Big winners of the past were losers in 2008

Likewise, real estate mogul Sam Zell burdened Tribune Co. with $13 billion in debt when he bought the company last year, leading it to file for bankruptcy in December. While he blamed the economy, employees and observers blamed him.

"We knew he was going to take this business under," said Philip Gregory, a lawyer for a Los Angeles Times auto critic and five former newsroom employees who sued Tribune in September over Zell's takeover. "Of course he's blaming the market, but it's really the $13 billion in debt that he brought into the business."

Losers: Pollyannas
Jerry Yang, Yahoo Inc.'s chief executive, kept waiting for Microsoft Corp. to offer a better price than $47.5 billion for Yahoo. It never happened. Instead, Yahoo's stock sagged near five-year lows, making his refusal look less like an effort to get the best price for shareholders and more like excessive optimism. Yang said in November that he'd step down and Yahoo, in December, overhauled its severance plan in a move that would save a buyer somewhere between $462 million and $2.1 billion.

Former Texas Sen. Phil Gramm, also a vice chairman of Swiss Bank UBS, made headlines — and enemies — in July, when he said the U.S. was in "a mental recession."

"We may have a recession; we haven't had one yet," said Gramm, who was, at the time, an economic adviser to presidential candidate John McCain. "We have sort of become a nation of whiners."

Losers: U.S. automakers
The CEOs of the Detroit Three went to Washington to beg for billions in bailout money. But it wasn't on their hands and knees.

As new car sales cratered, the group flew private jets to D.C. in November to ask for billions in bailout money. Worse, they came without a plan.

After they drove to Washington for a repeat visit, the Senate quashed a bailout, but the Bush administration approved a $17.4 billion rescue loan.

"Allowing the auto companies to collapse is not a responsible course of action," Bush said.

Winners: Cassandras
As markets plummeted, the dourest economic observers gained respect.

Nouriel Roubini, a New York University economics professor, said in 2006 that the worst recession in four decades was on its way. He predicted that mortgage defaults would spread, investment banks would no longer exist in their current form and Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac would tumble.

Peter Schiff, president of Euro Pacific Capital, has been saying for years that the economy was built on too much consumption and not enough saving. "The disease is all this debt-financed consumption," he said on a 2006 CNBC appearance. "The cure is that we stop consuming and start saving and producing again. That's a recession. Sometimes, medicine tastes bad, but you gotta swallow it."

Dean Baker, an economist the Center for Economic Policy and Research, has been tracking the housing bubble since 2002, when he published a paper titled, "The run-up in home prices: Is it real or is it another bubble?" His answer: Bubble. Lately, he has been arguing that the best way to stabilize home prices is to bring them lower and the best way to rescue homeowners who can't keep up with their mortgages is to keep them in their homes — as renters. Again, few seem to be listening, despite his record.

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