Gary Shilling

A. Gary Shilling, president of A. Gary Shilling & Co., warns of a "severe" recession in Europe in 2012, potentially worse than the U.S.'s 2008-2009 slowdown. Without a common fiscal policy in Europe, "it makes it much more difficult to react to weak economic times," he says, speaking in a Jan. 12 interview. Also, U.S. consumers will pull back on spending this year, he says. They spent more freely until December, "but they didn't have the income advances to support it." In China, he predicts a "hard landing" in 2012, with growth falling from "double digits" to 5 or 6 percent.

(Left, workers make glasses in a plant of the Xintai Group, China's biggest spectacles maker.)

Photograph by Wang Dingchang/Xinhua Press/Corbis