Michael Panzner is bearish, and you should listen.

Why?

The 25-year veteran of the global stock, bond, and currency markets was one of the few who called the crisis before it happened, with a book aptly titled "Financial Armageddon."

Today, Panzner calls a V-shaped recovery "ridiculous," says commercial real estate is a bubble sure to burst, and is fearful that there's far too much speculation on commodities, risky stocks and emerging markets. In short, he says "the world is a riskier place and will continue to stay that way going forward."

We caught up with Panzner at a panel on risk management sponsored by QFinance. Some notes from our conversation:

On recovery, Panzer says it's "a protracted process" but "talk about a 'V' bottom is ridiculous." He also said "talk about a jobless recovery is laughable, especially in the context of the U.S. being some 70% reliant on the consumer:"

In some respects the system is more broken than it was before. From my perspective at least the economic model of the banking system -- the operating model is essentially broken. Securitization doesn't work. The biggest supplier of funds and the biggest customer to the banking sector is the Federal Reserve. In some respects the whole concept of too big to fail has been complicated by the fact you have institutions that are now too connected to care. There's a hubristic element that remains from the crisis of the past two years.

On dealing with the financial crisis by spending:

[We've] learned the wrong lessons in terms of how to deal with the crisis. Before we had this notion that people could slice and dice risk and make it go away. The new version of that is the fact that large amounts of publicly created debt will somehow make the problems of large amounts of old, privately-created debt go away, which is a little bit of a non sequitur.

On the coming commercial real estate crash:

Commercial real estate seems to be the accident waiting to happen. In my mind at least there is no doubt...in fact it seems like a deja vu moment in terms of the way it's playing out. We're getting reassurances here that it's all going to be okay, it's this sort of contained phenomenon...it's very reminiscent in my mind of what took place with sub-prime and the failure to acknowledge that it was a broader problem -- an institutional problem in terms of credit, in terms of risk taking. It seems like there's a bit of an instant replay going on with commercial real estate. People are thinking 'well, it hasn't happened yet, so it's not going to happen.'

That's the old Hurricane Katrina line of reasoning. From what I can see it's a tsunami unfolding and it's going to be a real train-wreck over the next two to three years for the banking sector. I don't think there's any way around that issue. Zero.

Another deja vu moment for Panzner is government debt. The same problems of securitization and derivatives apply: faulty assumptions, faulty models with limited data, and over-confidence.

"They're assuming debt levels can go up forever, without putting that in any sort of reality context." But that rules out the black swan, which is "what happens if people don't want to buy your debt."

Panzer thinks we may see hyper inflation as the share of U.S. outlays relative to the deficit are about 40%. "It may not be such a good idea -- even though the Krugmans of the world think it is -- to spend unlimited amounts of money without thinking through the potential consequences."

On the next financial bubbles:

I'm a very long term bull on gold, however I believe that gold and commodities more generally, the short dollar trade, the long equity trade are all part of this gigantic risk play that is propagated by this huge amount of cheap money being pumped into the system...I would be looking for these things to correct, perhaps violently.

He adds: "The first real uptick you get in the dollar you'll see elephants running through a revolving door."

Panzner says gold is the perfect example. People say it's a safety hedge, but why are bonds not selling off and why are emerging markets going up? "If you look at that they're all moving together then you get a much clearer, coherent picture. It's another bubble, an echo bubble or whatever you want to call it."

Besides gold, Panzner counts oil, basic commodities, stocks, emerging markets -- and other riskier assets -- as the stuff of speculation and over-investment.

It's an Orwellian universe. People keep making non sequeters and everyone else shakes their heads and says 'yeah, that's okay' and no one is standing back and saying 'wait a minute, that doesn't make any sense at all.' People are saying these things and acting on them but not thinking thinking them through and saying 'wait a minute, this doesn't make sense.