In 2006 I accidentally bought a book about the amount of debt stacked up in American real estate and with people generally. I read it in horror and got hold of every book I could on the subject. By 2007 I was telling everybody I met that there was a big crash coming based on unsustainable debt and fancy-pants ways of disguising it. I was told by the (wealthy) people around me that the problems were all 'priced in' and everything would be fine. As I was fairly skint at the time, I couldn't do much about it.

I got a job as an office cleaner which was a life-saver and which I kept for five years.

Sadly in 2008, nobody remembered that I'd told them so.

It seems to me that capitalism needs a crash every ten to 15 years to clear out the debt and the hollowed-out companies.

So never mind the indicators. We're due another crash and as it's been a long time since the last one (16 years), the next one is going to be bigger and more painful simply because there's more waste to flush.

The advice is always the same: get out of debt; get used to spending less and more intelligently; make sure you have a real job and certainly not retail; buy gold if you can; hunker down on any savings like a dragon until that wonderfully reliable cue that says the bad time is over.

What is the cue?

When top financial periodicals announce that the crash and following slump are the New Normal and nothing will get better ever.

At that point, buy.