The Man Who Saw This Coming

I am currently reading Mr Ferguson's "Ascent of Money", and recommend it. The Stock Market is dicey, always has been and always will be. My grandfather borrowed money once, during the 1930s, $5,000, to buy a farm and paid it off in 2 years. Through extremely hard work, as a hog farmer, and selling railroead ties he cut himself. My point is, it always comes down to hard work, no matter who you are. The meteoric rise of stocks began most recently in March 2003, after the refis, and preceded the invasion of Iraq. Many saw the collapse coming, and began selling between 11,000 and 12,000; or sooner. Not talking conspiracy, but go look at the history. Truth though: Current Administration policies, along with wall street, is when all this happened, and it's not over. It will end during the next 4 years hopefully. I don't care who gets the credit. Get out of debt as soon as you can, and spend as little as little as possible. Then worry about investing. Then your Grandkids will have something.

I really question those FBN pundits about their professionalism. This Alexis, you can see that she just worries her home price so terribly in the show.

Alexis, Most people with common sense in thier skulls saw this coming at least 18 months ago.

I am serious when i say that a relative in Calif and NC were selling mortgages from their real basement office in their home. Such that 1 relative bought an expensive Hummer at one point. Their mortgages were then given to their main source company, who then bundled them up. And the Feds approved of practices?

Niall said this in 2007 ? I said this around 2000 when my mother told me about two relatives who had a bsasement business selling mortgages. Their former jobs had no connection. So I figured, There must be more people doing the same. And I doubted such basement abilities to give proper mortages. I told Mom, this will have a huge ripple affect thru the economy. I predicted that the huge home price increases will plummet. They finally did so. You know the rest of the story now. This was not a very hard thing to forecast. I have a simple MBA and figured it out 8 years ago. I don't dabble in the :casino: stock market. I remember listening to Greenspann around 2005 referring to the possible "bubble" Even Greenspann knew it but did little about it. He failed us. They could have called me and we could have traced my 2 cousins activities right back to their bosses (big financial companies that you know hear about failing). Botton line is "nothing is for free". This was a huge pyramid scheme from the beginning. We need to figure out how to stop this from happening again. We have to stop the get rich fast people and the one;s who sell "methods" to buying foreclosed properties too. The realtors won this round. The Fed and related agencies were either asleep at the wheel or were enjoying the benefits.

So the democrate party plan to press fanie and redie to give massive amounts of subprime loans to people who can't even pay for them caused the entire problem. The packaging of subprime loan batches and selling them as having good value sent the diease throughout the economy. The democrat claim that Bush did it was fraud. So now we have a growing disease that will not be solved because the people who started the problem put themselves into more power to continue the problem.

Alexis, That was a very informative and riveting interview. While I doubt he is the only one to predict this meltdown, he certainly is the most coherent I've heard so far. I love historians. It occurs to me that we are in the financial equivalent of flood "management." The first day of my Hydrology course, the professor walked in and wrote two rules on the chalk board. 1. Rivers flood. 2. There's nothing man can do to prevent it. He then spent 50 minutes giving us a history lesson on how trying to prevent floods only made things worse. Stop a flood at town A and town B downstream gets wiped out. He had nothing good to say about the Army Corps of Engineers (FED, Treasury). Prevent Bear Stearns from going under and you get AIG, CitiGroup, et al.

So Mr. Ferguson should get the Nostrodamus award for 2008. Big deal. Elaine Gazzarelli "predicted" the 1987 crash almost to the day, to her credit and to fame and fortune, but after that, her crystal ball went a little hazy. It's easy, after the fact, to point to one person and say "he predicted it !" Sometimes the weatherman gets it right, but not always.

Many people saw this coming several years back. However, it is nice to see Niall being brutally honest and totally unemotional about this issue. We need more folks with media exposure operating from a basis of facts and not emotion. If you can't afford a house, then you shouldn't be able to buy one. Seems like common sense to me.

NF is a genius, all his history books are important & fascinating, fantastically well-written, easy to understand for the layperson.

this man should be the next secretary of treasury, and not a moment too soon.

The documentary film, I.O.U.S. A. by Agora Publishing pointed to this also. THe also point to the 53 trillion dollars the USA has obligated us to pay.

Mr. Ferguson is entirely correct, but he isn't the only one to predict this. Every responsible citizen who has lived a frugal, financially sane life, created wealth, saved money and taken care of business while not trying to keep up with the Joneses, saw-this-coming. Sadly, there were too few of us who felt that way to matter. I now have great fear for this nation and the world, not because of an economic downturn, but because a socialist intent on 'spreading the wealth' will soon have the most powerful job in the world. Losing our personal fortunes is punishment, surely, for making the wrong investment decisions, but having our fortunes stolen is an entirely different matter. Chris McDaniel Baton Rouge

During the dot com run up many companies stock prices increased with P/E's going to new highs. Many companies split their stocks, 2 to 1, 3 to 1, and many people made money. The dot com bust took out the high tech companies, especially those without substance, and the remaining companies have been sliding since. Accounting for the stock splits on todays prices and looking at the P/E's for the various industries, are we that off to the historical averages?

As a small business owner, in a professional sector that services development, I saw this coming in late 2006. If economists and professors would get their head out of the books and off the computer, they may had been able to OPEN their eyes to reality and would have seen this train wreck coming from a mile away. These analysts may be experts in theory, but failed to see what was happening in the real world. Naill is the exception and not the rule. I'm guessing that people did not take him seriously in 07 calling him an alarmist... as people did with us as we started to prepare for the "great repression."

There were quite a few people who saw "this" coming: Eric Janszen, Michael Kosares, Michael Panzner, Robert Prechter, Jim Rogers, Peter Schiff, to name a few. And most, if not all, were ridiculed for setting off the alarm. As Oscar Wilde once said, "Ridicule is the tribute paid to the genius by the mediocrities."

Gimme a break.. thousands of Joe the Plumbers have seen this coming for "YEARS". Dozens of books have been written over the last few "decades" predicting exactly whats happening,not to mention all the politicians who knew exactly what they were doing.For heavens sake your own Glen Beck has been predicting this meltdown for years.

i think no one wants to comment because they would amit they were wrong. This man saw this coming years ago yet no one listen or even thought about what he had to say now look at the problem we are in.

It seem's Mr. Ferguson's prescient observations lead us back to the old and time honored maxim "The main lesson we learn from History is that we do not learn enough of it." Hopefully, all the governmental efforts at de-railing the train of 1931 rolling down the track towards 2009 will work. I have my doubts.

That was jarring to listen to. Even as it rolls right off his tongue like a memorized script, he conveys a sense of urgency and the need for a global perspective that I haven't heard expressed in an interview. If he's correct (again) about where we should be focusing our efforts, then my hope suddenly plunged. Obama and his merry bunch of on the left want to save this economy in obvious but destructive ways. Bailouts, stimulus packages that phase out for those that would actually spend it, and the creation of new govt. programs to treat the symptoms, not the cause. We'll certainly need a bit of both, but I am quite sure the Dems will overreach and veer our economy into the ditch. What I think I heard him say was perhaps a little bad medicine is in order. Bankruptcy might be the preferred long term option for the auto industry. We won't have the ability to sell our debt at the same rate we enjoyed in the past because this crisis is widespread around the world. Therefore we can't throw blank checks at everyone standing in line with empty pockets. I still like my idea of allowing home owners, where possible, to refinance their mortgages at a reduced rate. No phase outs and restrictions. This is where the last bit of $$$ will come from in our economy that will allow consumers to spend. These rates will obviously have to be 'set' because the market is broken and the banks are holding back. If we wait for them to come around, the damage will be too great. We are, after all, a consumer economy. More than 2/3 of GDP is consumer spending. If we crack open our home equity piggy banks, there might be some hope for a comeback. Businesses would have a reason to borrow.

Alexis You should invite Jay Johnson to your show. He truly predicted this entire debacle 8-9 years ago at an investors conference. He predicted the exact timing and severity of this down turn. He gave a very convincing presentation and he discussed the demographic theory of economics. He is no "perma bear." He predicted a generally rising economy until that point and then a prolongued and deep depression. He actually advises that there are great buys even in th midst of market declines. He give RCA as an example of a stock that rose substantially throughout the 1929-1932 period. I know he is not part of the acela-ocracy and is not at an ivy league school but sometimes us yokels are pretty smart also. He lives in Gig Harbor, WA. I am sure you can look him up. I think he would be a great guest to have on to give another point of view to the reverse Chicken Little salespeople/analysts you always have on from all the brokerages telling us for the past 18 months that the bottom is here and to invest now or we will miss out. Bill Bauer, MD athleticdoc2000@yahoo.com