By Greg Hunter’s USAWatchdog.com - April 1, 2026

Financial analyst Ed Dowd of PhinanceTechnologies.com warned at the end of January that the “Credit Destruction Cycle” was showing up in something called private credit. Dowd was worried about extreme risk in the economy, especially with all the growth in lending in the last two years coming from private credit. Has this gotten better or worse? Dowd says, “It’s gotten worse, and it has spread. The number if credit funds that have gated their investors keeps growing. This is important because high net worth individuals, insurance companies and pension funds put millions of dollars in these private credit funds and now they want to redeem them, and there is a gate. The last two years of loan growth in the economy was from banks loaning to private credit. . .. There have been earth shaking events in private credit land. That started a cascading effect of people becoming worried about their private credit fund. Then, redemptions started, and some funds like Blue Owl have taken massive hits. They had to gate their fund. Apollo gated their fund. Black Rock gated their fund, and KKR has gated their fund. So, there is a lot of gating going on. Basically, this is the beginning of the credit cycle rolling over. This starts in the most egregious sector, which looks like private credit. . .. So, the credit market is starting to end the party, and we are going to see this cascade throughout the whole economy.”

The Iran war just turbocharges the entire negative global scenario. Dowd says, “You layer on top of this the Iran war and that only hastens the whole thing unless there is a quick resolution.” . . .

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There is more in the 47-minute interview.