Economist warns of severe downturn

NEW YORK, Sept. 11 (UPI) -- Economist Meredith Whitney, who has called a few shots in the past, said the global financial crisis is far from over and will get worse.

"What's ahead is much more severe than what we've seen so far," Whitney was quoted as saying in Fortune Magazine, MoneyNews.com reported Thursday.

Her "biggest concern," she said, is that her estimates of the crisis "are way too low."

Whitney, an economist at Oppenheimer & Co., has been right in the past, predicting the mortgage crisis last fall and troubles at Citigroup, Lehman Brothers Holding and UBS bank, MoneyNews.com reported.

Currently, "it feels like I am at the epicenter of the biggest financial crisis in history," she said.

Her viewpoint is not universally accepted.

President of Emerging Market Strategies William Gamble said, "the U.S. stock market has lost 20 percent of its value. Still, this is tiny compared with losses on other exchanges."

The Chinese stock market has dropped more than 50 percent and Russian markets more than 35 percent, Gamble said.

"As the global economy slips into recession, there is one country that will be the first to recover," Gamble wrote in a weekly e-mail to business reporters.