The Greatest Depression EVER Has Already Started | Gerald Celente

## Introduction and market reaction The conversation lays out a stark thesis: we are not on the cusp of a routine recession but at the opening act of a global unraveling—what the speaker insists is already the "greatest depression ever." Markets, politics, industry and foreign policy are woven together in a single, accelerating trend. Short-term market rallies—whether triggered by geopolitical headlines or ceasefire rumors—are framed not as recoveries but as manipulations that paper over deeper structural decay. The exchange contends that equity bounces reflect a controlled choreography by concentrated capital, not renewed economic health, and that the broader trajectory points toward systemic failure rather than cyclical correction. A central claim in the discussion is that financial signals have become detached from productive reality. When political pronouncements, diplomatic gestures, or military developments move asset prices, it’s less evidence of a functioning market and more proof of a rigged system. The underlying data cited—the extraordinary ownership concentration in the S&P 500 and the skewed distribution of wealth—serves as the base for this diagnosis: a few giants prop up valuations while the rest of the economy stagnates or slides downward. From this vantage, stock-market resilience is not resilience at all but the last artful breath of a system whose fundamentals have long been hollowed out. ## Deindustrialization and war economy One of the most compelling lines of the discussion is the link drawn between geopolitical choice and economic structure: as heavy industry and technological capacity migrated offshore, so too did the means to sustain a full-spectrum national economy. The narrative traces that migration to trade policy decisions—particularly the entry of China into global trade institutions—and the strategic outsourcing that followed. The result is a nation that retains the machinery of war at a high rhetorical pitch, yet lacks the industrial foundation to execute large-scale, sustained military engagements without severe strain. This deindustrialization has cultural consequences as well as economic ones. The exchange paints a portrait of towns and neighborhoods transformed—once-familiar retail and service businesses displaced by consolidated corporate chains, infrastructure crumbling, and public services declining. The imagery is sharp: rail lines that once symbolized national connectivity and industrial might now stand as relics while other nations, most notably China, invest in modern transportation and urban amenities. The argument is that a polity that bets its identity on military dominance but shops its factories abroad ends up with a paradox: a war economy unable to fully supply itself, and a society increasingly unable to sustain the civic underpinnings required for long-run prosperity. At the same time, the conversation posits a moral and institutional rot—what is described as a fusion of corporate interests and state authority that can resemble old models of fascism. Whether one accepts the historical analogy, the point is blunt: public policy increasingly serves private concentration. From privatized infrastructure to defense industrial contracting, the incentives that once supported a broad middle class now amplify elite wealth and political power. That dynamic undercuts social cohesion and leaves democratic institutions brittle when confronted with shocks. ## AI bubble, bailouts, and dollar crisis Another strand of the discussion centers on the contemporary technology boom—especially hype around artificial intelligence—and its role in shaping market distortions. The AI story is painted as a classic speculative mania: enormous valuations funnel capital toward a handful of winners, squeezing smaller firms and fueling a rearrangement of labor markets that leaves swaths of younger workers frustrated and unemployed. The speaker warns of a dot-com–style bust, arguing that those who have most benefited from recent rallies will lobby for and secure interventions designed to prevent near-term collapse, regardless of long-term consequences. Those interventions, the conversation argues, will resemble the post-2008 playbook but on a vastly larger scale. The bailout machinery—central bank liquidity, asset purchases, and other forms of implicit state support—has already been deployed repeatedly, and this path is likely to continue. Citing extraordinary estimates of central-bank assistance and off‑balance-sheet obligations, the exchange suggests that nominal national debt numbers dramatically understate systemic fiscal liabilities. The eventual political and market reckoning, in this framing, will be a collapse of confidence in the dollar’s special status. That prospect—erosion of the dollar as the prime international reserve and invoicing currency—is not treated as a remote possibility but as an emergent reality. As nations opt into alternative payment systems and blocs such as BRICS recalibrate economic relations, the conversation predicts a higher trajectory for precious metals and commodities as hedges against a depreciating dollar. Taken together, the AI bubble, the political reflex to bail out asset holders, and the dollar’s growing vulnerability are portrayed as mutually reinforcing forces pushing toward a global financial reset, not a contained crisis. ## What can be done now Amid the diagnosis of decay and looming financial collapse, the conversation does not consign readers to fatalism; it outlines a set of practical and cultural prescriptions intended to redirect the trajectory. The immediate policy package suggested calls for reindustrialization initiatives coupled with vigorous antitrust enforcement. Rebuilding a diversified manufacturing base—especially in strategic sectors such as semiconductors, energy, and defense supplies—is treated as essential to both economic resilience and geopolitical autonomy. Equally important is reclaiming competitive markets from the chokehold of a few asset managers and conglomerates whose control compresses opportunity and raises systemic risk. Monetary and fiscal stewardship also matter. Rather than reflexive bailouts for asset holders, the conversation advocates for policies that flow to productive investment and broad-based employment, including targeted infrastructure spending and workforce retraining programs. A reinvigorated trade strategy is part of the plan—one that balances openness with strategic safeguards and encourages domestic value chains. On the regulatory side, a revival of labor protections and social safety nets is framed as necessary to stabilize consumption and prevent social fracture. Civically and culturally, the exchange calls for a renewed emphasis on public goods and an educational reorientation toward science, manufacturing skills, and practical trades that match the demands of a modern economy. This is not nostalgia for an imagined past but a forward-looking agenda: to cultivate an economy that creates real careers, not just finance-sector rents. The proposals also include a diplomatic posture that privileges peace and pragmatic trade relationships over perpetual conflict as a driver of policy. The argument is clear: reestablishing economic dignity for the many is both a moral imperative and the most effective way to defuse the social pressures that feed instability. ## Ukraine, Russia, and World War III fears Finally, the conversation ties the domestic and financial questions back to foreign policy, warning that ongoing conflicts—whether in Eastern Europe or the Middle East—cannot be separated from the structural weaknesses at home. There is a critique of how wars and geopolitical entanglements function as both distraction and resource transfer: they mobilize public sentiment, redirect state spending, and create markets for militarized producers, all while diverting attention from domestic decline. The exchange suggests that the United

The Greatest Depression EVER Has Already Started | Gerald Celente Gerald Celente, American trend forecaster and publisher of the Trends Journal, discusses market manipulation, the Iran war, U.S. decline, deindustrialization, Gen Z anger, the AI bubble, dollar weakness, and the risk of wider war. He argues that America needs peace, antitrust laws, trades, culture, and a new renaissance to avoid deeper crisis. Links: Trends Journal: https://trendsjournal. com Occupy Peace: https://occupypeace.com Neutrality Studies substack: https://pascallottaz. substack.com Merch: https://neutralitystudies.com/shop Donation: https://neutralitystudies.com /donate Timestamps: 00:00:00 Introduction and market reaction 00:00:55 Market manipulation and U.S. decline 00:06:13 Deindustrialization and war economy 00:12:55 Gen Z anger and social breakdown 00:17:41 AI bubble, bailouts, and dollar crisis 00:21:20 Iran war and U.S. military limits 00:26:53 What can be done now 00:34:08 America needs a renaissance 00:37:10 Ukraine, Russia, and World War III fears 00:42:51 Why peace lacks power and funding #Pascal Welcome back, everybody, to Neutrality Studies. Today, for the first time, with Gerald Celente, an American trend forecaster and publisher of the Trends Journal. Gerald, welcome. Well, thank you for having me. Thank you very much for saying yes to this. You've been somebody who's been working all your life with markets and with trends of where things are going, and I really wanted to pick your brain about what you think the Iran war is doing to the markets. As we speak today, on your morning, June 19th, how are the markets reacting to the memorandum of understanding that the US and Iran just made yesterday? #Gerald Celente Very positive. And again, tracking trends is the understanding of where we are, how we got here, to see where we're going. You go back before the Iran war, you saw the equity markets in the United States going down because of the fear of the private equity groups and the people wanting to pull their money out because AI is wiping out a lot of the smaller software and a lot of software companies. And people wanted to get their money out. Things were going terrible before that happened. Then the war happened and things changed. And again, we only go by the facts. We're political atheists, by the way. We don't take sides on anything. And you look at things for the way they are, not the way you want them to be. So you go back, and again, by the facts, Trump said on March 1st that the war is going to end in four or five weeks. And on March 11th, he said, we won. I don't like to say we won too early, but we won. But they didn't win. Every time I'm mentioning this, it's the same thing with this guy who is the energy secretary, -- 1 of 16 -- Chris Wright, or I call him Chris Wrong. He kept BSing. They BS'd about the United States sending naval ships through the Strait of Hormuz to bring tankers through. It wasn't true at all. I'm mentioning this because it manipulates the markets. And that's what you have going on now—market manipulation. And then you have to look at the facts. You have three companies: State Street, Vanguard, and BlackRock. Google it. They own, in value, about 88% of the S&P 500. All right, three companies. Then you look at the data: 1% in America owns 54% of the stock market. 1%. Then you put the 10% into it, it's 93%. So you have a rigged market. They're going to do everything they can to keep propping these things up. You know, once upon a time, there was this Italian guy by the name of Mussolini. The merger of state and corporate powers is fascism. And that's what you have. You look at now how Trump is buying up parts of companies like Intel. Oh, did you see Intel stock just went up? Oh, yeah, we just did a deal. One after another, company after company, they're merging, and the corporations own the country. It's as simple as that. So there's no reality in the markets. The P/E ratios are overvalued. And we believe there's going to be a dot-com bust. Again, we only go by the facts. And by the way, to make this perfectly clear, when I say that I'm a political atheist, I don't believe in any of the political systems. To me, they're crime syndicates. And this is one of the shirts that we sell at the Trends Journal. #Pascal A politician to tell me? #Gerald Celente Oh, wow. To tell me what to do. All right. So just to make it clear, that's the system. Now, I'm mentioning this because, going back to A.R., 25 years ago, Bill Clinton brought China into the World Trade Organization. Western nations flooded over there to get cheap labor. He gave China all the heavy industry and high tech that they never had. You go back up to about 2015—BMW, Volkswagen, all these companies, Ford, General Motors. Whoa, their sales are booming, booming, booming. Oh, all very booming in China. Not anymore. Who's the biggest exporter? Who's the biggest of anything in EVs? China. Now I'm going back to the dot-com bust. Before Bill Clinton brought them in, 10% of Chinese 18-year-olds went to college. Now, nearly 70%. And unlike in the United States, where they're going to college to take courses in transgender studies and other things like that, they're very advanced technologically, scientifically, and in AI. In America, I'm heartbroken. I'm heartbroken. You take the subway in New York City, it's a night in Calcutta. They got a thing called Amtrak. How about Amcrap? I'm up in Kingston, New York. This is the first capital of New York State, the third Dutch settlement. I'm four and a half hours if I could drive to Montreal. My friend just went across the river. There's a place called Rhinecliff. Took Amcrap from Rhinecliff to Montreal, 10 hours each way. Oh, wow. The country's rotting in front of us. Hey, -- 2 of 16 -- go to China. Oh, you're in Japan. Not here. Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. The roads, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. The whole country's rotting in front of our eyes. So where is this coming from? #Pascal Where did America take a turn to deindustrialization, to the degrading of all the infrastructure? And as Jimmy Dore usually says, under every bridge you've got homeless people, and they don't even fix the bridges anymore. When did that happen? Because once upon a time, there was an America that actually wanted to work. And of course, the first large railway networks were all built in America. And then that thinking went away. And I have friends who all break it down to basically the financialization of the economy. Where do you put this degeneration? #Gerald Celente Again, just to make this clear, I was the assistant to the secretary of the New York State Senate as a young guy. I used to work on major political campaigns in Westchester County, the richest county in America. I designed and instructed a course at St. John's University, American Politics and Campaign Technology, How to Run Political Campaigns. I put on a brunch with Ronald Reagan when I was 30 years old with 16 of our board of directors. I've been with presidents, prime ministers, and princes. It's a crime syndicate. They're low-life pieces of arrogant crap in a country near you. You got it? Take a trip to the UK. You like out-of-his-mind little Starmer? How about the con man Macron? How about the guy in Germany, Merz? You look at the poll ratings of these people, they're under 20%, all three of them. #Pascal Yeah, but Merz is such a wonderful example. He used to head BlackRock over there in Germany. I mean, it's directly related to the money crime syndicate, as you put it, and makes it to the top of the political food chain. And now he's going to be responsible basically for riding Europe into a full all-out war with the Russians. How did this encrusted elite come to dominate countries that once upon a time used to have a sane foreign policy? #Gerald Celente Again, you're asking me why the United States is rotting. You look at one of the covers of our Trends Journal a couple of weeks ago: "China trumps the U.S.," and we put "trumps" with Trump's name, T- R-U-M-P. The business of China is business, and the business of America is war. Yeah. All right. I grew up—I'm the same age as Trump. I grew up during the Vietnam War. I got draft deferments like he did. But I launched a movement called Occupy Peace, at peace rallies every year. I know the day—there's this cat by the name of Smedley Butler. Yeah. "War is a racket. War is a racket." Yep. He goes on to say, "War is a racket." -- 3 of 16 -- It always has been. It's possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives. You got it? America destroyed itself with all these wars. Hey, hey, you elect me for president? I promise you, I'm not going to start a war. I'm going to stop wars, all right? I'm Trump. I'm giving you the crap right then. Hey, hey, I'll go back to last February, all right? I'm going to cut the defense budget by half a trillion dollars, all right? Oh no, now this year we're going to increase it by half a trillion. #Pascal But here we have a contradiction, because in order to do war, you need an industrial base to implement it. And the United States hollowed out that industrial base and basically made sure it's being transferred to China very efficiently. So is it the system then, you know, what Marx said in the end, you know, the capitalists are going to sell us the noose with which we're going to hang them? Is that what's happening at the moment with this capitalist core of the West? #Gerald Celente Of the world. Look, again, before I go on, remind me to do that, but I want to go back before I forget about China and the dot-com bust. China's going to lead the world in AI. Trends are born, they grow, they mature, they reach old age, and then they die. You don't invest all your money in the infants that were born in 2022. Go back to 2025 when DeepSeek came out. Oh, DeepSeek? Oh, yeah, you saw Nvidia's stock go down, what, $600 billion in one day? Oh, it got back up. China's going to lead the world in AI. And AI is the future. Love it, hate it, it’s what it is. So going back, that's where they're going. That's where that's going. Now, go through the question you just asked me before that I said I would answer. You just... #Pascal Why is it that if war is a racket and war is the business of the United States, the United States is proving right now that it's becoming bad at its core business? With the way the Iran war went, with the way that the United States is actually running out of munitions, of missiles, the capitalist system then creates a military-industrial complex which sells weapons for a tremendous amount of money but actually only shells out pretty little of those things. I mean, that seems to be working against this militarized system that the United States has created. Why is that? #Gerald Celente Because, again, it's the military-industrial complex that runs the country. Once upon a time, there was this president by the name of Dwight D. Eisenhower, five-star general, supreme commander of the Allied forces, and two-term president. He said the military-industrial complex is robbing the -- 4 of 16 -- nation of the genius of the scientists, the sweat of the laborers, and the future of the children. And here we are. I am so heartbroken to see the rotting of this nation. You have no idea. Once upon a time, people all over the world wanted to come to America. Not anymore. It's a crap show. The style's gone. The vibe is gone. Again, the politicians are politicians. They're crime syndicates. #Pascal They're only interested in themselves. But the markets keep producing profits for these people, don't they? #Gerald Celente Yep. Again, going back, this is why I also want to mention the systems going on. It's not only the West that they're doing it in. What's going on in India? Oh, the cockroach pa