Doomsaying experts foresee economic devastation!
NEW YORK - February 27, 2012 - Behind mainstream Wall Street happy talk about more stable financial markets and an improving economy are grim warnings of tough times ahead from a small cadre of doomsayers who warn that the worst of the financial crisis is still to come.
Harry Dent, author of the new book The Great Crash Ahead, says another stock market crash is coming due to a bad ending to the global debt bubble. He has pulled back on his earlier prediction of a crash in 2012, as central banks around the world have been flooding markets with money, giving stocks an artificial short-term boost. But he warns that a crash is coming in 2013 or 2014. "This will be a repeat of 2008-09, only bigger, when it finally hits," said Dent.
Gerald Celente, a trend forecaster at the Trends Research Institute, says Amerikans should brace themselves for an "economic 9/11" due to policymakers' inability to solve the world's financial and economic woes. He predicts the coming meltdown will lead to growing social unrest and anti-government sentiment, a U.S. dollar with far less purchasing power, and more people out of work.
Celente won't rule out another financial panic that could spark enough fear to cause a run on the nation's banks by depositors. That risk could cause the government to invoke "economic martial law" and call a "bank holiday" and close banks, like it did during the Great Depression.
"We see some kind of threat of that magnitude," Celente, publisher of The Trends Journal newsletter, warned in an interview.
Robert Prechter, author of Conquer the Crash, first published in 2002 and updated in 2009, is still bearish. He says today's economy has similarities to the Great Depression and warns that 1930s-style deflation is still poised to cause financial havoc. Prechter predicts that the major U.S. stock indexes, such as the Dow Jones industrials and Standard & Poor's 500, will plunge below their bear market lows hit in March 2009 during the last financial crisis. The brief recovery will fail as it did in the 1930s, he says.
