Gerald Celente, founder and director of the Trends Research Institute, is warning that the United States is heading toward what he calls the “greatest depression,” an economic collapse he predicts will be worse than the crashes of 1929, 2000 and 2008.
“This is not going to be the Great Depression, it’s going to be the greatest depression,” Celente said during an interview with Lena Petrova of World Affairs in Context.
Celente tied his forecast to soaring U.S. obligations, an increasingly concentrated stock market and what he sees as a massive artificial intelligence investment bubble fueled by debt. He argued that America’s financial condition is far worse than the commonly cited federal debt figure suggests, pointing to estimates that put total obligations, including Social Security and other commitments, at roughly $126 trillion.
The AI boom, he warned, could become the catalyst that exposes those weaknesses. Celente compared the current rush into artificial intelligence with the dot-com mania of the late 1990s, when enormous amounts of capital poured into technology before the Nasdaq collapsed.
He predicted what he described as a “dot-com bust 2.0,” arguing that trillions of dollars in debt-fueled AI investment have created expectations that cannot be sustained. Celente said China is positioning itself to emerge stronger from that transition while the United States becomes increasingly dependent on financial speculation and military spending.
“The 20th century was the American century, but the 21st century is going to be the Chinese century,” he said.
Celente pointed to China’s position in artificial intelligence, electric vehicles, battery manufacturing, solar energy and critical minerals as evidence of the shift. His broader argument is that China has spent decades building industrial and technological capacity while the United States increasingly moved production abroad and concentrated wealth in financial assets.
That divide is also visible in the stock market, according to Celente. He said the richest 1% of Americans own roughly 54% of U.S. equities, while the top 10% control about 93%, leaving stock-market records increasingly disconnected from the financial condition of ordinary households.
“The middle class is dead,” Celente said.
He argued that this concentration makes Wall Street a poor measure of the health of the broader economy. Stocks can continue rising even as housing becomes unaffordable, infrastructure deteriorates and younger Americans struggle with the cost of basic necessities, he said.
Celente also sees a weakening dollar as part of the same transition. He predicted that BRICS members and other countries will continue building alternatives to the dollar-based financial system and eventually move toward a new global currency or settlement structure.
“This is the beginning of the death of the dollar,” he said.
Federal Reserve policy could accelerate that process, Celente argued. He predicted Fed Chairman Kevin Warsh will ultimately move toward lower interest rates as the Trump administration tries to support the economy before November’s midterm elections. Lower rates, he said, would put additional pressure on the dollar while strengthening gold and silver.
Celente also connected his economic outlook with the continuing U.S. war with Iran, arguing that Washington’s military commitments are adding debt while exposing limits in American power. He said the United States has repeatedly failed to achieve decisive victories since World War II and predicted Iran would prove impossible to defeat through conventional military pressure.
He described the Iran conflict as fundamentally tied to energy and control of resources, arguing that Tehran’s scientific, technological and military capabilities make it a dramatically different opponent from countries Washington fought in previous decades.
Celente was equally pessimistic about the prospects for peace in the Middle East. He predicted Israel would not fully withdraw from Lebanon or reverse its territorial policies in Gaza and the West Bank, and said he does not expect current diplomatic efforts to produce a lasting settlement.
He also accused Washington and Israel of trying to manage financial markets and geopolitical tensions ahead of the U.S. midterm elections. Celente predicted the appearance of de-escalation could be maintained through the election period before the war intensifies again afterward.
His darkest warning, however, concerned nuclear weapons.
Celente said his greatest fear is that the expanding conflicts involving Russia, Ukraine, Iran and Israel eventually cross the nuclear threshold. He pointed to the possibility of Russia responding to attacks on nuclear-related targets and raised Israel’s so-called Samson Option, the long-discussed concept that Israel could resort to nuclear weapons if it faced an existential military threat.
Celente cited estimates placing Israel’s undeclared nuclear arsenal somewhere between roughly 90 and 400 warheads and said an escalating conflict with Iran could create circumstances in which nuclear weapons become part of the calculation.
He was similarly dismissive of the possibility that the United States could prevail in a major war against China. With China’s population, industrial capacity, growing military power and control over critical minerals needed by Western defense industries, Celente said Washington would be confronting an opponent on an entirely different scale.
“There’s no way in the world that the United States could defeat China,” he said.
Running throughout the interview was Celente’s argument that America’s problems are no longer confined to a normal economic cycle. He described a system in which political power, corporate power, financial concentration, debt and military expansion have become increasingly intertwined.
Celente used characteristically harsh language to describe that system, calling the U.S. government a “crime syndicate” and arguing that the country increasingly resembles what he defines as fascism: the merger of state and corporate power. He pointed to direct government involvement in major corporations as an example of how far he believes the United States has moved from genuine free-market capitalism.
Whether Celente’s sweeping predictions prove correct will ultimately depend on developments across financial markets, monetary policy and several rapidly changing geopolitical conflicts. His message, however, is unmistakable: he believes the next crisis will not resemble a routine recession or even another 2008.
He believes the economic, geopolitical and financial pressures are converging at the same time.
And his advice is to prepare accordingly.
“Get in the best shape you can physically, emotionally, and spiritually,” Celente said, arguing that people will need resilience as economic and geopolitical instability intensifies.
For Celente, the coming crisis is bigger than another market crash.
It is the end of an era.
