Economist Reveals How to Turn Political and Financial Upheaval to Your Advantage

November 16, 2017

WRITER

Economist and bestselling author Harry S. Dent, Jr. joined Glenn on radio Thursday morning to discuss his new book, Zero Hour: Turn the Greatest Political and Financial Upheaval in Modern History to Your Advantage.

Listen to the interview above or read the transcript below. Here's the teaser for his latest book:

About the Author

Harry S. Dent, Jr. studied economics at Harvard in the ‘70s, but found it vague and inconclusive. He became so disillusioned by the state of his chosen profession that he turned his back on it. Instead, he threw himself into the burgeoning new science of finance where identifying and studying demographic, technological, consumer and other trends empowered him to forecast economic changes. He is a lecturer, bestselling author and founder of Dent Research, which publishes several influential financial newsletters.

GLENN: All right. I've got somebody that's going to scare the hell out of you.

STU: Wow. I can't wait.

GLENN: Yeah. Yeah. Kids will mess with the environment. Actually we're looking at priorities. Harry Dent is the author of a new book Zero Hour, which I've read. And it will scare the hell out of you. Scare the hell out of you. Because it has a lot of charts and graphs and everything else.

Harry has been on with us many times. He's the guy that predicted the 2008 struggle and what we're going through right now. This is a book on how to turn the greatest political and financial upheaval in modern history to your advantage. Harry Dent Jr. is with us now. Hello, Harry, how are you?

HARRY: Oh, hi, Glenn, good to be back.

GLENN: So, Harry, I know you have a lot of charts and graphs, but I have a lot of questions that I think you're going to be able to actually answer for me.

There is a story that I saw on Business Insider and a couple of other places today, that the stocks are flashing ominous signals. Not seen since the financial crisis. And one of them is the -- Stu, help me out. The Hindenburg omen. And the other is the Titanic Syndrome. A, do you find any credibility in either of those, and what do they mean if you do?

HARRY: The Hindenburg, yes, I do track that. And there have been many, many more signals on that. Much more than usual. That is not a guarantee of a crash. The more important thing I've been looking for, Glenn, because you know I've been talking that this bubble is going to burst at some point. It's going to burst violently when it does. It's the only way it happens in history. The Dow transports are tanking while the Dow Industrials keep edging up. That is a big diversion, and the small --

GLENN: Wait. What does -- what does that mean to the average person? Explain that.

HARRY: Well, it means -- okay. If the industrials are going up, it means, okay. We're still producing stuff. But the transport is not going up. Yeah, but we're not distributing them. People aren't buying it.

And when the small caps go down, in which they've down recently. They're down 4 to 5 percent, with the Dow up. It says, hey, the smart money, who buys small caps because it takes more sophistication, they're getting out of the market, while the everyday person, which buys Apple and GE and all the big names, that's what they know. They're piling -- those are the two diversions I've been looking for. They are starting to show warning signals.

You know, I take that more seriously than the Hindenburg. Because the Hindenburg can happen a lot and still not get a crash, although it's a sign it is more likely.

This is the biggest thing I look for. And this is starting to happen. I think we're in a topping process between October and December and January. And I think the thing, Glenn, that I warn people -- because everybody says, well, Harry, if this things going to burst, I'll just wait till there are signs and when my stockbroker tells me to get out. First of all, your stockbroker will never tell you to get out.

GLENN: Yeah.

HARRY: When bubbles crash, and I've averaged every major bubble in the last century -- the first crash tends to be 41 percent in two and a half months, so it's too late when that happens. Better to get out a little early and be cautious. So I think these warning signs are saying that we are getting close. If you look at the chart -- I mean, this is just like -- we said in November, as soon as Trump got elected against the odds -- and, of course, we were warning that was likely because of this populist movement we were seeing happen. We said, hey, we're going to have another 20, 25 percent rally.

Even though I had been talking about -- this market says, it is going up. It is expecting a big tax cut, but we've seen that rally. And it has been 20 to 25 percent since then. So I think this is -- we're getting very near atop. And when this thing goes and people say, oh, governments won't let this happen. Governments create the damn bubble. You know, they created the roaring 20 bubble. And then the Great Depression.

The fed was created in 1913. And then 20 to 30 years later, you get the Roaring Twenties and the greatest depression of all time, because they boosted up the economy artificially, by cutting rates, cutting rates. Making money cheap. Free money always creates bubbles. Well, that's what they've done here. So for somebody to say, oh, the central banks, the federal reserve won't let this market crack, they're the ones that have created this extreme thing. Stressed the market so far. And when they go, it's like a rubber band, going to the extreme. I'm just telling people, I didn't create this bubble. Get out of the way.

GLENN: Okay. So, Harry, we've been warning about this for a long time. I thought we were not as resilient as we are.

I expected this thing to come crashing down just because of the money printing and the extraordinary levels of debt, which -- not just the government debt. But the debt that we have as Americans. Our credit card debt is, what? 119 billion. And -- and we're starting to default on those. And people have jobs now.

I expected this to go a lot earlier. Why do you think it's this time?

HARRY: Well, you know, it's hard to argue with $14 trillion of free money being created. It's hard to argue with mortgage rates that are 4 percent, when they ought to be 6 percent. Car loans are, you know, two to 3 percent, and they ought to be six to seven.

I mean, everybody is getting a free lunch here. And stocks are going up 20 percent a year, instead of the normal 7 percent adjusted for inflation. You know, everybody is getting a free lunch. You know, mortgage -- housing is going up 10 percent, instead of the 3 percent inflation. So everybody is getting a free lunch. And it makes everybody kind of high. I don't know a better way to say it. And people don't want to hear the bubble is going to burst. I get lambasted all the time. And I'm like, look, I'm just the messenger. I've studied history. Bubbles build. They're totally recognizable.

I have a whole bubble model that tells you how it's going to build, how much it's going to crash, how long it's going to take to crash. There's nothing black swan about these bubbles at all. It shouldn't be a surprise. People go into denial because they don't want it to end because everybody is getting something for nothing. So governments don't want it to end.

GLENN: So you put -- the reason why your book I think is accurate on at least diagnosing the problems is you have several chapters on -- on revolution. And the world is going into revolution.

HARRY: Yeah.

GLENN: Most people are not -- they're absolutely denying what is happening. Even the Trump thing was a revolution. And it has just begun. It's only going to get worse. Tell me -- give me the highlights of your take on what's happening globally.

HARRY: Well, you know, I had been talking about for a long time, yeah, we're going to have a crisis financially just because we've got bubbles and debt bubbles. And these things are totally predictable. But I've also been saying we have a 250-year revolution coming. The biggest thing to happen in all of modern history was when Sally met Harry. Free market capitalism met democracy, in the late 1700s.

I mean, that's the biggest thing that's happened ever. And this is going to happen again. And the reason I pushed this book. And this book focuses more on the political side of what I'm talking about, is because I've been waiting for signs. It was Brexit. And it was the surprise Trump election. That told me, okay. The political side of this is starting to happen. And this is going to take decades. We've got a backlash against globalization. The special interests have total taken over democracy. Central banks have totally taken over free market. We're destroying the golden goose that made us rich in the first place, since the late 1700s. And all of modern progress has come since those two things came together. This is going to be that big or bigger. And this is going to go down in history. And people aren't going to realize it until later. We're telling you now. This is going to happen. It's going to be unsettling. It's going to change a lot of things.

You know, we really need a bottoms-up economy. Get out of all this top-down management. All this social and financial engineering, where economists try to create La La Land, with three or four percent growth and two percent inflation, which is the worst thing you can do for the economy. You have no innovation when that happens. Japan has had no innovation for 30 years. No growth for 30 years. Because they've been living off of quantitative easing.

GLENN: But, Harry, you and I know that, a lot of this audience knows that, but that is not where the world is headed. They are -- trust me, even Donald Trump, we go through a Great Depression, and Donald Trump will be FDR. He will.

He will not cut it back. He will become the great state that will take care of everyone. And if he won't do it, there will be somebody there to promise it. Socialism is popular now.

HARRY: It is. And we've been living on more than that for now nine years, with all this quantitative easing and free money.

The problem, Glenn, is this, governments created this. Central banks created this bubble, extended it, took it to extremes. And when it burst, it is going to be out of control. It is going to be impossible to stop. And they're going to lose credibility. My theory is central banks, of course they're going to want to -- they're going to want to do ten times the quantitative easing. It's just people are going to say, hey, you already did that, and it failed. Why would we believe you this time?

I think governments are going to lose credibility. I think central banks are going to lose credibility. And that's a good thing. That's -- that's the revolution, when people say, cut off their heads. We don't want anymore of this baloney.

GLENN: We're going to get into the he says there's six triggers. And then there's some safe havens for you. We'll get into that here in just a second. Harry Dent Jr. the name of the book is Zero Hour.

The case for mass deportation

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Unchecked illegal immigration into America may be the most dangerous issue our country faces today, and with every day it goes unsolved, the risk of a terrorist attack of 9/11 proportions only increases.

Despite the risk, we can't even touch the subject without the Left and the mainstream media having a meltdown. Even suggesting that the tide of undocumented immigrants may pose some sort of national problem will quickly get you labeled as a racist, stumping intelligent conversation before it can even begin. But as any right-minded Conservative will tell you, calls to close the border and deport the people who stole into our country have nothing to do with race.

In his most recent TV special, Glenn described in detail what sorts of dangers we have let into our countries, with facts and figures that prove that if we don't act soon we will be in deep trouble. Glenn made it clear: we need to conduct a mass deportation or risk being torn apart from within. Here are three reasons that make the case for mass deportations:

Islamic terror cells are forming in South America.

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Congressional testimony from the Committee on Homeland Security in 2011 revealed that Hugo Chavez held a "Secret Summit" involving the Supreme Leader of Hamas, the Chief of Operations for Hezbollah, and the Secretary General of Palestinian Islamic Jihad in Caracas, Venezuela. It is clear that ever since (and possibly before) there has been a Radical Islamic Terrorist presence in Venezuela. Right now there is an Iranian beachhead off the Venezuelan coast on Margarita Island, where the Iranian government is running criminal activities and recruiting and training Venezuelan gangs. These gangs have used our border crisis to infiltrate the U.S. The most infamous of these gangs, Tren de Aragua, has been declared a terrorist organization by the State of Texas.

Terrorist-backed gangs are smuggling in weapons and tearing through the country.

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What are these Iranian-trained and backed gangs doing in America? As you can imagine, nothing good. Just this year alone an estimated million rounds of ammunition, 1.2 million gun parts, 3,000 body armor vests, and thousands of pieces of other military paraphernalia have been smuggled across the border. On top of that, they have already taken over an apartment complex in Aurora, Colorado, and are now terrorizing the remaining residents.

It's noteworthy that the gang managed to move into the apartment in the first place because they received subsidies through an NGO that was assisting the Colorado asylum seekers program, using money given to the state by the Biden administration in 2021.

Gangs have attacked military bases.

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It hasn't stopped at apartment complexes either. A leak from the U.S. Army revealed that the gangs have launched probing attacks on military facilities within the U.S. Members have been sighted taking surveillance photos of Lackland Air Force Base, as well as firing multiple shots into the facility. Another military base in Texas, Fort Sam Houston, caught a gang member attempting to gain access to the facility. This coincides with suspicious activity documented within the Permian Basin, the largest oil field in the U.S.

They are smuggling in vast quantities of military equipment, probing and surveying military facilities and key energy locations, and taking over residential areas. What exactly is going on and why isn't the federal government taking it more seriously?

VP debate recap: A Vance victory

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This might have been the most consequential VP debate in recent memory.

For those of you who missed the debate, it was a decisive victory for J.D. Vance and the Trump-Vance team as a whole. Vance presented a calm, collected, and considerate side of the Republican party that compliments Trump and helps to make their platform more palatable. Meanwhile, Tim Walz had a lackluster, though certainly not catastrophic, night. He had a few embarrassing gaffes and came across as overly nervous, but like Vance, kept it civil.

Both VP candidates entered the stage as relative unknowns to most Americans, and by the end, both men had given an accurate representation of their characters. Here is a brief recap just in case you missed the debate:

J.D. Vance looked great

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Vance came out of the gate swinging, with a stellar opening statement that helped set the stage for the rest of the debate. He delivered a concise yet compelling recap of his life, which framed him as everything Walz claims to be: a relatable veteran from humble beginnings who earned his position through hard work and service. He then went on to deliver a clear and palatable defense of Trump's platform and mission while cooly drawing attention to the failures of the Biden-Harris administration.

Overall, J.D. Vance looked incredibly presidential. He presented himself not just as a capable vice president, but as a strong successor to Trump and as a valid replacement if anything should happen to the former president between now and the end of his hypothetical second term. Vance also successfully dispelled the notion that he is "weird" as Walz called him, and if anyone looked strange during the debate, it certainly wasnot Vance.

Tim Walz's gaffes

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While Tim Walz certainly didn't have an awful night, he did not stack up well against Vance. Walz had a major gaffe around halfway through the debate when asked to explain the change in his position on assault weapon bans. Walz then claimed that he had befriended school shooters during his time in office. While that was clearly not the intention of what he was saying, it was embarrassing nonetheless.

Another weak moment was when the moderators asked Walz to explain a claim he had made regarding being in Hong Kong during the infamous Tiananmen Square protest in 1989, which has since been proven false. Walz gave a long-winded, rambling answer about taking students to visit China and how Trump should have joined in on those trips, before being called out by the moderator for dodging the question.

Vance fact-checked the fact-checkers

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One of the conditions of the CBS debate was that the moderators would not fact-check the debaters live, but instead rely on after-the-matter fact-checking. But, CBS couldn't keep to its own rules. While Vance was describing the migrant crisis that has swelled during the Biden-Harris administration, one of the CBS moderators, Margaret Brennan, chimed in with a "fact check." She claimed that the Haitian migrants in Ohio have legal status, to which Vance clapped back by calling Brennan out for breaking the rules of the debate, then proceeded to correct her, explaining that they only had legal status due to overreach by the Biden-Harris administration.

Dockworker strike: Everything you need to know

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At midnight on September 30th, dockworkers across the East Coast went on strike, effectively cutting the country's import and export capabilities in half.

Don't go out and panic buy a pallet of toilet paper and instant ramen just yet. It's going to take some time for the full effects of the strike to be felt and hopefully, the strike will be good and over by then. But there are no guarantees, and this election cycle could get significantly more insane as we draw near to the election. And even if the strike is settled quickly, it shows growing cracks in our infrastructure and industrial capacity that needs to be addressed if America wants to maintain its global dominance.

Here is everything you need to know about the dockworker strike:

What do the dockworkers want?

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As with most strikes, pay is the driving factor behind this situation the country now finds itself in. The longshoremen want more pay, and with rising inflation who can blame them? After all, working the docks is hard and dangerous business, and fair compensation only seems... fair. But when you compare the wage of a dockworker, which is around $100,000 to $200,00 a year to the average income in America of $56,000, suddenly they seem significantly less sympathetic.

How much money are they asking for? For most Americans, a three percent raise is considered high, but the unions are asking up to 15 percent, depending on location. On top of that, they are asking for a 77 percent raise over the next six years. The West Coast dock workers recently made off with a 36 percent raise and were considered lucky. These increases in costs are just going to be transferred to the end consumer, and we'll likely see a jump in prices if these terms are accepted.

The other major ticket item is protection against automation. Autonomous ports are quickly becoming a reality, with major ports in China that are capable of handling vast amounts of cargo being run by a single office, not an army of dock workers. Naturally, the longshoremen are concerned that their jobs are at risk of being replaced by machines that can work harder, longer, for cheaper, and without risk of injury.

How will it affect Americans?

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Don't panic yet!

It is going to take some time for consumers to feel the effects of the strike and it is possible that a resolution could happen at any time.

Week one should be pretty much business as usual. It might be a good idea to stock up on fruit and other perishables, but there is no need to go COVID-lockdown-crazy yet.

Week two is when you'll first start feeling the pinch. Fresh fruits and veggies will become scarce, along with other imported goods like shoes, toys, and TVs. Prices will start to creep up as the shelves will start to look a little sparse. The supply of tools, lumber, and other hardware materials will also begin to dry up.

By week three, the cracks in the system will really start to show. Entire industries will begin to slow down, or even stop. Factory workers will get furloughed and sent home without pay. Stores will have to ration items, prices will be sky-high, and online orders will come to a standstill. At this point, the strike will have escalated into a full-blown crisis, and even if it was resolved immediately, it would still take weeks to restore everything to working order.

At the four-week mark, the situation will have developed into a national security crisis, and as Glenn describes, a poly-crisis. Small business will be closing their doors, entire brands will be out of stock, and everything that remains will be so expensive it is unaffordable. By this point, the holiday season will be drawing near and there will be a rush on any sort of gift or decor items left. At this point, irreparable damage to our economy will have occurred and it will be months if not years before it can be mended.

While that sounds bleak, with the election just around the corner, it seems unlikely that the Biden-Harris administration will let it get that bad. That being said, their administration has not been characterized by good decision-making and reasonable policy, so there are no guarantees.

What can be done?

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The big question is "Why hasn't Biden already done something?"

President Biden, who ran on the image of a blue-collar, union-worker, has been uncharacteristically absent from the issue. Despite his earlier involvement in a train strike, Biden has declared that involvement in union fights is not a presidential issue unless it getsreally bad.

So where's the line? At what point will he step in? He has to understand that an economic crisis right before the election will reflect poorly on Kamala.

Join Glenn TONIGHT for BlazeTV's exclusive VP debate coverage!

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Join Glenntonight for Vice Presidential debate coverage you do not want to miss!

Tonight is the first (and only) Vice Presidential debate, and it will be hosted by CBS News. But don't be reliant on CBS News or any other mainstream media channel for their biased coverage. Join the BlazeTV live stream tonight to get the uncensored truth alongside top-quality commentary from Glenn and the rest of the world-class panel.

Glenn is joined by Megyn Kelly, Liz Wheeler, Allie Beth Stuckey, Steve Deace, Jill Savage, Dave Landau, and more to cover the CBS News Vice Presidential Debate. Blaze Media subscribers gain access to live chat with the fantastic panel of hosts! If you subscribe today by visiting BlazeTV.com/debate you will get $40 off of your annual subscription with code DEBATE. This is the largest discount ever offered, so take advantage NOW!

See you TONIGHT at 8 PM ET for an event you do NOT want to miss it!

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