Daryl,

I consider myself reality-based, meaning I look at the data and draw conclusions. IF that means "liberal", so be it.

As far as I'm concerned, Harry Dent lost it before the dot.dom bust. I've never followed him because he seems to be "messianic", or maybe telling folks what they want to hear.

Now having a Reuters story about "systemic margin call" does worry me a bit.

http://biz.yahoo.com/rb/080308/wallstreet_losses_jpm.html?.v=1

From the article: JPMorgan, which sent a default notice to Thornburg Mortgage Inc. (NYSE:TMA - News) after the lender missed a $28 million margin call, said more default notices and margin calls were likely. The Carlyle Group's mortgage fund also failed to meet $37 million in margin calls this week.

"A systemic credit crunch is underway, driven primarily by bank writedowns for subprime mortgages," according to the report co-authored by analyst Christopher Flanagan. "We would characterize this situation as a systemic margin call."

But if you want to follow Harry Dent, far be it from me to tell you otherwise.