Man who predicted 2008 financial crash and The Big Short’s Michael Burry share same devastating prediction

It's been a rollercoaster few years to say the least, but worse could be on the way if Robert Peston and Michael Burry are both correct.

Peston is a political editor at ITV News, while Burry is best known for Christian Bale portraying him in The Big Short, a film about the financial crash of 2008.

They have both made a chilling prediction, and we'd do well to listen based on their track records.

Peston also correctly predicted the global financial crisis in 2008, and is credited with predicting the coronavirus pandemic.

Burry is an investor and the founder of Scion Capital.

He was one of the first people to raise alarms about the financial crash too, but he brought it up years before it happened.

We probably should have listened...

ITV's political editor Robert Peston is frustrated people don't listen (X/Peston)

'Genuinely anxious'

Now, Peston has confessed he's 'genuinely anxious' that we're heading towards another major market crash.

He believes if people keep pouring money into AI, that we will head rapidly towards a 'collapse'.

The expert shared his frustration about the fact that 'people don't listen' to him when he says 'say things are about to go awfully, badly wrong', based on his track record.

Meanwhile Burry is echoing his worries about AI, and has placed a whopping bet predicting it will fail.

He wrote on social media: "Sometimes, we see bubbles. Sometimes, there is something to do about it. Sometimes, the only winning move is not to play."

It has now emerged he has bet a shocking £840 million ($1.1 billion) that the AI bubble will burst.

He has bet against software company Palantir and chipmaker Nvidia, and the stocks for both firms are currently down.

Palantir CEO Alex Karp called his bet 'bats**t crazy', telling CNBC: "The two companies he’s shorting are the ones making all the money, which is super weird."

"He’s actually putting a short on AI…" he added.

A film was made about the financial crash and Burry's predictions (Paramount)

Talking about the previous financial crash, back in 2024 Peston told the Walking the Dog podcast: "Broadly, what happened was, I broke a series of important stories, did some investigations, got some scoops.

"From the middle of 2007 onwards, I was giving people information that was directly relevant to their lives, which they weren’t getting from anywhere else.

"I think at that point people concentrated more on what I was saying rather than on how I was saying it. It is interesting for me looking back on it: I must have a very thick skin because, even though there was a lot of criticism, I didn’t feel particularly anxious. I just kept doing what I was doing and fortunately I then had this breakthrough."

New warnings

Peston told the Radio Times: "I am genuinely anxious that we’re going to get a serious financial crash, globally, in the next year or two, because there is the most astonishing amount of money going into building the data centres and power plants for AI, and as we saw when SpaceX floated on the stock exchange, a late-1920s degree of breathless excitement on the markets.

"And I worry that the profits aren’t going to be delivered on a scale to justify all this, so businesses will go bust, investors will take fright and we will have a significant market shock."

The Bank of England's financial policy committee warned: "The risk of a sharp market correction has increased.

"On a number of measures, equity market valuations appear stretched, particularly for technology companies focused on artificial intelligence. This… leaves equity markets particularly exposed should expectations around the impact of AI become less optimistic."