{"id":117749,"date":"2025-09-03T22:00:09","date_gmt":"2025-09-03T22:00:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/117749\/"},"modified":"2025-09-03T22:00:09","modified_gmt":"2025-09-03T22:00:09","slug":"veteran-economist-warns-about-converging-crises-worse-than-2008-vanguard-total-stock-market-etf-arcavti-spdr-sp-500-arcaspy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/117749\/","title":{"rendered":"Veteran Economist Warns About Converging Crises, ‘Worse Than 2008’ – Vanguard Total Stock Market ETF (ARCA:VTI), SPDR S&P 500 (ARCA:SPY)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Economist Fred Harrison, known for accurately forecasting the 2008 financial crisis and previous downturns using his 18-year property cycle theory, says converging crises<\/a> will create chaos.<\/p>\n

An 81-year-old veteran, who had a 10-year stint in forming the Russian economic policy after the fall of the USSR, sees the situation as something he\u2019s \u201cnever experienced in my lifetime.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re talking about a pattern that\u2019s been going on for hundreds of years, with deviations only if there\u2019s a world war,\u201d he said in a recent YouTube interview<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Also Read: This Housing Buyer\u2019s Market Isn\u2019t Your Friend<\/a><\/p>\n

Delaying the Inevitable<\/p>\n

The COVID-19 pandemic, he believes, disrupted this cycle by bringing forward a surge in house prices<\/a> that otherwise would have peaked in 2025\u201326. Instead, the gains were \u201cbanked\u201d during lockdowns, pushing the world closer to the end of the cycle today.<\/p>\n

According to Harrison, governments are now inflating housing markets, burdening workers with taxes, and deregulating lending risks, actions that only accelerate the approach of collapse.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are locked into a peak behavior which will result in the termination of house prices over the next 12 to 18 months,\u201d he warned. The precipitating event may not even come from the property. \u201cIt might be that the rents we were expecting to get out of investment in AI companies are not being generated. Bingo, that brings everything to a halt.\u201d<\/p>\n

This time, he argues, the fallout will be \u201cfar worse\u201d than in 2008. Then, banks were \u201ctoo big to fail\u201d and could be rescued with printed money. Now, he says, \u201cit\u2019s the governments that are too big to fail with their debts, and nobody\u2019s going to bail them out.\u201d<\/p>\n

What makes the situation unique is the convergence of multiple crises: environmental pressures, migration waves, geopolitical conflicts, and political paralysis. \u201cIf all four existential threats converge at one time and place, and that place is global, there\u2019s nowhere to hide,\u201d Harrison cautioned.<\/p>\n

A Broken Managerial Class<\/p>\n

Harrison\u2019s critique is not limited to markets. He sees profound institutional weakness in the managerial class, politicians, academics, and think tanks, who he believes are unable to confront the scale of the problem.<\/p>\n

\u201cAll it speaks of is the political paralysis of the lawmaking class. They have no idea how to forge a new future, a better future for the people. To be fair to them, neither do the academics and the think tanks that are advising them.\u201d<\/p>\n

This institutional failure, he argues, leads inevitably to increased repression as governments struggle to maintain control without offering genuine solutions. \u201cWith the closing of the imagination, what is left but to keep control of events by repressing people even further,\u201d he observes.<\/p>\n

Rather than revolution, Harrison advocates for informed mass movements.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe don\u2019t want a rerun of the French Revolution. Set up the guillotine in the public squares and chop the heads off. That doesn\u2019t get us anywhere,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

Instead, he calls for citizens to become educated about systemic solutions and apply democratic pressure for fundamental fiscal reform.<\/p>\n

AI as an Existential Threat<\/p>\n

Perhaps most ominously, Harrison identifies artificial intelligence<\/a> as an unprecedented existential risk. \u201cArtificial intelligence is not artificial at all. It\u2019s autonomous intelligence,\u201d he warns. \u201cWhat we are currently doing is imbuing the existing behavior of humanity, the existing way of thinking, into these algorithms.\u201d<\/p>\n

The danger, according to Harrison, lies in AI\u2019s lack of moral constraints combined with its absorption of humanity\u2019s destructive patterns.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis intelligence, which is being imbued into the metaverse, is as fast as the investors can make it, going to become autonomous,\u201d he predicts. \u201cIt will end up capturing the energy that\u2019s available on planet Earth. And the more it can get rid of human beings, the more energy there will be to sustain this metaverse.\u201d<\/p>\n

Read Next:<\/p>\n

Image via Shutterstock<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Economist Fred Harrison, known for accurately forecasting the 2008 financial crisis and previous downturns using his 18-year property…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":117750,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[45,49,48,64797,65754,32268,65753,41004,65755,32271,32269,32272,49890,11669,46,11668,64799,65756,41009,65757],"class_list":{"0":"post-117749","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-economy","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-ca","10":"tag-canada","11":"tag-category-economics","12":"tag-category-global","13":"tag-category-government","14":"tag-category-macro-economic-events","15":"tag-category-news","16":"tag-category-opinion","17":"tag-category-politics","18":"tag-category-regulations","19":"tag-category-top-stories","20":"tag-category-trading-ideas","21":"tag-cms-wordpress","22":"tag-economy","23":"tag-pageisbzpro-bz","24":"tag-symbol-spy","25":"tag-symbol-vti","26":"tag-tag-expert-ideas","27":"tag-tag-recession"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/117749","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=117749"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/117749\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/117750"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=117749"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=117749"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=117749"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}