[gpk9]

"I had previously heard back in December that it would really start dawning on folks how bad the financial/economic situation is around February as a host of business bankruptcies and failings started announcing..."

I share your view. So do a host of other people, like Gerald Celente, Peter Schiff, Max Keiser, Jim Rogers, Marc Faber, Bob Moriarty, to name a few. They're all saying the exact same thing.

The consensus is that retail will be the next big collapse. Hundreds of well-known retailers going belly-up after shocking declines in 4Q sales, including the Christmas season.

That collapse in retail commercial real estate, combined with a developing collapse in commercial office-type real estate (thanks to hundreds of thousands of people being laid off or outright fired, and the resulting vacancies of millions of square feet of office-type real estate), will rapidly lead to an overall collapse in commercial real estate, the next BIG shoe to drop.

That will hammer financial institutions all over again, as they are holding short-term loans and longer-term mortgages on enormous amounts of commercial real estate.

But this time it won't be confined to a few large investment banks. All manner of banks will be hit, right down to your locally-owned bank.

I believe that is when we will see major panic arise, resulting in bank holidays, etc. Again, the folks mentioned above are all saying the same thing.

[griswold3]

Any ideas of what type of economy comes out the other side?

[OB1kNOb]

Of the guys you mention, do you have any particular ones you personally favor reading/listening to that you think has a solid grasp of the big picture?

[CRBDeuce]

Peter Schiff, Max Keiser, Jim Rogers, Marc Faber

Schiff also said this week that he's closed all his shorts and is 'LONG' again, buying stocks (perhaps not bank stocks). Rogers also said he'd closed all his (and presumably Soros') shorts before Thanksgiving.