Prophets of the Next Catastrophe

Everywhere you turn these days, Nouriel Roubini is delivering gloomy economic forecasts in his Transylvanian monotone, his market value and celebrity secured by his spot-on prediction of our current economic mess. Others who bucked the boundless optimism of economic orthodoxy while enduring the contemptuous dismissals of Wall Street shills and free-market cheerleaders are now similarly basking in the limelight (e.g., Peter Schiff, Robert Shiller, Meredith Whitney, etc.). Their warnings of impending disaster were unheeded during the bubble, yet seem so obviously sensible in retrospect.

There's another epic catastrophe looming and another crop of Cassandras whose dire warnings are being largely ignored today, but who will be revered for their foresight tomorrow. The pending catastrophe is the decline of world oil production and its leading prophets include Matthew Simmons and Robert Hirsch.

Here's Robert Hirsch giving an introduction to the problem:



And here's Matthew Simmons (I believe from early 2007):



If you've got time while you're fixing your breakfast or ironing your shirts, you can listen to Simmons and Hirsch together last week being interviewed by Jim Puplava on financialsense.com.