The End of American Ascendancy?

The near future has some bad omens, but perhaps Americans shouldn’t worry.

Jeffrey Folks | August 10, 2026

Jeremy Grantham, a well-known market commentator, has stated that we are near the end — not just the end of the current bull market in stocks, but the end of social and economic ascendancy as a nation.  Stock and bond markets are carrying too much leverage, too much stock issuance is entering the market, society is deeply divided, debt of all kinds is at all-time high levels, and resources are running low.

What happens when the bubble bursts?  According to Grantham and others, society descends into something like anarchy as groups and individuals struggle to meet their needs, with too few goods available for too many people.  Elevated prices collapse, and with them the retirement savings of millions of Americans.  America enters into an economic depression that reminds one of the 1930s or the period after the housing crisis of 2007.

What Grantham is describing is not just a market crash, however.  He is describing the end of an eighty-year cycle going back to WWII, during which America has been the dominant economic and military power in the world and in which endless opportunities existed for individual advancement and wealth creation.  As that cycle comes to an end and reverses, we may face long-term contraction rather than expansion.  Immense quantities of wealth will evaporate, and we will enter what will seem like a permanent state of decline.

Grantham is a wise observer with a half-century of experience tracking markets.  It is........

© American Thinker