Heeter, what do you think Bob Wiedemer....

[z31maniac]

...and his upcoming predictions for the next 3-5 years?

[rwh11385]

Wasn't the first edition printed in Nov 2009??

Honestly, not worth a thread nor any promotion:

http://finance.fortune.cnn.com/2011/09/02/aftershock-finding-fortune-in-marketing-doom/

Want to make money in this market? Just predict the market is just going to get much, much worse. At least that's the very profitable tack the writers of a doom-and-gloom tome, Aftershock: Protect Yourself and Profit in the Next Global Financial Meltdown are taking. The three co-authors, brothers David and Robert Wiedemer, and Cindy Spitzer, are raking in a multimillion-dollar payday by advising people to sell their homes now, cash out their life insurance policies, and dump their stocks ahead of what they predict will be 50% unemployment, a 90% stock market crash, and 100% annual inflation.

In a nutshell, Aftershock argues that a succession of bubbles have set the country on the path to ruin. First came the dotcom bubble, then the housing bubble. Now Federal Reserve market "manipulation" and the "incredible irresponsibility and bad judgment of the public sector" -- i.e. the U.S. government -- make banana republic inflation levels inevitable starting in 2012. Their advice: Sell everything, and pile into gold and inflation-linked securities.

Aftershock, now in its second edition, has spent the past month in the top five selling business books on Amazon.com (AMZN). It is the basis for a massive publicity campaign for right-leaning media outfit Newsmax, and it provides fodder for talking heads on CNN, Fox, and CNBC. All that has been good for sales -- publisher John Wiley & Sons says 200,000 copies are now in print.

But the $800,000 or so in book royalties the authors may receive (based on a standard 15% cover price royalty rate) pales in comparison to the trio's ancillary businesses: David Wiedemer told me the book is responsible for $100 million in assets flowing into Absolute Investment Management, a Bethesda, Md.-based money manager with whom the brothers partnered and where they are now managing directors. On top of that, 1,000 people have paid an annual fee of $399 to receive the Wiedemers' investment advice, a number that is growing faster as more people read the book. (Periodic exhortations to subscribe and invest with them pepper the chapters.)

Now the brothers are branching out. Next up is a follow-up book , the Aftershock Investment Guide, due out next spring. Robert has a consulting deal with Newsmax, which is giving away copies of Aftershock to entice its own readers to subscribe to its own investment newsletters. The West Palm Beach, Fla.-based publisher claims one million people watched a recent "Aftershock Survival Summit" it hosted and publicized a few weeks ago with a full-page Wall Street Journal ad. In the video of the summit, Robert enunciates dire predictions between shots of Obama and elderly people wearing janitor and fast food uniforms. David is thinking bigger. "I'd really like to do a mutual fund," he says.

But the Wiedemers seem less ideologues than two guys who finally found a bubble they can make money from. Before the success of their book, the brothers' day jobs were heavily dependent on government largesse: They still run the Business Valuation Center, a Reston, Va.-based outfit that the Small Business Administration has paid $1.98 million since 2006 to provide financial valuations of potential grant recipients. But David says the asset management business is so successful they are "sort of phasing that down."

Basically same gig as Hussman or that other doomsday guy. Make tons of money from those who want to read that the economy is going to collapse.

[z31maniac]

Yeah, I just caught some blurb about another edition coming out and supposed predictions of the first meltdown.

But honestly haven't had time to research any of his claims.

[rwh11385]

Yeah, put books like this and all other strategies to profit from fear in the same category of fad diet books. South Beach Diet was a top seller written by a doctor and dietitian, but ... ad populum doesn't mean it's correct.

Journal of General Internal Medicine published an evaluation of 42 nutrition and health claims made by the South Beach Diet book. The report found that only 33% of the claims made in the book could be confirmed by findings in the scientific literature, while 17% were not supported. Another 43% yielded "both supported and not supported" results, and 3 claims had no support for or against.