"Governments always seek election with the promise that they will deliver a stable economy," wrote Fred Harrison in The Chaos Makers. But: "as the economy begins to grow buoyantly, the rent of land and of the resources of nature becomes a larger proportion of national income. This ought to be welcome: a larger surplus means more to be spent on the good things in life. And yet, it is just at this point that the crisis breaks out and the economy launches itself into a tailspin.

Just as the production of goods and services increases at an accelerating rate, as the manufacturers and the providers of commercial services get into their stride, as the index of growth in gross domestic product assumes an exciting tempo - the system collapses. Boom / bust: the fateful economic duality which is the bane of governments."

For this 1997 publication, Fred declared that "the property boom of 2000 will come as a shock to Gordon Brown; who, if he is still presiding in Britain's Treasury in the first decade of the millennium, will... be politically traumatised by the astronomical unearned gains from land that will be pocketed by shrewd operators who know how to manipulate the tax system."

Fred stated further that: "the consequence is predictable. By 2007 Britain and most of the other industrially advanced economies will be in the throes of frenzied activity in the land market equal to what happened in 1988/9. Land prices will be near their 18-year peak, driven by an exponential growth rate, on the verge of collapse that will presage the global depression of 2010. The two events will not be coincidental: the peak in land prices not merely signalling the looming recession but being the primary cause of it."