Harry Dent and Ron Insana Debate Influence of Demographics on Markets
Harry Dent, economic expert and founder of H S Dent, was interviewed on CNBC and said Europe would be the trigger for the next collapse due to their sovereign debt crisis. There is greater debt and demographics are going to slow, he added.
Dent said the fiscal cliff and the Fed won’t be the cause of the crisis, but “Europe can take the whole world down.”
Dent stated we’ve seen three bubbles and the low of the market was slightly lower each time so the trendline shows the Dow bottoming at 6,000, which shouldn’t be surprising, he added.
Ron Insana took the other side of the argument making a case that the fundamentals are positive for the U. S. (see video below).
Dent claimed that Europe has the worst problems because they have the worst demographics.
Insana said demographics have not had predictive value in determining future stock market returns and pointed out some of the forecasting errors made by Dent in the past.
Dent vigorously defended demographics as the “ultimate leading indicator,” citing his past forecasts for Japan and the U. S. and he said he’d be happy to bet Insana on that in the next year.
Dent said he expects the market to end the year strong with an agreement averting a fiscal cliff, but the economy will slow between December and February.
Back in July, Dent was in a debate with Seth Bernstein and was calling for the Dow to collapse to 3,000 [link].