I can’t recall who exactly recommended this to me when I first picked this up back in 2010 or 2011, but I do recall the cautionary note that they took as they described it and the author’s conclusions.
The global recession had begun four years earlier, since which time I had just barely been able to sell a house (seriously–I closed the sale of the house the same week that Bear Sterns ceased to be), had graduated from law school at perhaps the worst time for new attorneys to be entering the work force, and had managed to find a good, but not great paying, job at a local company. Financially speaking, the future seemed bleak, and I was not sanguine about my prospects for future income.
Aftershock: Protect Yourself and Profit in the Next Global Financial Meltdown seemed like a warning voice against future economic calamity, so I picked it up and gave it a read.
Unfortunately, I was, largely, disappointed. Falling into that category of financial reading that seems to best be described as “fear mongering,” I found it full of doom and gloom, threatening prognostications, and warnings about the future. I suspect that authors David and Robert Wiedemer, and Cindy Spitzer have made better money of the sale, and subsequent editions of, the book than most readers have from the advice they give.
This isn’t to say that there may not be substance to their arguments. Looking at a succession of financial bubbles, including both the dotcom bubble and the more recent housing bubble, they posit that the bubbles have led the Federal Reserve to engage in reckless market manipulation that is going to result in 50% unemployment, a 90% stock market crash, and 100% annual inflation, starting in 2012.
Their advice? Sell your home, cash out your stocks, and convert your assets into gold and inflation pegged securities.
That’s a stark transition, and from a set of authors who are perhaps inflating their own expertise in economic prophesy a bit further than their resumes merit.
Meanwhile, we find ourselves in 2014, the economy on the mend, and the catastrophic events predicted by Aftershock as yet unrealized. I suppose that there is still time, and I don’t want to give the impression that everything is smelling of roses, but perhaps the take away is that the success of Aftershock is more about marketing for its authors than about economic prediction relevant to readers.
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- Economist Caution: Prepare For ‘Massive Wealth Destruction’ (endtimeheadlines.wordpress.com)
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- Aftershock? (atginvestments.com)
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- The perils of predicting a stock market crash in 2014 (theweek.com)
Aftershock: Protect Yourself and Profit in the Next Global Financial Meltdown by Wiedemer, Wiedemer, and Spitzer
Non-fiction, investing
Wiley
November 9, 2009
Hardcover
273
Amazon
From the authors who predicted with unmatched precision the domino impacts of the real estate, stock market, and other bubbles that led to 2008's market meltdown comes the definitive look at what is still to come and what investors can do to protect themselves
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