From The 12% Letter:

Here’s a prediction… “Cost of living will soar. There’s surplus capacity in almost every industry, and major corrections are likely. Currencies and bonds will lose their purchasing power as governments inflate money supplies. People are hopelessly in debt… 10 times the normal levels. Millions go bankrupt… as do the businesses that extend credit without collateral.”

Sir John Templeton was one of the top investment legends of the 20th Century, equal in stature to men like J.P. Morgan and Cornelius Vanderbilt from the 19th Century. He built a billion-dollar fortune playing the stock market and selling mutual-fund investments to the public.

Sir John made these predictions on June 15, 2005, in a memo he wrote from his home in the Bahamas. In short, Templeton believed the peak of prosperity was behind us, dangers were more numerous and larger than at any time in the last 90 years, and countries around the world would experience financial chaos for many years.

The memo was lost and never published. Templeton died in 2008. The note resurfaced a few days ago… You can read a full version of the lost memo, with some introductory notes by the first journalist to find it, here.