From My friend Sara:
Friends -
I recently read the book "The Big Short" - about the people who saw the financial crisis coming well before the financial meltdown in September of 2008. This book tells the story of a few brilliant folks who saw the subprime mortgage crisis coming as early as 2005, and "put their money where their mouth is" .... taking very large "short positions" on specific financial stocks & subprime based CDOs.
One of the people mentioned in this book is Meredith Whitney. In October of 2007, she was an obscure financial analyst at Oppenheimer & Co. ... who rocked the financial world by accurately predicting the impending Citigroup debacle. In March of 2008, she predicted a 50% drop in U.S. financial sector stocks, six months before it actually happened!
Meredith Whitney has recently launched her own independent financial rating firm, intended to compete with the more established (and somewhat tarnished) financial rating houses - Moodys and Standard & Poors. Here is a link to her website .... www.meredithwhitneyllc.com
Meredith was recently interviewed by the Financial Times in the UK. In this interview, she spells out the ingredients for a second financial meltdown, this time in the huge U.S. municipal bond market. This is a 2.8 Trillion dollar market!! If this takes place (and her logic sounds solid), there will be significant "collateral damage" in the housing and financial sectors, and large government job losses. By inference, it could also do serious damage in the stock market. She says that this financial unraveling is likely to start happening this month, and continue into 2011.
Here is a link to this very interesting video interview with Meredith ....
While I do not know for sure that this financial meltdown will actually take place as predicted, I felt that you should have this information, just in case.
Here are links to a recent YouTube post by Tony Robbins (the most prominent motivational guy in the world), who agrees with with Whitney, sent to me by a friend. And I've read a similar prognosis from some other investor and non-mainline economist types, who agree that this entire economy is just a house of cards, waiting for the next puff of wind. The first part of Robbins' warning is 15 minutes long, the second, 9. Everyone should see this.
Part one: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z_rShZA_IjE
Part two: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LZuJqrcwrEU&feature=related
Iceland is the only country that allowed the banks to fail, and here's an article saying they are already out of the recession.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2010/dec/07/iceland-exits-recession-third-quarter
Wendy