想在现今的市场上赚钱吗？要做的就是预言市场将会每况愈下。至少这是末日论《余震：如何在新一轮全球金融危机中自保进而获利》（Aftershock: Protect Yourself and Profit in the Next Global Financial Meltdown）一书作者的生财之道。该书的三位共同作者，大卫•韦德默和罗伯特•韦德默兄弟以及辛迪•斯必茨，预测在即将到来的金融危机中，失业率将达到50%，股市将暴跌90%，年度通胀率将达到100%，因此建议人们应及时变卖房产，兑现人寿保单、抛售所持的股票。他们三人现正通过这一途径日进斗金。

    总而言之，《余震》一书认为一连串的泡沫已将国家推向崩溃的不归路。首先是互联网泡沫，然后是房地产泡沫。现今，美联储（Federal Reserve）对市场的“操纵”和“公共部门，即美国政府，极不负责任的态度和严重的误判”将使拉美国家在2012年不可避免地出现严重通胀。他们的建议就是：变卖一切资产，然后购买黄金及与通胀挂钩证券。

    《余震》一书现已发行了第二版。该书在上个月一直位居亚马逊网站（Amazon.com）商业书籍销量前五。基于此书，右倾媒体Newsmax新闻网发起了一场声势浩大的宣传活动。该书也成为了美国有线新闻网（CNN）、福克斯（Fox）和CNBC电视台各大名嘴热议的话题。这一切都使得该书的销量节节攀升。据出版商John Wiley & Sons公司透露，新增的20万册已在印刷当中。

    该书的版税将达到80万美元左右（版税按书价的15%计算），然而比起三人在副业当中的收益，这一数字微不足道。据大卫•韦德默透露，该书为总部位于马里兰州贝塞斯塔市的投资管理公司Absolute Investment Management带来了1亿美元的资产进账。兄弟二人曾是该公司的合伙人，现任公司的董事总经理。除此之外，有1,000多人已花钱购买韦德默兄弟的投资咨询服务，年费为399美元。随着读者的增加，这一数字还在进一步加速增长当中。（书中经常号召读者加入兄弟二人的投资队伍）

    现在，兄弟二人又有新动作，两人的新作——《余震中的投资指南》（Aftershock Investment Guide）一书将于明年春天面世。Newsmax新闻网与罗伯特达成了咨询服务协议，目的是通过赠阅《余震》一书来招揽该书的读者订阅该新闻网的电子版投资通讯。该书位于佛罗里达州西棕榈滩的出版商声称，最近有100万人观看了该公司主办的“余震求生之道峰会”（Aftershock Survival Summit），而且该出版商在活动几周前在华尔街日报（Wall Street Journal）还刊登了整版广告。罗伯特在峰会的录像中言之凿凿地预测了未来的低迷前景，其间穿插播放的画面则充斥着奥巴马以及身着清洁工作服和快餐店服装的老人。然而大卫的理想更为远大，他说“我很想成立一个共同基金”。

    虽然找到了发家致富的法宝，但是韦德默兄弟并未因此而变得不切实际。兄弟俩现在仍经营着位于弗吉尼亚累斯顿市的商业评估中心（Business Valuation Center），在该书热销之前，该中心的业务在很大程度上依赖于政府扶持。 2006年以来，小企业管理局（Small Business Administration）总共向该中心支付198万美元用于评估潜在捐赠接受方的财务情况。但是大卫说这项资产管理业务目前运营得非常成功，所以他们正在逐步减少政府的资助。”

    Want to make money in this market? Just predict the market is just going to get much, much worse. At least that's the very profitable tack the writers of a doom-and-gloom tome, Aftershock: Protect Yourself and Profit in the Next Global Financial Meltdown are taking. The three co-authors, brothers David and Robert Wiedemer, and Cindy Spitzer, are raking in a multimillion-dollar payday by advising people to sell their homes now, cash out their life insurance policies, and dump their stocks ahead of what they predict will be 50% unemployment, a 90% stock market crash, and 100% annual inflation.

    In a nutshell, Aftershock argues that a succession of bubbles have set the country on the path to ruin. First came the dotcom bubble, then the housing bubble. Now Federal Reserve market "manipulation" and the "incredible irresponsibility and bad judgment of the public sector" -- i.e. the U.S. government -- make banana republic inflation levels inevitable starting in 2012. Their advice: Sell everything, and pile into gold and inflation-linked securities.

    Aftershock, now in its second edition, has spent the past month in the top five selling business books on Amazon.com (AMZN). It is the basis for a massive publicity campaign for right-leaning media outfit Newsmax, and it provides fodder for talking heads on CNN, Fox, and CNBC. All that has been good for sales -- publisher John Wiley & Sons says 200,000 copies are now in print.

    But the $800,000 or so in book royalties the authors may receive (based on a standard 15% cover price royalty rate) pales in comparison to the trio's ancillary businesses: David Wiedemer told me the book is responsible for $100 million in assets flowing into Absolute Investment Management, a Bethesda, Md.-based money manager with whom the brothers partnered and where they are now managing directors. On top of that, 1,000 people have paid an annual fee of $399 to receive the Wiedemers' investment advice, a number that is growing faster as more people read the book. (Periodic exhortations to subscribe and invest with them pepper the chapters.)

    Now the brothers are branching out. Next up is a follow-up book , the Aftershock Investment Guide, due out next spring. Robert has a consulting deal with Newsmax, which is giving away copies of Aftershock to entice its own readers to subscribe to its own investment newsletters. The West Palm Beach, Fla.-based publisher claims one million people watched a recent "Aftershock Survival Summit" it hosted and publicized a few weeks ago with a full-page Wall Street Journal ad. In the video of the summit, Robert enunciates dire predictions between shots of Obama and elderly people wearing janitor and fast food uniforms. David is thinking bigger. "I'd really like to do a mutual fund," he says.

    But the Wiedemers seem less ideologues than two guys who finally found a bubble they can make money from. Before the success of their book, the brothers' day jobs were heavily dependent on government largesse: They still run the Business Valuation Center, a Reston, Va.-based outfit that the Small Business Administration has paid $1.98 million since 2006 to provide financial valuations of potential grant recipients. But David says the asset management business is so successful they are "sort of phasing that down."

    在成为政府顾问之前，拥有威斯康星大学麦迪逊分校（the University of Wisconsin-Madison）工商管理硕士学位的罗伯特，曾开了一家名为Pricesaroundtheworld.com的网站，结果成了互联网泡沫的炮灰（《余震》一书中嘲笑互联网时代“泡沫一代”高管们的素材可能就来自于这段经历）。在过去的8年当中，他一直担任通讯公司Proxim Wireless的董事会成员，该公司在场外电子交易板交易，并于2004年草率收购了Ricochet公司（保尔•阿伦曾于90年代通过该公司在各大城市推广无线网络）。

    在90年代，兄弟二人合伙建立并经营Imark Technologies公司，这家在纳斯达克上市的公司籍籍无名，大卫在书中的自传部分提到自己曾在这家公司担任的首席执行官。 Imark公司主要为出版公司提供CD-Rom资源。1998年，该公司制定的由出版商通过网络销售CD-Rom数据的商业计划以失败告终，公司也随之寿终正寝。然而自传当中对此事只字未提。

    《余震》的第三位共同作者辛迪•斯必茨透露，她曾为《心灵鸡汤》（Chicken Soup）原著的部分内容代笔。《余震》的书封显示她现在是余震顾问公司（Aftershock Consultants）的总裁，该公司主要向个人或公司提供有关此书的解读服务。在就任该职之前，她与多瑞•琳博士在去年年底共同编写了《成人性事》（Sex for Grownups）一书。

    这些背景并不能说明韦德默兄弟关于金融灾难的预言就是错误的。大卫的确从威斯康辛大学（the University of Wisconsin）拿到了经济学博士学位，而且这三人的第一本书《美国的泡沫经济》（America's Bubble Economy）是一本相对严肃的书籍，书中也确实指出了美国房地产市场所存在的不平衡性。但是当韦德默兄弟以此书的观点来炫耀自己独到的经济眼光和投资技巧时，他们其实更多地在证明营销的威力。《美国的泡沫经济》一书希望让读者了解“泡沫在经济和社会长期发展中所扮演的角色。”然而新书《余震》却传达了一个更为直白的信息：“新一轮全球金融危机来临之前还有时间来保护你自己、你的家人和你的生意”。

    不过，兜售末日观点颇有些讽刺意味，因为个人投资者都是墙头草，而且投资电子通讯和顾问服务的更新率与市场动向时刻保持步调一致。资产管理也是一样。如果韦德默兄弟所预言的经济地震发生，韦德默兄弟将失去所有的收入来源，或至少绝大部分来源。大卫表示：“人们总还是要投资的，蛋糕虽然会变小，但是我们分到的份额会变大。”

    Before consulting for the government, Robert, who has an MBA in marketing from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, tried his hand running Pricesaroundtheworld.com, a dotcom-era bust. (The experience may be the source of the scorn Aftershock heaps upon Internet-era "Bubble babies" executives.) For the past eight years, he has been on the board of Proxim Wireless, a bulletin board-traded communications firm that in 2004 ill-advisedly scooped up the carcass of Ricochet, a 1990s Paul Allen effort to bring Wi-Fi to cities.

    Also in the 1990s, the brothers co-founded and ran Imark Technologies, the unnamed "Nasdaq-listed company" in which David's book biography mentions he was CEO. The bio fails to note that Imark, which provided CD-Rom resources to publishing companies, went bankrupt in 1998 when a business plan to get publishers to sell CD-Rom data over the Internet foundered.

    Aftershock's third co-author, Cindy Spitzer, says she ghostwrote part of the original Chicken Soup for the Soul. According to Aftershock's book jacket, she is now president of Aftershock Consultants, which provides insights to individuals and companies based on the book. Just before taking on that title she co-wrote Sex for Grownups with Dr. Doree Lynn late last year.

    All of this background doesn't mean the Wiedemers might not be correct that we're racing toward a financial catastrophe. David does have a PhD in Economics from the University of Wisconsin, and the trio's first book, the far more sedate America's Bubble Economy, did point out the imbalance in the housing market. But while the Wiedemers use the claims of their first book as proof of their economic and investing prowess, it's really more correctly proof of the power of marketing. America's Bubble Economy told readers it would "look at how the bubbles are a part of the long-term evolution of the economy and society." With the new edition of Aftershock the message has gotten a lot less oblique: "There is still time to protect yourself, your family, and your business in the next global money meltdown."

    The irony with selling the apocalypse is that individual investors are a fickle lot -- renewal rates to investment newsletters and advice services move in lockstep with how the market is doing. The same is true with asset management. Should the economic hell the Wiedemers predict come to pass, it would dry up all of their revenue sources. Or almost all of them. "They've always got to invest in something," notes David. "We'll get a bigger share of a smaller pie."