Nouriel Roubini is the only mainstream economist to predict the current financial meltdown so he is worth paying attention to.
In his words:
“a housing bubble, a mortgage bubble, an equity bubble, a bond bubble, a credit bubble, a commodity bubble, a private equity bubble, a hedge funds bubble are all now bursting at once in the biggest real sector and financial sector deleveraging since the Great Depression.”
(I helped start a discussion list a few years ago called Meltdown to discuss the possibility but never predicted it would actually happen – actually, I was always a bear on the thesis of that group.)