But Italy, perhaps because its overall debt level was already so high and its population was older, pursued a policy of greater fiscal rectitude than its neighbors and avoided a real estate bubble.

And Mr. Hugh’s main policy proposal — that Germany leave the euro, which would almost immediately push the value of the currency down sharply, improving competitiveness for the weaker countries that remained behind — reads better as a provocative blog post than as a practical solution.

Still, the sudden vulnerability of the euro zone and the search far and wide for answers by policy makers, investors and economists have caused his once obscure ramblings to go viral.

“He is an information channel that I value a lot,” said Brad DeLong, an economist at the University of California, Berkeley, who was a United States Treasury official in the administration of President Bill Clinton and a prominent blogger in his own right.

Mr. Hugh has also attracted a cult following among financial analysts.

“Edward was writing very clearly about the imbalances in Europe and the likelihood of a crisis long before it was even on the radar screen of economists or analysts,” said Jonathan Tepper of Variant Perception, a London research firm that caters to hedge funds and wealthy investors. “He is a thinking machine.”

At the same time, Mr. Hugh is determined to resist some of the newfound temptations that have lately come his way. He said he had turned down lucrative offers from hedge funds to provide exclusive research because he did not want his views monopolized by any one entity — although he said he was considering an offer to join the stable of contributors who work for Mr. Roubini.

And when the Milken Institute — financed by Michael Milken, a felon who managed to hang on to a fortune even after having to pay a $550 million fine for his actions during the junk-bond boom of the 1980s — paid him $3,000 for a short report he did in a day on Eastern Europe, Mr. Hugh gave the money to a friend who was having trouble paying her mortgage, he said.