The United States, Roubini went on, will likely muddle through the crisis but will emerge from it a different nation, with a different place in the world. “Once you run current-account deficits, you depend on the kindness of strangers,” he said, pausing to let out a resigned sigh. “This might be the beginning of the end of the American empire.

We can only hope he's wrong. But he did call the mortgage meltdown, the credit crunch, the run on the banks, and the implosion of the entire credit market.