A Wide Decline Has Been Set in Motion

This blog post originally appeared on RealMoney Silver on Aug. 16 at 8:06 a.m. EDT.

Over the past two years, I have consistently warned against the broad implications of the egregious use of leverage (in financial institutions, at hedge funds and at the consumer level), the downside to the market's broad reach for yield (and return), a protracted and severe housing downturn and, in turn, the effects of the subprime contagion on our economic and financial well being.

It was a lonely journey -- Nouriel Roubini was literally the only one on my investment/economic page -- and I took a lot of abuse. It hurt in many ways, and at times I felt very stupid. I tried to apply logic of argument and analytical dissection in constructing my ursine views and to dismiss the non-rigorous use of sentiment, which so many relied on to support their optimism -- after all, the trend in prices was consistently up.

With confidence in my views, I expressed my concerns in public forums -- in editorials I wrote and in interviews I gave to Barron's, as a guest host on CNBC's "Squawk Box," on numerous appearances on "Kudlow & Company," on "Mad Money," "Fast Money," "Squawk on the Street" and, of course, on the pages of TheStreet.com's Web sites.

As I wrote earlier, I was in a minority, one of a handful of bears seen as Cassandras in a world in which the value of nearly every asset class rose in unison.