Did anyone here predict the 2008 crash?

A broken clock is correct twice a day...

These are 12 clocks each separately pointing to one time which happened to be the correct point of failure. With a few trillion on the line I'd be checking what those clocks read now even if I thought it random

The irony of random vs uniform risk
 
I think most people who are reasonably well informed about the world can tell when the economy is in a dangerous unsustainable state. It's calling when it's going to pop that's the issue.

Everyone knew the boom years leading up to 2008 were fuelled by debt and it was going to come back and bite us at some point.
 
This guy was predicting it... he does run an investment bank though.

though perhaps a better claim than most it isn't much of a claim... that is more like Scorsa's 'stopped clock' analogy - just some talking head who happened to be talking down the housing market at the time (at any point in history you'll probably find a talking head saying housing is going to fall)

far cry from someone like Mike Bury going through those MBS brochures, finding a very real problem he could quantify and placing a very big bet on it
 
I was predicting it before 2006 and many of my friends and work colleagues kept laughing and saying it would never happen. After the crash they all said it was obvious and they predicted it.

Unfortunately I didn't time my house buying right to make a profit. But I did sell around £70k of banking shares just before the shareprice crash :D
 
The Problem with the stopped clock analogy is that it dismisses that there may actually be fundamental problems. It assumes that what is happening is inviolable, like the flow of time, and that nothing can be done.

Dismissing a point using the analogy is disingenuous at best.

Nate
 
I don't think anyone has dismissed a point using the analogy per say but rather used that analogy to describe the various people who happened to be vaguely 'right' in their 'prediction' of a crash in a very wide sense of 'prediction'.
 
I predict a 2017 crash. Maybe even 2016.

Interesting fact. In the Northeast ALL house building has stopped. Full stop. On hold.

in 3 weeks time there will be no work for brickies, joiners, plasterers unless things change.

Funny as it's thriving down in the South East and will continue with no signs of slowing down.

But that's where the money is (and the best weather).
 
UK property is a safe haven in uncertain times as the government has shown time and time again they will continue to take measures to ensure the market keeps going up.

There remains a slim possibility of the government getting a grip on the problem and making availability of affordable housing a priority over making older voters better off....but it's pretty slim.
 
Seems Peter Schiff believes that the US has a currency problem wholesale incoming at the end of the year.

I am skeptical that he's not just playing off his "success" in interpreting 2007 and trying to seem a big guy and such, but considering that nothing has really changed in a decade, he's probably close to the answer.
 
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I remember Robert Peston being the strongest voice on this at the time from a UK perspective. Maybe not so much as a prediction, but in explaining what was going on and its severity.
 
Depends on what you mean by 'predict' (and indeed 'the crash'). I thought it was extremely likely that interest rates would fall so took out a lifetime tracker mortgage before they got slashed by 5% (to be fair, I'd been expecting a more modest cut).

It will of course happen again but the question is when. I think we'll see a slight correction in house prices in the next couple of years as affordability limits are reached (currency devaluation will in around 6 months time be filtering through to hit people in the pocket in terms of fuel, food costs etc). Jobless total is at an 11 year low so it seems feasible that this will rise a bit.
 
I did in late 2005 when loads of yanks got made unemployed and started being dispossessed for not paying their mortgage, it was obvious then and it's obvious now that the entire western collection of "markets" is rigged by direct lies, collusion and ultra dubious govt stats.
 
I've had a few discussions with fund managers at my company and every one of them so far has said they expect a global recession to begin before the end of the year. A couple think it will be worse than 2008 and as yet no one has thought everything will be fine. I've also had a number of conversations with these people about personal investments and on every occasion they have told me they have cashed all investments.

Hopefully the negative sentiment is wrong, but I guess we will know 12 months from now.


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I did not predict the 2008 crash. I had read some of the people warning of it in the media, but didn't think much about it.

I did predict the oil crash about 18 months before it came. I felt pretty good about that one as it happened exactly when and why I said. I didn't profit from it though, which is a shame.
I did, like I did with brexit and like am with the new crash coming very soon to the EU.
 
Seems Peter Schiff believes that the US has a currency problem wholesale incoming at the end of the year.


He does fundamentals not trading. The quote about the stockmarket outlasting you is really the reality.

If every balance sheet were played out in total, the USA is already bust. Thats not how it works though and they have backers far larger then the actual usa economy.
He is correct I believe but as for timing then no I wouldnt rely on that. If the question was did anyone pinpoint 2008 then afaik nobody did.
Many did call out very large problems and its not a broken clock to be consistent in your criticism and eventually that is a cause of failure.

Does the engineer get it wrong to fail a bridge on safety but it lasts another five years and then fails. There are large structural problems evident ongoing not improving, this is true

USA has a horrible debt problem, any company in a similar position would be rated horribly but they can do any number of things to juggle, defer or even deny any consequences for the moment. Inevitably I see that changing, I rate any natural effect over politics ability to stop it being true.

Start a new thread for guesses maybe but 2016 isnt the year of a crash. They didnt even know that in 2007 was the start of a recession, that was in retrospect a realisation and adjustment to figures after the fact.
http://www.forexfactory.com/#graph=6238
In autumn 2007 RBS carried out one of the worlds largest banking take overs, it was a disaster and they outbid Barclays who narrowly and cluelessly avoided the same bad luck


I sold all my Bradford and bingley shares at over 3 pounds. Just a random judgement they were expensive where as an IPO by standard life was relatively cheap and forced by the regulator it was an ideal buy. I'd say thats all people can do in predictive terms of large events, try to capture genuine value if possible.
Compare house prices to rental costs, etc. Dont hold on hoping for a greater fool
 
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Yes, I predicted it, thought it would happen years before it did, but I predicted it and the reasons I did were the reasons it happened.

The next crash has already started and will be characterised by stagflation.
 
He does fundamentals not trading. The quote about the stockmarket outlasting you is really the reality.

If every balance sheet were played out in total, the USA is already bust. Thats not how it works though and they have backers far larger then the actual usa economy.
He is correct I believe but as for timing then no I wouldnt rely on that. If the question was did anyone pinpoint 2008 then afaik nobody did.
Many did call out very large problems and its not a broken clock to be consistent in your criticism and eventually that is a cause of failure.

Does the engineer get it wrong to fail a bridge on safety but it lasts another five years and then fails. There are large structural problems evident ongoing not improving, this is true

USA has a horrible debt problem, any company in a similar position would be rated horribly but they can do any number of things to juggle, defer or even deny any consequences for the moment. Inevitably I see that changing, I rate any natural effect over politics ability to stop it being true.

Start a new thread for guesses maybe but 2016 isnt the year of a crash. They didnt even know that in 2007 was the start of a recession, that was in retrospect a realisation and adjustment to figures after the fact.
http://www.forexfactory.com/#graph=6238
In autumn 2007 RBS carried out one of the worlds largest banking take overs, it was a disaster and they outbid Barclays who narrowly and cluelessly avoided the same bad luck


I sold all my Bradford and bingley shares at over 3 pounds. Just a random judgement they were expensive where as an IPO by standard life was relatively cheap and forced by the regulator it was an ideal buy. I'd say thats all people can do in predictive terms of large events, try to capture genuine value if possible.
Compare house prices to rental costs, etc. Dont hold on hoping for a greater fool

So are we in a prolonged situation compared to 2007 and the resulting 2008 kerfuffle?

I mean, a few folks are saying the dollar is in serious trouble with Renmimbi doing crazy interesting things, the EURO has political problems as well as member states being profligate and Sterling is a stranger due to Brexit...

Surely things are about to unravel?
 
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