Nouriel Roubini

A nation of whiners? Or a seriously decimated economy? The nation’s leading economists say it’s the latter, and the already crumbling financial sector is due for a series of crippling aftershocks that could last well into the next decade. Once-leading lenders Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, Merrill, Lehman, and AIG have perished in only seven days, all on the heels of the IndyMac collapse and $29 billion Bear Stearns bailout. And experts say more lenders are expected to fall in the near future, some even this week.

In Sunday’s NYT magazine, a profile of NYU economics professor opened with a prescient observation Roubini made back in 2006: An impending housing bust could cripple or destroy financial institutions like Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac.

Today, at his blog Global EconoMonitor, Roubini goes on to give his prognosis of the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression: prime mortgages defaulting in record numbers; suburbia facing plight; a recession lasting more than a year; small banks and financial institutions collapsing; and an end of the American empire as we know it. Registration for EconoMonitor is required, and it’s well worth it. After the jump are just a few of Roubini’s chilling predictions that spell an even longer road ahead for most Americans: