Guru watch: Gloomy Gus

American economist Gary Shilling sees himself has something of a Cassandra. "Nobody likes a bearer of bad news, a gloomy Gus or a glass half-empty attitude [but] it has become my reputation," he says in Forbes magazine. The 75-year-old has made a name for himself by correctly predicting several major recessions since the late 1960s.

More recent calls include highlighting subprime housing loans as "the greatest financial problem" for the US economy in 2006 and warning of a "serious recession" in 2008. Now he's warning that America widely touted as one of the West's healthiest major economies is about to head back into another recession.

The main reason, says Shilling, is the weak employment market. A lack of jobs is hitting consumer spending the largest part of the American economy. "We've had three consecutive months of declines in retail sales," says Shilling. "That's happened 29 times since they started collecting the data in 1947, and in 27 of the 29 we were either in a recession or within three months of it." It's worth noting that more recent retail figures have come out after Shilling's interview, and showed a 0.8% bounce in July.

Subscribe to MoneyWeek

Subscribe to MoneyWeek today and get your first six magazine issues absolutely FREE

Get 6 issues free

Sign up to Money Morning

Don't miss the latest investment and personal finances news, market analysis, plus money-saving tips with our free twice-daily newsletter

Don't miss the latest investment and personal finances news, market analysis, plus money-saving tips with our free twice-daily newsletter

Sign up

But Shilling has other evidence to back his view. "Nervous markets are anticipating this global recession", he says, noting that oil, copper and cotton have all seen "huge drops". Meanwhile, "most stockmarkets around the world have largely erased their earlier 2012 gains in anticipation of further economic weakness and a collapse in corporate profits".

Despite all of this, Shilling's major prediction this year that the key US index, the S&P 500, would fall to 800 looks pretty distant at the moment, with the index currently trading around 1,400. But Shilling is undeterred. "It hasn't happened yet, and the figure has been scoffed at. But disbelief is exactly how people reacted when I predicted the housing bubble's burst" in 2005.