{"id":321,"date":"2008-02-20T12:42:30","date_gmt":"2008-02-20T20:42:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mikeindustries.com\/blog\/archive\/2008\/02\/someone-predicted-this-credit-mess-five-years-ago"},"modified":"2016-05-25T23:34:29","modified_gmt":"2016-05-26T06:34:29","slug":"someone-predicted-this-credit-mess-five-years-ago","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mikeindustries.com\/blog\/archive\/2008\/02\/someone-predicted-this-credit-mess-five-years-ago","title":{"rendered":"Someone Predicted this Credit Mess Five Years Ago"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Normally, I think of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.fool.com\" target=\"_blank\">The Motley Fool<\/a> as one of the most worthless financial sites around, spouting off attention-grabbing, sensationalist headlines just to pull readers into their abyss of mediocre financial articles.  Here is a sampling of some typical headlines that have popped up over the past few weeks:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.fool.com\/investing\/general\/2008\/02\/16\/this-mistake-could-cost-you-a-fortune.aspx\" target=\"_blank\">This Mistake Could Cost You a Fortune<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.fool.com\/investing\/mutual-funds\/2008\/02\/16\/best-investments-ever.aspx\" target=\"_blank\">Best. Investments. Ever.<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.fool.com\/investing\/value\/2008\/02\/15\/turning-1000-into-277-trillion.aspx\" target=\"_blank\">Turning $1,000 Into $277 Trillion<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>You get the picture.<\/p>\n<p>However, today, a Motley columnist pointed to what may be the most prescient piece of content ever to appear on the site.  Fittingly, it came from a <em>reader<\/em> on a discussion board and not an actual Motley Fool employee.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/boards.fool.com\/Message.asp?mid=18103748&#038;sort=whole\" target=\"_blank\">Here is the discussion board post<\/a>.  It&#8217;s quite amazing.  It&#8217;s essentially a dead-on calling of the collapse of the bond insurance industry almost exactly five years before it happened.  (For those who aren&#8217;t following, the bond insurance industry &#8212; specifically MBIA and a few other companies &#8212; has crumbled over the last few months and is threatening to take other pillars of the economy down with it&#8230; mostly because of bad subprime debt).<\/p>\n<p>To have called almost this exact scenario five years before it happened is pretty amazing.  I&#8217;m sure this person wasn&#8217;t the only one waving a warning flag, but it&#8217;s an incredibly interesting read.<\/p>\n<p>In looking at the S&#038;P chart below over the last five years, however, it&#8217;s clear that as bad as this development is, and as accurate as the prediction was, pulling out of the U.S. economy &#8212; at least so far &#8212; would have been a bad idea.  &#8220;So far&#8221; being the operative qualifier there. :|<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/blog\/images\/inline\/sandp.gif\" alt=\"\" width=\"450\" height=\"232\" \/><\/p>\n<p><strong>UPDATE:<\/strong> On a related note, <a href=\"http:\/\/docs.google.com\/TeamPresent?docid=ddp4zq7n_0cdjsr4fn&#038;skipauth=true\" target=\"_blank\">this animated primer of the subprime mess<\/a> is hilarious.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Normally, I think of The Motley Fool as one of the most worthless financial sites around, spouting off attention-grabbing, sensationalist headlines just to pull readers into their abyss of mediocre financial articles. Here is a sampling of some typical headlines that have popped up over the past few weeks: This Mistake Could Cost You a [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41,282],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-321","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-business","category-original"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mikeindustries.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/321","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mikeindustries.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mikeindustries.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mikeindustries.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mikeindustries.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=321"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mikeindustries.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/321\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mikeindustries.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=321"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mikeindustries.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=321"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mikeindustries.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=321"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}