Adam Taggart | Thoughtful Money, Released on 10/23/25

When today’s guest was last on this channel back in July, he warned that a ‘triumvirate” of three massive asset price bubbles — in credit, real estate and stocks — threatened to take down our fragile economy and dash the retirement hopes for millions. Since then, the bubbles have only expanded. Will they expand further — or pop — in 2026? To find out, we have the great good fortune to welcome money manager Michael Pento back to the program.

0:00 – Pento on Triumvirate Bubbles Threatening Economy & Retirements
2:21 – Bubble Assessment: Credit, Real Estate & Stocks at Record-Breaking Extremes
3:49 – Early Fractures: First Brands Defaults & China Tariff Tremors
5:20 – Credit as Catalyst: 35 Years Insist Bubble Bursts via Insolvency/Inflation
6:21 – Reserves Explosion: $3.5T Fed Liquidity—Debt Monetization’s Core
9:22 – Fed Balance Sheet: $6.2T Expanding in October—QT Panic Reversal
10:19 – Credit Unglued: Draghi’s Pledge Fails vs. U.S. Inflation/Insolvency Mix
14:16 – Reserves Dynamics: Rate of Change Drives ’18-19 Repo Echoes
15:48 – Fed Preempts: Cuts & QE Restart to Foam Runway Before Fracture
19:00 – Real Funds Rate: Positive Peak Fades—Recessions Trail Spikes
23:14 – M2 Surge: Vertical Post-2000—Fed’s Bubble-Building Machine
24:37 – Leverage Loans Peak: $400B Q3 Record—Auto/Student/Private Perils
26:35 – Non-Financial Debt: $77.9T/256% GDP—Historic Overhang
27:39 – Housing Affordability: 7x Income Ratio—Worse Than Bubble Peak
30:46 – MAG7 Dominance: 34% S&P Record—Overvalued/Leveraged Extreme
32:47 – Crash Scenario: Credit Break → Truncated Plunge → Reflation Attempt
36:04 – Gold Sector 1: De-Dollarization & Negative Rates Drive Upside
41:05 – Gold Dip Caveat: Long Bond Spike Pressures, But Hold 5% Physical
44:43 – Private Credit Risk: Malinvestment Cycle—Illiquid Traps in Recession
49:23 – Portfolio Now: Net Long India/Australia/IBM/A&D with Hedges
53:05 – Closing: PentoPort.com for Model-Guided Management & Insights

Michael Pento is a specialist in Austrian economics and is the President of Pento Portfolio Strategies. Prior to starting Pento Portfolio Strategies he served as a senior economist and VP of the managed products division of another well known financial firm. Michael has also created ETFs and UITs that were sold throughout Wall Street. Earlier in his career, he worked on the floor of the NYSE. He is the author of The Coming Bond Market Collapse: How to Survive the Demise of the U.S. Debt Market.

Adam Taggart is the Founder of  Thoughtful Money. He is also Co-Founder and former President of Peak Prosperity. Adam is an experienced Silicon Valley internet executive and Stanford MBA. Prior to partnering with Chris Martenson (Adam was General Manager of our earlier site, ChrisMartenson.com), he was a Vice President at Yahoo!, a company he served for nine years. Before that, he did the ‘startup thing’ (mySimon.com, sold to CNET in 2001). As a fresh-faced graduate from Brown University in the early 1990s, Adam got a first-hand look at all that was broken with Wall Street as an investment banking analyst for Merrill Lynch. Most importantly, he’s a devoted husband and dad.

  market correction, market crash, recession