.

HARRY: Because he's promised something he cannot deliver. He's pissed everybody off in every realm. Countries, immigrants, you know, ethnic groups, women. All this sort of stuff. He has the impulse control of a grease fire.

GLENN: Let me tell you -- let me tell you -- give you a counter to that.

When there is financial trouble and strife, a country can go one of two ways: It can go into riots in the streets, or it can go into nationalism and we all pull together. And we seem to be going the national way, without the economic strife yet.

If you're saying the bubble burst is happening this year, I see a rise of nationalism. And that would make him stronger.

HARRY: Yeah, no, actually I predicted this before the election, that this thing, you know, Brexit and then the Italian vote and then Trump winning against the odds and we're going to see much more -- this is a global phenomenon.

GLENN: It is.

HARRY: Globalization has peaked. The second big surge from World War II into recently has peaked. Globalization has been a great productivity tool. Better trade. All this stuff. But it has gone too far. Too many people feel like their jobs have been lost. We've been put face-to-face in an internet globalized world. And now we've got a huge inflict in values.

GLENN: So what does this mean? What does this mean to the average person, Harry?

HARRY: It means we've got a cultural social civil war. In other words, the blue states and the red states, the blue cities, red cities, whatever you want to call it, are so polarized. And I've got measurements of this.

I mean, this is life just before the Civil War. That there's no way to have compromise. There's no way to have a government.

If Trump succeeds -- and he is. He's doing exactly what his voters told him to do. But what's happening is now the blue states are reacting. If Hillary had come in, she would have the blue way, and the red states would have reacted.

Before the election, I said, if Hillary gets elected, somewhere pretty soon, states like Texas are going to talk about leaving the union. Well, guess who's got a petition to put on ballot in 2018 --

GLENN: California.

HARRY: -- for California to start to leave the union. And California is the largest state. Controls the two most productive dominant US industries in the world. Entertainment and Silicon Valley. And if they threaten to leave, that makes Italy and Greece threatening to leave the euro like nothing. So I think we have a civil -- I don't know how it works out. But I know the red states and the blue states cannot come to compromise. Trump is rolling forward as if he has a mandate from the red states. And he does. But does that say the blue states have to say, "Well, we'll just roll over and do everything you say?" California is already saying no. There's ten or 15 states that they could follow them. Now, what happens then? The South succeeded in the Civil War. We'll see what happens. But I think the only way we may come together as a country, is when we realize, oh, my God, if we don't find some way to work this out together, we're going to split in two, and we're not going to have the power we had.

GLENN: So let me ask you this: We just saw that Jim Rodgers said, the death of cash is coming. Total government control of spending. We've seen this in India. We're seeing the beginnings of it in Australia.

You know, I read a -- I read a book recently called Defying Hitler, that really, when I read how Weimar Republic got out of their problems, I thought, oh, my gosh, they actually thought that worked. They thought that was a good thing.

And I think the central banks have looked at that lesson and said, "Well, we could always do that." And, you know, you look at this with the inflating of the money. Because we were worried about deflation. The inflating of the money. The growing government control. Now they're starting to digitize currency and saying, "Hey, you got a cap on this." They're allowing the banks to say, "We could have a bail-in." I think we are headed for a firestorm in the financial sector with the people picking up pitchforks as they trap their money in banks and won't allow them to have cash or at least large sums of cash.

HARRY: Yeah. This is one of many issues. And I do see civil unrest. I am -- I am in Puerto Rico now. It's a bankrupt country, but at least they know it. And they're dealing with it like Iceland did. And, by the way, Iceland devalued. Did everything Greece should have done: Defaulted on their foreign debts. Went through three years of inflation. They crippled their consumers and came out the other side and are growing at 4 percent again.

They took their medicine, instead of endless bailouts, endless denial. Bail-ins -- you go and take the best small businesses and large businesses and high net worth deposits over 100,000 and have those people bail out a bank and you think they'll ever put money in a bank again and people won't have pitchforks? So all of this reaction is coming from the fact that governments are not facing the problem. Politicians are not telling people, like in Puerto Rico, which they've been foreseeing that we are bankrupt. We are way more bankrupt than Puerto Rico.

GLENN: But we can't declare -- but we can't declare bankruptcy. The United States can't default on their debt.

HARRY: No, no, no, but you can restructure, especially private debt. What businesses do when businesses get in trouble in the economy, it used to be Chapter 7. Fire sale. And you get 10 cents on the dollar. The vulture creditors come in.

The US was the one that innovated Chapter 11. Let the courts protect the business for a short period of time so they can sell off their assets in an orderly manner instead of fire sale. Have time to renegotiate with creditors and say, "Hey, what if we pay you 50 cents instead of you getting 10 percent in a fire sale?" And then they come to an agreement and everything moves forward.

We need that. We have to write off debt. You can't keep bailing out banks and things in countries like Greece. You have to restructure the debt and let the banks and the bondholders and the equity investors who took the risk from those things take losses. And then if governments do provide some financial assistance, it's only in direction correlation to the amount that banks wrote down. Because when they write down debt, guess what, businesses and consumers get relief, it freeze up cash flow, and we can grow again. We will never come out of this with these denial policies. And every policy from QE to building infrastructures for nobody, you know, cutting taxes, all you're doing is changing the fixed pie. You're saying, "Okay. We're going to take money that would have gone to government and give it to businesses."

Well, why not just send everybody a 20,000 check like we gave the banks all this QE money. This is denial. It doesn't solve the problem. It's like taking a drug to feel better and keep from coming down, rather than going to detox.

We need a giant detox. Detox does not come without banks and some businesses going under that are zombies. And it doesn't come without writing down debts. And we did that in spades in the Great Depression. The Great Depression only took three years to bottom. And we did nothing but grow after that.

Because like Iceland, we took our medicine and went on, instead of doing this denial. Oh -- you know, even Trump came in and said, "We're in a big, fat ugly bubble." Well, he hasn't studied bubbles. You can't just walk out of a bubble. Bubbles are extremes, and you have to rebalance, and that is painful. Just like detox. It's exactly like detox for a drug addict. There's no other choice.

GLENN: Harry, I appreciate it. Thank you so much for being on with us. The name of the book is The Sale Of a Lifetime: How the Great Bubble Burst of 2017 Through 2019 Can Make You Rich.

Harry Dent. I highly recommend that you pay attention to him and that you pick up his book and read it. Harry, I can't thank you enough. Thank you for being on.

What do clay pots have to do with to preserving American history?

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Editor's note: This article was originally published on TheBlaze.com.

Why should we preserve our nation’s history? If you listen to my radio program and podcast, or read my columns and books, you know I’ve dedicated a large part of my life and finances to sourcing and preserving priceless artifacts that tell America’s story. I’ve tried to make these artifacts as available as possible through the American Journey Experience Museum, just across from the studios where I do my daily radio broadcast. Thousands of you have come through the museum and have been able to see and experience these artifacts that are a part of your legacy as an American.

The destruction of American texts has already begun.

But why should people like you and me be concerned about preserving these things from our nation's history? Isn’t that what the “big guys” like the National Archives are for?

I first felt a prompting to preserve our nation's history back in 2008, and it all started with clay pots and the Dead Sea Scrolls. In 1946, a Bedouin shepherd in what is now the West Bank threw a rock into a cave nestled into the side of a cliff near the Dead Sea. Instead of hearing an echo, he heard the curious sound of a clay pot shattering. He discovered more than 15,000 Masoretic texts from the third century B.C. to the first century A.D.

These texts weren’t just a priceless historical discovery. They were virtually perfect copies of the same Jewish texts that continue to be translated today. Consider the significance of that discovery. Since the third century B.C. when these texts were first written, the Jewish people have endured a continued onslaught of diasporas, persecutions, pressures to conform to their occupying power, the destruction of their temple, and so much more. They had to fight for their identity as a people for centuries, and finally, a year after the end of the Holocaust and a year before the founding of the nation of Israel, these texts were discovered, confirming the preservation and endurance of their heritage since ancient times — all due to someone putting these clay pots in a desert cave more than 2,000 years ago.

I first felt a prompting to preserve our nation's history back in 2008, and it all started with clay pots and the Dead Sea Scrolls.

So, what do these clay pots have to do with the calling to preserve American history? I didn’t understand that prompting myself until the horrible thought dawned on me that the people we are fighting against may very well take our sacred American scriptures, our Declaration of Independence, and our Bill of Rights. What if they are successful, and 1,000 years from now, we have no texts preserved to confirm our national identity? What kind of new history would be written over the truth?

The destruction of American texts has already begun. The National Archives has labeled some of our critical documents, like our Declaration of Independence, Constitution, and Bill of Rights, as “triggering” or “containing harmful language.” In a public statement, the National Archives said that the labels help prepare readers to view potentially distressing content:

The Catalog and web pages contain some content that may be harmful or difficult to view. NARA’s records span the history of the United States, and it is our charge to preserve and make available these historical records. As a result, some of the materials presented here may reflect outdated, biased, offensive, and possibly violent views and opinions. In addition, some of the materials may relate to violent or graphic events and are preserved for their historical significance.

According to this statement, our founding documents are either “outdated, biased, offensive,” “possibly violent,” or a combination of these scathing descriptions. I’m sorry, the Declaration of Independence is not “triggering.” Our Constitution is not “outdated and biased,” and our Bill of Rights certainly is not “offensive and possibly violent.” They are glorious documents. They should be celebrated, not qualified by such derogatory, absurd language. Shame on them.

These are only the beginning stages of rewriting our history. What if they start banning these “triggering” documents from public view because they might offend somebody? Haven’t we torn down “triggering” statues before? What if we are no longer able to see, read, and study the actual words of our nation's founding documents because they are “harmful” or “possibly violent”? A thousand years from now, will there be any remnant to piece together the true spirit behind the nation that our founders envisioned?

The Declaration of Independence is not “triggering.”

That is why in 2008, I was prompted to preserve what I could. Now, the American Journey Experience Museum includes more than 160,000 artifacts, from founding-era documents to the original Roe v. Wade court papers. We need to preserve the totality of our nation’s heritage, the good, the bad, and the ugly. We need to preserve our history in our own clay pots.

I ask you to join with me on this mission. Start buying books that are important to preserve. Buy some acid-free paper and start printing some of the founding documents, the reports that go against the mainstream narrative, the studies that prove what is true as we are continually being fed lies. Start preserving our daily history as well as our history because it is being rewritten and digitized.

Somebody must have a copy of what is happening now and what has happened in the past. I hope things don’t get really bad. But if they do, we need to preserve our heritage. Perhaps, someone 1,000 years from now will discover our clay pots and, Lord willing, be able to have a glimpse of America as it truly was.

Top 10 WORST items in the new $1.2 TRILLION spending bill

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Biden just signed the newest spending bill into law, and Glenn is furious.

Under Speaker Johnson's leadership, the whopping $1.2 TRILLION package will use your taxpayer dollars to fund the government through September. Of course, the bill is loaded with earmarks and pork that diverts money to fund all sorts of absurd side projects.

Here is the list of the ten WORST uses of taxpayer money in the recently passed spending bill:

Funding venues to host drag shows, including ones that target children

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Money for transgender underwear for kids

Funding for proms for 12 to 18 year old kids

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Border security funding... for Jordan and Egypt

Another $300 million for Ukraine

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$3.5 million for Detroit's annual Thanksgiving Day parade

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$2.5 million for a new kayaking facility in Franklin, New Hampshire

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$2.7 million for a bike park in White Sulfur Springs, West Virginia, a town with a population of less than 2,300 people

$5 million for a new trail at Coastal Carolina University

$4 million the "Alaska King Crab Enhancement Project" (whatever that means)

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There is no doubt about it—we are entering dark times.

The November presidential election is only a few months away, and following the chaos of the 2020 election, the American people are bracing for what is likely to be another tumultuous election year. The left's anti-Trump rhetoric is reaching an all-time high with the most recent "Bloodbath" debacle proving how far the media will go to smear the former president. That's not to mention the Democrats' nearly four-year-long authoritarian attempt to jail President Trump or stop his re-election by any means necessary, even if it flies in the face of the Constitution.

Meanwhile, Biden is doing worse than ever. He reportedly threw a tantrum recently after being informed that his polls have reached an all-time low. After Special Counsel Robert Hur's report expressed concerns over Biden's obviously failing mental agility, it's getting harder for the Democrats to defend him. Yet he is still the Democratic nominee for November, promising another 4 years of catastrophic policies, from the border to heavy-handed taxation, should he be reelected.

The rest of the world isn't doing much better. The war in Ukraine has no clear end in sight, drawing NATO and Russia closer and closer to conflict. The war in Gaza is showing no sign of slowing down, and as Glenn revealed recently, its continuation may be a sign that the end times are near.

One thing is clear: we are living in uncertain times. If you and your family haven't prepared for the worst, now is the time. You can start by downloading "Glenn's Ultimate Guide to Getting Prepared." Be sure to print off a copy or two. If the recent cell outage proved anything, it's that technology is unreliable in survival situations. You can check your list of supplies against our "Ultimate Prepper Checklist for Beginners," which you can find below:

Food

  • Canned food/non-perishable foods
  • Food preparation tools
  • Go to the next level: garden/livestock/food production

Water

  • Non-perishable water store
  • Water purification
  • Independent water source

Shelter

  • Fireplace with a wood supply
  • Tent
  • Generator with fuel supply
  • Go to the next level: fallout shelter

Money

  • Emergency cash savings
  • Precious metals

Medicine

  • Extra blankets
  • Basic first aid
  • Extra prescriptions
  • Extra glasses
  • Toiletries store
  • Trauma kit
  • Antibiotics
  • Basic surgery supplies
  • Potassium Iodate tablets

Transportation

  • Bicycle
  • Car
  • Extra fuel

Information

  • Birth certificates
  • Insurance cards
  • Marriage license
  • Immunization records
  • Mortgage paperwork
  • Car title and registration
  • House keys, car keys
  • Passports
  • Family emergency plan
  • Prepping/survival/repair manuals
  • Go to the next level: copy of the Bible, the U.S. Constitution, and other important books/sources

Skills

  • Cooking
  • Gardening
  • Sewing
  • First Aid
  • Basic maintenance skills
  • Go to the next level: farming/ranching
  • Self-defense training

Communication

  • Family contact information and addresses
  • HAM radio

Miscellaneous

  • Flashlights and batteries
  • Lamps and fuel
  • Hardware (tools, nails, lumber, etc)
  • Extra clothes
  • Extreme weather clothes and gear
  • Gas masks and filters
  • Spare parts for any machinery/equipment

Is Trump's prosecution NORMAL?  This COMPLETE list of ALL Western leaders who served jail time proves otherwise.

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Mainstream media is on a crusade to normalize Donald Trump's indictments as if it's on par with the electoral course. Glenn asked his team to research every instance of a Western leader who was jailed during their political career over the past 200 years—except extreme political turmoil like the French Revolution, Napoleonic Wars, Irish Revolution, etc.—and what we discovered was quite the opposite.

Imprisoning a leader or major political opponent is not normal, neither in the U.S. nor in the Western world. Within the last 200 years, there are only a handful of examples of leaders in the West serving jail time, and these men were not imprisoned under normal conditions. All of these men were jailed under extreme circumstances during times of great peril such as the Civil War, World War II, and the Cold War.

What does this mean for America? Are Trump's indictments evidence that we are re-entering times of great peril? Below is a list of Western leaders who were imprisoned within the last 200 years. Take a look and decide for yourself:

Late 1800s

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Jefferson Davis: The nearest occurrence to a U.S. President to serve jail time was in the case of Jefferson Davis, the first and only president of the Confederate States of America. Jefferson was captured in Georgia by Northern Soldiers in 1865 and locked up in Fort Monroe, Virginia for two years. He was offered a presidential pardon but refused out of his loyalty to the confederacy.

Early 1900s

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Eugene V. Debs: Debbs, a Midwestern socialist leader, became the first person to run for president in prison. He was locked up at a federal penitentiary in Atlanta having been convicted under the federal Sedition Act for giving an antiwar speech a few months before Armistice Day, the end of World War I. Many of his supporters believed his imprisonment to be unjust. Debs received 897,704 votes and was a distant third-part candidate behind Warren G. Harding, the Republican winner, and James M. Cox, the second-place Democrat. Harding ordered Debs’s release from prison toward the end of 1921.

Nazi sympathizers and collaborators: After the end of World War II in 1945, several European leaders who had "led" their countries during the Nazi occupation faced trial and imprisonment for treason. This list included Chief of the French State Philippe Pétain, French Prime Minister Pierre Laval, and Minister-President of Norway Vidkun Quisling. The latter two were also executed after their imprisonment. President of Finland Risto Ryti and Prime Minister of Finland Johan Wilhelm Rangell were also tried and jailed for collaborating with the Nazis against the Allied Powers.

Late 1900s

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The end of the Cold War: The fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 was one of the pivotal moments that brought the Cold War to a close and marked the end of Communist East Germany. With the fall of the wall and the collapse of the German Democratic Republic (East Germany), the former leaders were brought to trial to answer for the crimes committed by the GDR. General Secretary Erich Honecker and General Secretary Egon Krenz were both put on trial for abuse of power and the deaths of those who were shot trying to flee into West Germany. Honecker was charged with jail time but was released from custody due to severe illness and lived out the rest of his life as an exile in Chile. Krenz served 4 years in jail before his release in 2001. He is one of the last surviving leaders of the Eastern Bloc.

Lyndon LaRouche: Larouche was a Trotsky evangelist, public antisemite, and founder of a nationwide Marxist political movement, became the second person in U.S. history to run for President in a prison cell. Granted, he ran in every election from 1976 to 2004 as a long-shot third-party candidate. When he tried to gain the Democratic presidential nomination, he received 5 percent of the total nationwide vote. Even though in 2000 he received enough primary votes to qualify for delegates in a few states, the Democratic National Committee refused to seat his delegates and barred LaRouche from attending the Democratic National Convention.