The Crash of the Millennium: Surviving the Coming Inflationary Depression - Hardcover

Batra, Ravi

3.6

5 ratings by Goodreads

9780609605127: The Crash of the Millennium: Surviving the Coming Inflationary Depression

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0609605127 ISBN 13: 9780609605127

Publisher: Harmony, 1999

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It's remarkable how often the predictions of economics professor Ravi Batra have proven prescient. Years in advance he predicted the rise of fundamentalism in Iran, the fall of the Berlin Wall, the decline of communism, the stock market crash of 1987, and the September market slump of 1998. The one time Batra seemed to get it wrong was with the prediction of his best-selling book, The Great Depression of 1990. As it turned out, that depression was postponed by massive borrowing from abroad, and what we now face will be all the worse for the delay.

The premise of this book is as simple--and as powerful--as the law of supply and demand. In the United States, as in many other countries, we've been producing more and more goods, but wages have not kept pace. That disparity has been papered over by credit cards, easy loans and a huge speculative bubble in the stock market, but cracks are appearing in the walls. Russia, the "Tiger" economies of Asia, and Latin America have been hit hard recently, and Batra predicts similar tough times ahead for the United States. It will begin with a stock market crash in the fall of 1999, followed by a depression made doubly damaging by rising inflation. Its effects will reverberate through the early part of the coming decade.

In The Crash of the Millennium, Professor Batra describes how individuals, businesses, and governments can prepare for the hardships that lie ahead. And he tells us how, for those who survive, the future beyond the dark horizon holds decades of prosperity and peace.

The author of five international best-sellers, Batra is known for successfully predicting:
the stock market crash of 1987
the fall 1998 U.S. stock market slump
the current market turmoil in Asia and Latin America
a fundamentalist revolution in Iran in 1979
the decline of communism
the fall of the Berlin Wall

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Review:

Anyone who collects a wage will appreciate the premise behind Crash of the Millennium: Wages are too low, relative to the growth of productivity, and thus we're in for a global economic disaster. Who would've thought that being underpaid would have such awful repercussions? Batra, an economics professor at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, has a long history of mostly accurate predictions. He predicted a major depression in 1990, which turned out to be just a recession, but also had quite a few hits: the rising stock market in the '80s, falling inflation and real-estate crashes in the '90s, and assorted wars and other upheavals.

As the 20th century comes to a close, he avers, a handful of long-term trends are coming to a disastrous climax: too much government spending, too much consumer credit, too many monopolistic industries, too much wealth staying at the top in the form of high corporate profits and unprecedented stock prices, and too little trickling down in the form of wages. He also tells you what to do to minimize your losses in this disaster: Sell stocks and bonds. Forget about real estate as an inflation shelter. Park your money in bank certificates of deposit. If you have to speculate, buy gold, silver, or platinum. It's radical advice, but Batra backs it all up with numerous charts showing historical patterns of inflation and speculative bubbles. And he candidly admits he has no idea where all this will end up; his advice merely applies to late 1999 and the first two years of the new millennium. Is he right? We'll know soon enough. --Lou Schuler

From the Back Cover:

"Ravi Batra has made an outstanding reputation in the United States as an international economic theorist in the best Western tradition."
--Leonard Silk, New York Times

"When it comes to the bottom line so beloved of economists, one can learn a lot about events by thinking about them in cyclical regularities,
of which Batra gives a novel and brilliant exposition."
--Lester C. Thurow

"The forecasting record of this widely respected Southern Methodist University economist has won glowing praise from many pragmatic investment masters."
--Tom Peters, Chicago Tribune

"Batra is a scholar who has earned a considerable reputation as an expert on trade."
--Albert Crenshaw, Washington Post

"Scary, provocative. The good professor has a formidable academic reputation and, from what I know, his forecasting record is impressive."
--Barton Biggs, Morgan Stanley & Company

"Ravi Batra was used to making tumultuous global forecasts and having nobody listen--then predictions started to come true."
--Chip Brown, Associated Press

"His predictions in the early 1980s of low inflation, falling oil prices, and a wave of mergers--mocked for years--have proved close to the mark."
--Thomas C. Hayes, New York Times

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