Financial expert Harry S. Dent, Jr. is the founder of Dent Research, which publishes several newsletters. In the first half, he shared his contention that we are in a vast financial bubble on a global level and that cryptocurrency and the Reddit vs. hedge fund battle are symptoms of this bubble. The bubble is so big, we could have another Great Depression when it bursts, he warned. The government kept doubling down with quantitative easing (Central Bank increasing the money supply), and COVID stimulus funding has further pushed up the deficit. Further, the stock market is at its all-time peak and highly leveraged and overvalued, he said. When the burst happens, he foresees stocks falling as much as 60 to 90% off their current high, and real estate dropping from 30 to 50% in value. He believes this crash could come as soon as this month and recommends getting into cash and bonds, like the US Treasury Bond.

In the recent GameStop stock mania, small investors on Reddit's WallStreetBets and the Robinhood app sought to stick it to the established hedge funds. Dent thought there was a kind of justice to this as the hedge fund managers often practice a kind of predatory investing by shorting out stocks. Interestingly, he predicted that India will become a super-economy in the coming years, perhaps even surpassing China in the 2030s. Dent predicts that a recovery from the bubble burst will occur for stocks by late 2022 or early 2023, and real estate will recover somewhat later.

-----------------

Board Director of the International Association for the Study of Dreams, Clare R. Johnson, Ph.D., was the first person in the world to write a Ph.D. dissertation on lucid dreaming as a creative tool. In the latter half, she discussed nightmares, sleep paralysis, and how to transform your night of sleep into a healing refuge so that you wake up energized. Regarding nightmares, the brain's amygdala is given greater sway while the prefrontal cortex is suppressed during sleep, and this can trigger the fight or flight response, she explained. During this state, aggression, fear, and sadness are heightened, and unresolved issues or traumatic memories can be magnified into scary material or narratives. Nightmares, she added, can also be brought on by sleep disturbances or even medications that people are taking. Yet, she believes that these disturbing dreams may be "considered a gift in ugly wrapping paper" that brings insight to help us in our lives.

One method of working with or confronting nightmares is to become lucid (aware that you're dreaming while still in the dream). Johnson described a case in which a dreamer had an encounter with a hideous hunched figure, and when she became lucid, she knew she had to look into its face. As she did, it transformed into "pure luminosity," an incredible spiritual light that shone on her and was part of her. Another way to work with nightmares is to re-enter the dream mentally, but this time experience it without fear or anxiety, and travel to the "tipping point" where the dream turned into a nightmare, and then rehearse different positive outcomes. Johnson revealed that she suffered from repeated sleep paralysis episodes at age 19-20, and eventually learned a calming breathing technique to circumvent the problem.

News segment guests: John M. Curtis, Charles Coppes