Harry S. Dent Jr. is a financial writer, researcher, and a New York Times best selling author. He is the founder of Dent Research and has appeared on numerous programs to discuss the unique economic research that he uses to illustrate the future of global and domestic economies.
Using his knowledge of global economics, Dent started a company and began writing newsletters and books to speak to the changing financial demographics of the world. While his audience was mainly small businesses, his book The Great Boom Ahead introduced Dent to a larger audience. Published in 1993, The Great Boom Ahead refuted analysts claims that Japan’s economy was going to surpass the United States’. Instead, Dent asserted that the Japanese economy was going to crash while the United States would witness a massive boom. He explained this by using a spending demographic indicator which analyzed when individuals reach the climax of their spending habits.
This peak age is 46 years old, argues Dent. He believes that this indicates when a country will have financial growth and can predict when a recession is likely. At this age, individuals contribute the most to the economic growth of any given country. In the United States, one of the largest populated generations are baby boomers and by 2008, the majority of boomers surpassed their spending peak. Dent’s analysis proposed that the United States economy experienced this decline in 2008 before it was stimulated by the government, delaying the effects of a potential crash.
In his interview with Founder Phil Cannella and CEO of Crash Proof Retirement Joann Small, Dent shared how his scientific demographic research showed indicators of a debt bubble growing in the United States and discussed when it would be most likely to burst. Dent explained that from 2017-2022 the United States would witness an economic decline for two reasons. The first being the ever increasing debt being accumulated by the United States and in other global economies, like China. Secondly, Dent predicted that the spending demographics of the country were weighing down the economy because a vast majority of the population were baby boomers and past their peak economic contribution.
Dent forecasted that the United States would experience a decline for several years before regaining its economic strength starting in 2017. “Well the baby boomers keep dragging the US economy down till about 2022 and then the millenials will more than offset them,” said Dent. Even so, based on the spending demographic indicator, there are at least five years of an economic downturn. With the impending debt bubble looming over the United States, Dent implores individuals to protect their assets and savings before it is too late.
