“The system is collapsing, but I can save you”

Disclaimer: This guide is for satirical purposes only. Following this advice may lead to a loss of friends, family, and actual money, but a potentially massive gain in YouTube subscribers, which is the only metric that truly matters in the coming economic reset.

The allure of being a doomsday prophet is obvious: Potential for instant celebrity + money.

Here’s the how and why:

Fear creates attention (bold calls always attract an audience)
Attention builds authority (fear sells; people are wired to avoid loss, etc)
Authority can be monetized (newsletters, books, investment fund offerings)

Now that we understand why being a doomsday prophet is appealing, we can dive into the playbook of how it works. But first, let’s look at some of today’s leaders in the field:

The Doomsday Prophet Hall of Fame

Haters may call them ‘Financial Charlatans’, but these guys have built an impressive lifestyle predicting an apocalypse, and they all share a similar strategy:

	Medium	Doomsday Predictions	End Product
Harry Dent	Books, Newsletters	Stock Market Crashes, Demographic Failures	Dent Sector Fund, Dent Demographics Fund (Closed), Dent Tactical ETF (closed)
Peter Schiff	Fund Blog, Podcast, Newsletter	Hyperinflation, Collapse of the Dollar	Schiff Gold, Euro Pacific Asset Management
Nouriel Roubini	Professor @ NYU, Books, Newsletter	Debt/Deficits/Bubbles	Speaking Appearances, Roubini Macro Associates Consulting
Marc Faber	“Gloom, Boom and Doom Report Newsletter	Hyperinflation, Politics, Government Overreach	Marc Faber LTD Investment Funds
Gerald Celente	“The Trends Journal” Newsletter	War, economic collapse, national deficit	Newsletter, Books, Public Speaking, Consulting
Jim Rickards	“Strategic Intelligence” Newsletter	Death of the dollar, economic collapse	Physical Gold Fund, Physical Hard Assets Fund

The playbook here is straightforward: Predict a disease, mass distribute it, then sell the cure. We’ll reference these guys throughout the playbook.

7 Steps to Becoming a Prophet of Doom

Step 1: Choose Your Origin Story

No prophet is created without a dramatic conversion story. You can’t just be a person who reads a few blog posts. You must have seen the truth.

The Insider: "I spent 20 years on Wall Street. I saw the rot from the inside. I walked away that day to warn the people."
- Rickards worked for Long Term Capital Management (Bankrupt), Schiff worked for Lehman Brothers (Bankrupt). Faber worked for White Weld & Co. (acquired in 1978).
The Scholar: "I was a professor of economic history. While translating an ancient clay tablet, I discovered that culture also had a Federal Reserve that acted too late. Next thing you know, their society collapsed into dust.”
- Roubini teaches in the NYU business program.

Step 2: Choose Your Apocalypse and stick with it

Mild predictions aren’t going to cut it. You can’t say “I think the S&P 500 will drop 10% this year” because that happens basically every year, and people aren’t worried about a small drop.

You have to sell TOTAL APOCALYPSE. If you say “the system is about to collapse”, someone will invite you on a podcast to explain. Loss aversion is a powerful instinctive human trait. Your job is to appeal to it.

The “Collapse of the dollar” is a popular narrative. Each of our Hall of Doomers above (Dent, Roubini, Rickards, Schiff, Faber & Celente) makes it a core thesis. Point to the national deficit, government spending, etc, and you’ve got an audience.
The new depression or “great reset” is also a popular one. Take any of the weekly data points and extrapolate away: Unemployment, CPI, PPI, a slowdown in Vegas, etc. Tell them all: “This is the canary in the coal mine.”

Whatever Doom Vision you choose, stick to it. Nobody likes a waffle.

Step 3: Be Confident, master the lingo

To be a prophet, you must sound like one. Share these key phrases and deliver them with grave authority:

"It's not a matter of if, but when."
"The fundamentals are broken."
"A return to the mean is inevitable." (Implying the "mean" is the Stone Age).
"The sheeple are asleep, but the lions are waking up." (Your followers are the lions, obviously).
"This isn’t a prediction, it’s a calculation: a mathematical certainty."

Step 4: Timing is always “soon to very soon”

People don’t care that something might happen “eventually”. If you want their attention, create urgency, and tell them they don’t want to miss the boat. That “boat” being, of course, what you’re selling.

Step 5: Responding to prediction results

If your prophecy coincides with a market drop or recession: Congratulations! You can now advertise this for literal decades. Many of our prophets above take credit for a Japanese stock collapse or internet bubble from 25+ years ago. They proudly advertise those wins to this day, while burying a multitude of losses.
This is the best part of the job (behind the fame/money): Being wrong doesn’t really matter. Don’t people expect you to be right? Not necessarily! Here are some of our Doomer’s worst calls of all time.

Harry Dent

His most prominent bad call of the decade was the "Demographic Cliff" prediction. Around 2011, Dent forecasted that a massive wave of baby boomer retirements would trigger a stock market crash and a prolonged depression, with the Dow Jones falling to as low as 3,000. Instead, the U.S. stock market entered one of the most powerful and sustained bull markets in history.

Peter Schiff

Throughout the entire decade, Schiff's signature bad call was his unwavering prediction of imminent U.S. hyperinflation and a dollar collapse. Starting around 2010, he argued that the Federal Reserve's quantitative easing (QE) was "monetizing the debt" and would destroy the dollar, making gold the only safe asset. The dollar remained the world's primary reserve currency, inflation stayed stubbornly low for the entire decade, and U.S. stocks dramatically outperformed gold.

Nouriel Roubini

While he was more measured than others after his correct 2008 call, Roubini's most notable incorrect forecast was his warning of a "perfect storm" in 2013. He predicted that a combination of a slowdown in China, U.S. fiscal tightening (the "sequester"), and the Eurozone debt crisis would stall the global recovery and could tip the world back into recession. Instead, 2013 became a banner year for the S&P 500, which surged nearly 30% as those fears failed to materialize.

Marc Faber

Faber was consistently bearish on U.S. stocks for years, but a famously bad call came in 2012-2014. He repeatedly warned that the market was a "bubble" created by the Fed and was on the verge of a major crash similar to 1987. In a well-known 2014 interview, he claimed U.S. stocks could easily drop 30-40%, yet the market continued its steady climb for several more years.

Gerald Celente

Celente's most memorable incorrect call of the period was his prediction of the "Panic of 2010." He forecast a widespread economic collapse, food riots, and tax revolts in the United States for that year. While the economy was still recovering, no such panic or societal breakdown occurred, and the market began its long bull run.

Jim Rickards

His most significant incorrect call was detailed in his 2011 book, Currency Wars. Rickards argued that major economies were actively devaluing their currencies to boost their own economies, a process that he predicted would lead to financial chaos and the collapse of the international monetary system. While currency fluctuations continued, the system did not collapse, and his forecast of a catastrophic breakdown proved unfounded during that decade.

How did these market collapse predictions play out? From the beginning of 2011 to mid-August 2025, the S&P 500 provided a total return of over 600%*. This means that a $10,000 investment made at the start of 2011, with all dividends reinvested, would have grown to roughly $74,500*.

Step 7: you can’t be wrong, only ‘early’

Usually Sometimes doom and gloom predictions don’t go your way. Does that stop our “experts”? No! These “prophets”, still get up every day, claim market/data manipulation, and double down on their warning. “Oh, you thought a 40% drop would be bad? Now it’s going to be a 90% drop!”

Shutter your funds with negative returns, delete the blogs and videos, and bury any evidence of loss. It’s what all the greats do. Only relaunch the new Gold Fund or ETF when you think people forgot about the last failure. Remember, some people want to hear that the world is going to hell in a handbasket. Sell them something!

The economy is vast and full of things to be worried about. You can always find something to publish newsletters and books about.

Pick your apocalypse, polish your rhetoric, and remember the golden rule: if you predict a storm every single day, eventually you'll be right. And you can sell a lot of umbrellas in the meantime.

Disclaimer: This guide is for satirical purposes only. Following this advice may lead to a loss of friends, family, and actual money, but a potentially massive gain in YouTube subscribers, which is the only metric that truly matters in the coming economic reset.

*Footnote: Over Time, Stock Market Returns Tend To Follow Earnings