Will Our Economic Bubble Burst Before the Election?

October 13, 2016

Writer

Harry Dent, author of the new book The Sale of a Lifetime and editor of Economy and Markets, joined The Glenn Beck Program on Thursday to discuss the economic crisis facing America and what experts are calling an imminent crash of the stock market.

Read below or watch the clip for answers to these questions:

• What's the artificial bubble that's about to burst?

• Is Glenn going to sell all of his stocks?

• What does Harry Dent recommend for investors?

Below is a rush transcript of this segment, it might contain errors:

GLENN: Welcome to the program, Harry Dent, author of the new book The Sale of a Lifetime, editor of Economy and Markets at HarryDent.com.

Welcome, harry, how are you?

HARRY: Yeah, nice to be back, Glenn.

GLENN: In the 1980s, you kind of woke up to the stock market cycle. And you began to track this in a different way than everybody else. And you called the bubble of the '90s. You called the bubble of the early 2000s and 2008. And I've been following you for a while. And the one that is coming is gigantic. Would you agree?

HARRY: Yeah, it is. Because, you know, we have two natural bubbles with tech bubble and internet and then with the Baby Boomers peak and spending, which was into 2007, which like you said, we predicted 20 years before that happened, that we we'd have a greater boom than anybody thought. But then it would peak around 2007.

Of course, we've had quantitative easing ever since to try to ease the pain, and that still didn't work. But now we've got a third. And what I hate about it, totally artificial bubble that's all about printing free money. You know, $12 trillion of free money printed around the world.

And since zero interest rates were not low enough, now we've got to go negative in more and more countries. This is insanity to just force people to keep buying back their own stocks with companies or borrowing that little bit more or speculating more. Traders and stuff. And that's all we're growing on. So this is much more dangerous.

And I call this the third and final bubble. And when we peak into the '60s and early '70s, we had three higher highs in the market and three bigger crashes. And, of course, the last one, '73 to '74, was the big one. And that's what I'm seeing here, that 2017 to 2019, approximately, is going to be the time when we see a crash that's bigger and deeper than 2008 and '9. And it actually puts us into more of a depression than just a great recession.

When you grow debt, two and a halftimes GDP for 40 years, you're going to have a debt bubble. And that's going to cause financial asset bubbles and stocks and real estate commodities and everything else. And those bubbles are going to have to unwind. They have to, or you can't go forward in life. The economy can't move forward.

So we've been putting this off now for seven, eight years, which means, it's like a drug addict taking more and more to keep from coming down from the high. When you finally get hit and go to detox, it's not going to be pretty.

GLENN: But you know, a lot of people have taken this hit. Greece is probably the biggest. They've taken their hit.

Germany, they're still out of control. But they're still thinking that they're going to now bail-in. China spends more and more money. I mean, in your book, you talk about these ghost cities that are -- I mean, I was struck by this.

The Changsha City Sky Dream. You write: It was meant to become the world's tallest building at 2,749 feet, 202 stories, built in the shortest time. Imagine building a 202 story building. The Chinese wanted to build it in 90 days.

HARRY: Yeah.

GLENN: We built --

HARRY: It was the first prefab skyscraper. Oh, my gosh.

(chuckling)

GLENN: It's now a fishing hole. The whole thing was stopped and collapsed, and now they just -- the big hole in the ground where the foundation was. They've just filled it with water, and the locals are using it to raise fish.

But, anyway, there's another country completely out of control.

HARRY: You know, it's worse than that, Glenn. I mean, now the latest thing, Shenzhen, which is the most bubbly, large city there, they're now selling apartments, 66 square feet, the size of a decent closet, for $132,000, seven to ten times the income of the people in that city to get a closet to live in. I mean, if that's not a bubble, I don't know what is.

GLENN: So, Harry, the whole thing looks like it's coming down. Is there going to be any system that survives?

HARRY: Well, what happens at a time like this, this is when you can't listen to your stockbroker or even a good financial adviser. Because every -- you're going to have a big reset. We've had bubbles and everything, from this endless low and zero interest rates and endless stimulated economy and printing of money. And this is always going to happen, when this happens throughout history.

So everything has to reset. We even have a bond bubble. Normally, treasury bonds would be a safe place to go longer term. But they're going to have to at least correct it first from their own bubble, from central banks pushing down their yields to zero and negative, before they can grow again. And stocks have to come down. And real estate -- commodities have already crashed. I've been telling people for years, "When bubbles burst, it's not 20, 30, 40 percent. It is 70, 80, 90." And commodities have already collapsed, 70 to 80 percent, proving that when bubbles burst, they crash. They don't just go down slowly, and they don't just correct. And that's going to have to happen to everything else. So there's nowhere to hide. So the thing you do is you just get out.

I'm with HSBC. We said, hey, we're looking like we're going to break a key trend line up, which we did this morning. And the markets could be starting to crash again. And I never know exactly when it's going to happen. And the market never makes it easy. But it is going to be nasty. And one of the other things we've warned people, almost every bubble has had this happen, especially in stocks.

The first crash, even though the bubble is going to end up going down 80 percent on average, the first crash is going to be 40 to 45 percent in two to three months. And that happened in China last year. That happened in 1929. That happened in the tech bubble. It happened in the Nikkei bubble in Japan. And that's what we do in this book. We look at all major bubbles in history and say, "Look, these are not black swans when they crash. They build predictably over a period of time. They grow exponentially. But when they crash, they crash at least twice as fast. And half of that happens in the first two to three months." So you're an idiot if you don't get out a little early. If you want to wait until it's proven, you're going to be down 40 percent before you can react. That's not good investment strategy.

GLENN: So, Harry, I'm the average person, I don't have -- you know, I have a 401(k) or if I have a stockbroker. I barely even know his name.

HARRY: Right.

GLENN: And I go to the stockbroker, and they're going to say, "Look, keep it in. You know, this is long-term. You're going to lose money now, but you're not planning on pulling it out for another 20 years anyway. You leave it in."

HARRY: Yep. And that is why you cannot listen to these people now. Eighty percent of the time or more of that is right. But I tell people all the time, "When you see a major long-term generational spending wave peak, like in '29 or '68, and especially when you see a bubble like 1929 -- 1929 crash was 89 percent in stocks in less than three years, and it took 24 years to get back to even. If you had been a retiring person with a 401(k) plan back then, you would have been dead before you got back to even.

So that is not -- stocks don't always come back, not when you see a major bubble burst and/or when you see a long-term trend. Even in '68, that was not as much of a bubble boom.

But when the Bob Hope generation stopped spending, and when inflation and OPEC set in, it took 54 years to get back to even on that. Manhattan real estate, it crashed the most in the '30s. The greatest city in the world, supposedly, which people think can't go down.

Took into the mid-50s even longer than stocks to get back to even. So you have to get out of the way. And what we do in the book is we say, "Look, there's going to be different sectors over the, next, two, three, four, five years that are going to crash and bottom."

And, you know, we show models for bubbles to show, okay. You can know about how much downside there is. In real estate, it's more like 50 to 60 percent. In stocks, it's more like 70 to 80. In commodities, 80 to 90.

When you see that bubble get erased, then you can get back in long-term and listen to your financial adviser again.

But right now, they will tell you the wrong thing. I can guarantee you. They will just say, "It's all right. You're diversified."

Diversification didn't help in 2008 and '9. And it will help less now. And this is the final bubble crash. There's no way the fed can pull this stunt again if we go into a worst downturn. They're going to lose all credibility.

So you got to just get out of the way. And I'm just saying, look, we have four major indicators, which you mentioned a lot of them earlier, that all point down the same time into late 2000 (inaudible) -- we just got about a three-year period here of extreme danger, after that, you can feel better about stepping back in.

But, hey, what's it to miss three years of stock games when the stock market has, by the way, gone nowhere in the last couple of years, and commodities have only gone down?

So it's bubbled up so much that we think there's less than this. And Baron Rothschild always said, "The secret to my wealth was I always sold a little early."

GLENN: Harry, the -- you say that have cash on hand.

HARRY: Yes.

GLENN: I read a story yesterday that, you know, cash is crashing everywhere. And it's crashing because the central banks can't control it anymore. Our own central bank -- the Federal Reserve, has a white paper out, an internal white paper that was released that shows if this next recession hits, to make any impact, they believe they have to print $4 trillion in bailout stimulus money. And they said, "We're not even sure that would work." I mean, what happens to cash? Are you concerned about cash?

HARRY: I tell you, one of the things I show in the book is how all -- the total financial assets, loans, you know, mortgages, stocks, bonds, everything -- it's about $300 trillion, far beyond stretched any time in history. Can't even compare it.

That's $300 trillion. And in a time like the 1930s when these bubbles de-leverage. I'm talking about a minimum $120 trillion in financial assets, disappearing and not coming back for a long time.

So I would say, if the central banks want to offset the next downturn, they're going to have to print 100 trillion or more worldwide. I don't think they can get away with that.

So 4 trillion would not be enough. They don't know what they're talking about.

GLENN: I know.

EVAN: But they're just trying to slide by and keep the bubble going until they retire from office, like Bernanke or, you know, Obama now and any other president. Everybody just wants to push this thing down the road until the next administration or fed chairman comes in. Because somebody is going to have to take the consequences. You don't get something for nothing. If there's nothing I've learned in life, that's the number one lesson: You don't get something for nothing. And we've had the biggest for nothing economy for decades, but particularly since the financial crisis in 2008 and '9, when we've been living on printed money. You can't solve a debt crisis by creating more debt and printing more money. Because that's how you got there in the first place, printing money through debt. This is crazy.

GLENN: Harry, do you believe that you can trust the banks to keep your money in?

HARRY: No. Because they lend money out. And they've got -- I mean, Deutsche Bank is down 92 percent since its peak in 2007, and continuing to go down because they've got $55 trillion in derivative exposures. You know, four times or whatever -- six times the GDP of Germany or whatever. And bad loans in Italy and bad loans in Germany, bad loans with frackers in the United States.

You know, Italian and German banks and more and more banks have bad loans. And when those loans go bad, they only have 10 percent capital, which Deutsche Bank only has 3 percent because they've been battered. And you start losing money on loans. And all of a sudden, oops, you don't have the money to give depositors back because they lend against your deposits. And they're your deposits, not yours. They don't just raise capital and lend out money.

That's what a normal financial institution should do. They pledge ten percent of our deposits. And then like in the Depression, when those loans go bad, they're like, "Well, you know, we said we had your deposits, but we actually don't. We lost it. We lent it out, 10:1 to your reserves, in deposits, and we never -- and we didn't get it back." So you can't. You have to have your money in a brokerage account. I prefer to be with an independent firm that only does transactions. There's not invest in investment banking or speculate in the markets or lend money from mortgages online or anything. And you just have your money in your own name. They cannot lend against an account in your own name. They can lend against your checking or savings account.

GLENN: Okay. Harry, I've got literally ten seconds. I need a yes or a no on this. Do you think this bubble is going to happen fast enough to affect the election?

HARRY: Possibly, because we just made a big break today. So we could be down 10 percent in a matter of weeks. And, yes, a down market helps the outsider like Trump, and it hurts the insider like Clinton. We've said that for a long time.

GLENN: It could.

Okay. My grandfather -- my grandfather lived through the Depression, and he always said the people who made money during the Depression were the people that had money during the Depression that got their money out.

HARRY: Exactly.

GLENN: That's the premise of Harry's book, The Sale of a Lifetime. Everywhere now. The Sale of a Lifetime. Harry, always good to have you on. Thank you so much for the warning today.

HARRY: Okay. Thanks, Glenn.

GLENN: You bet.

Featured Image: Screenshot of Harry Dent from The Glenn Beck Program

Breaking point: Will America stand up to the mob?

Jeff J Mitchell / Staff | Getty Images

The mob rises where men of courage fall silent. The lesson from Portland, Chicago, and other blue cities is simple: Appeasing radicals doesn’t buy peace — it only rents humiliation.

Parts of America, like Portland and Chicago, now resemble occupied territory. Progressive city governments have surrendered control to street militias, leaving citizens, journalists, and even federal officers to face violent anarchists without protection.

Take Portland, where Antifa has terrorized the city for more than 100 consecutive nights. Federal officers trying to keep order face nightly assaults while local officials do nothing. Independent journalists, such as Nick Sortor, have even been arrested for documenting the chaos. Sortor and Blaze News reporter Julio Rosas later testified at the White House about Antifa’s violence — testimony that corporate media outlets buried.

Antifa is organized, funded, and emboldened.

Chicago offers the same grim picture. Federal agents have been stalked, ambushed, and denied backup from local police while under siege from mobs. Calls for help went unanswered, putting lives in danger. This is more than disorder; it is open defiance of federal authority and a violation of the Constitution’s Supremacy Clause.

A history of violence

For years, the legacy media and left-wing think tanks have portrayed Antifa as “decentralized” and “leaderless.” The opposite is true. Antifa is organized, disciplined, and well-funded. Groups like Rose City Antifa in Oregon, the Elm Fork John Brown Gun Club in Texas, and Jane’s Revenge operate as coordinated street militias. Legal fronts such as the National Lawyers Guild provide protection, while crowdfunding networks and international supporters funnel money directly to the movement.

The claim that Antifa lacks structure is a convenient myth — one that’s cost Americans dearly.

History reminds us what happens when mobs go unchecked. The French Revolution, Weimar Germany, Mao’s Red Guards — every one began with chaos on the streets. But it wasn’t random. Today’s radicals follow the same playbook: Exploit disorder, intimidate opponents, and seize moral power while the state looks away.

Dismember the dragon

The Trump administration’s decision to designate Antifa a domestic terrorist organization was long overdue. The label finally acknowledged what citizens already knew: Antifa functions as a militant enterprise, recruiting and radicalizing youth for coordinated violence nationwide.

But naming the threat isn’t enough. The movement’s financiers, organizers, and enablers must also face justice. Every dollar that funds Antifa’s destruction should be traced, seized, and exposed.

AFP Contributor / Contributor | Getty Images

This fight transcends party lines. It’s not about left versus right; it’s about civilization versus anarchy. When politicians and judges excuse or ignore mob violence, they imperil the republic itself. Americans must reject silence and cowardice while street militias operate with impunity.

Antifa is organized, funded, and emboldened. The violence in Portland and Chicago is deliberate, not spontaneous. If America fails to confront it decisively, the price won’t just be broken cities — it will be the erosion of the republic itself.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

URGENT: Supreme Court case could redefine religious liberty

Drew Angerer / Staff | Getty Images

The state is effectively silencing professionals who dare speak truths about gender and sexuality, redefining faith-guided speech as illegal.

This week, free speech is once again on the line before the U.S. Supreme Court. At stake is whether Americans still have the right to talk about faith, morality, and truth in their private practice without the government’s permission.

The case comes out of Colorado, where lawmakers in 2019 passed a ban on what they call “conversion therapy.” The law prohibits licensed counselors from trying to change a minor’s gender identity or sexual orientation, including their behaviors or gender expression. The law specifically targets Christian counselors who serve clients attempting to overcome gender dysphoria and not fall prey to the transgender ideology.

The root of this case isn’t about therapy. It’s about erasing a worldview.

The law does include one convenient exception. Counselors are free to “assist” a person who wants to transition genders but not someone who wants to affirm their biological sex. In other words, you can help a child move in one direction — one that is in line with the state’s progressive ideology — but not the other.

Think about that for a moment. The state is saying that a counselor can’t even discuss changing behavior with a client. Isn’t that the whole point of counseling?

One‑sided freedom

Kaley Chiles, a licensed professional counselor in Colorado Springs, has been one of the victims of this blatant attack on the First Amendment. Chiles has dedicated her practice to helping clients dealing with addiction, trauma, sexuality struggles, and gender dysphoria. She’s also a Christian who serves patients seeking guidance rooted in biblical teaching.

Before 2019, she could counsel minors according to her faith. She could talk about biblical morality, identity, and the path to wholeness. When the state outlawed that speech, she stopped. She followed the law — and then she sued.

Her case, Chiles v. Salazar, is now before the Supreme Court. Justices heard oral arguments on Tuesday. The question: Is counseling a form of speech or merely a government‑regulated service?

If the court rules the wrong way, it won’t just silence therapists. It could muzzle pastors, teachers, parents — anyone who believes in truth grounded in something higher than the state.

Censored belief

I believe marriage between a man and a woman is ordained by God. I believe that family — mother, father, child — is central to His design for humanity.

I believe that men and women are created in God’s image, with divine purpose and eternal worth. Gender isn’t an accessory; it’s part of who we are.

I believe the command to “be fruitful and multiply” still stands, that the power to create life is sacred, and that it belongs within marriage between a man and a woman.

And I believe that when we abandon these principles — when we treat sex as recreation, when we dissolve families, when we forget our vows — society fractures.

Are those statements controversial now? Maybe. But if this case goes against Chiles, those statements and others could soon be illegal to say aloud in public.

Faith on trial

In Colorado today, a counselor cannot sit down with a 15‑year‑old who’s struggling with gender identity and say, “You were made in God’s image, and He does not make mistakes.” That is now considered hate speech.

That’s the “freedom” the modern left is offering — freedom to affirm, but never to question. Freedom to comply, but never to dissent. The same movement that claims to champion tolerance now demands silence from anyone who disagrees. The root of this case isn’t about therapy. It’s about erasing a worldview.

The real test

No matter what happens at the Supreme Court, we cannot stop speaking the truth. These beliefs aren’t political slogans. For me, they are the product of years of wrestling, searching, and learning through pain and grace what actually leads to peace. For us, they are the fundamental principles that lead to a flourishing life. We cannot balk at standing for truth.

Maybe that’s why God allows these moments — moments when believers are pushed to the wall. They force us to ask hard questions: What is true? What is worth standing for? What is worth dying for — and living for?

If we answer those questions honestly, we’ll find not just truth, but freedom.

The state doesn’t grant real freedom — and it certainly isn’t defined by Colorado legislators. Real freedom comes from God. And the day we forget that, the First Amendment will mean nothing at all.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

Glenn Beck joins Megyn Kelly LIVE — One night ONLY in Fort Worth!

Get ready for sparks to fly. For the first time in years, Glenn will come face-to-face with Megyn Kelly — and this time, he’s the one in the hot seat. On October 25, 2025, at Dickies Arena in Fort Worth, Texas, Glenn joins Megyn on her “Megyn Kelly Live Tour” for a no-holds-barred conversation that promises laughs, surprises, and maybe even a few uncomfortable questions.

What will happen when two of America’s sharpest voices collide under the spotlight? Will Glenn finally reveal the major announcement he’s been teasing on the radio for weeks? You’ll have to be there to find out.

This promises to be more than just an interview — it’s a live showdown packed with wit, honesty, and the kind of energy you can only feel if you are in the room. Tickets are selling fast, so don’t miss your chance to see Glenn like you’ve never seen him before.

Get your tickets NOW at www.MegynKelly.com before they’re gone!

What our response to Israel reveals about us

JOSEPH PREZIOSO / Contributor | Getty Images

I have been honored to receive the Defender of Israel Award from Prime Minister Netanyahu.

The Jerusalem Post recently named me one of the strongest Christian voices in support of Israel.

And yet, my support is not blind loyalty. It’s not a rubber stamp for any government or policy. I support Israel because I believe it is my duty — first as a Christian, but even if I weren’t a believer, I would still support her as a man of reason, morality, and common sense.

Because faith isn’t required to understand this: Israel’s existence is not just about one nation’s survival — it is about the survival of Western civilization itself.

It is a lone beacon of shared values in the Middle East. It is a bulwark standing against radical Islam — the same evil that seeks to dismantle our own nation from within.

And my support is not rooted in politics. It is rooted in something simpler and older than politics: a people’s moral and historical right to their homeland, and their right to live in peace.

Israel has that right — and the right to defend herself against those who openly, repeatedly vow her destruction.

Let’s make it personal: if someone told me again and again that they wanted to kill me and my entire family — and then acted on that threat — would I not defend myself? Wouldn’t you? If Hamas were Canada, and we were Israel, and they did to us what Hamas has done to them, there wouldn’t be a single building left standing north of our border. That’s not a question of morality.

That’s just the truth. All people — every people — have a God-given right to protect themselves. And Israel is doing exactly that.

My support for Israel’s right to finish the fight against Hamas comes after eighty years of rejected peace offers and failed two-state solutions. Hamas has never hidden its mission — the eradication of Israel. That’s not a political disagreement.

That’s not a land dispute. That is an annihilationist ideology. And while I do not believe this is America’s war to fight, I do believe — with every fiber of my being — that it is Israel’s right, and moral duty, to defend her people.

Criticism of military tactics is fair. That’s not antisemitism. But denying Israel’s right to exist, or excusing — even celebrating — the barbarity of Hamas? That’s something far darker.

We saw it on October 7th — the face of evil itself. Women and children slaughtered. Babies burned alive. Innocent people raped and dragged through the streets. And now, to see our own fellow citizens march in defense of that evil… that is nothing short of a moral collapse.

If the chants in our streets were, “Hamas, return the hostages — Israel, stop the bombing,” we could have a conversation.

But that’s not what we hear.

What we hear is open sympathy for genocidal hatred. And that is a chasm — not just from decency, but from humanity itself. And here lies the danger: that same hatred is taking root here — in Dearborn, in London, in Paris — not as horror, but as heroism. If we are not vigilant, the enemy Israel faces today will be the enemy the free world faces tomorrow.

This isn’t about politics. It’s about truth. It’s about the courage to call evil by its name and to say “Never again” — and mean it.

And you don’t have to open a Bible to understand this. But if you do — if you are a believer — then this issue cuts even deeper. Because the question becomes: what did God promise, and does He keep His word?

He told Abraham, “I will bless those who bless you, and curse those who curse you.” He promised to make Abraham the father of many nations and to give him “the whole land of Canaan.” And though Abraham had other sons, God reaffirmed that promise through Isaac. And then again through Isaac’s son, Jacob — Israel — saying: “The land I gave to Abraham and Isaac I give to you and to your descendants after you.”

That’s an everlasting promise.

And from those descendants came a child — born in Bethlehem — who claimed to be the Savior of the world. Jesus never rejected His title as “son of David,” the great King of Israel.

He said plainly that He came “for the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” And when He returns, Scripture says He will return as “the Lion of the tribe of Judah.” And where do you think He will go? Back to His homeland — Israel.

Tamir Kalifa / Stringer | Getty Images

And what will He find when He gets there? His brothers — or his brothers’ enemies? Will the roads where He once walked be preserved? Or will they lie in rubble, as Gaza does today? If what He finds looks like the aftermath of October 7th, then tell me — what will be my defense as a Christian?

Some Christians argue that God’s promises to Israel have been transferred exclusively to the Church. I don’t believe that. But even if you do, then ask yourself this: if we’ve inherited the promises, do we not also inherit the land? Can we claim the birthright and then, like Esau, treat it as worthless when the world tries to steal it?

So, when terrorists come to slaughter Israelis simply for living in the land promised to Abraham, will we stand by? Or will we step forward — into the line of fire — and say,

“Take me instead”?

Because this is not just about Israel’s right to exist.

It’s about whether we still know the difference between good and evil.

It’s about whether we still have the courage to stand where God stands.

And if we cannot — if we will not — then maybe the question isn’t whether Israel will survive. Maybe the question is whether we will.

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