The fun thing with economic predictions: make enough of them, and some of them are bound to come true. The whole fond business seems to dwell on that, publishing lists of successful predictors by the end of the year. Research has shown that the successes are actually just random, but by cherry picking the success stories you can create a nice story for advertising.

In any case, it would be interesting to get more references from you (who predicted what, and what are the suggested steps).

I think there are always a lot of people predicting doom for the near future. Every now and then they are bound to be right, but it doesn't prove anything.