On a recent afternoon, I met Goldstein at a sushi restaurant near his Midtown Manhattan office. Midway through the interview, he told me he had invested in a new restaurant chain -- the one we were sitting in. He wore a dark suit and blue tie with a matching pocket square. He bought both at Bloomingdale’s, part of his recent buying spree. Techno music thumped loudly inside the empty restaurant. Goldstein spoke rapidly, his speech peppered with expletives.

Goldstein didn't want me to think he was materialistic: He's been spending money out of relief -- relief that he'd recovered his savings after nearly losing it all.

Goldstein grew up in Canada, in a family that prized living within one's means and avoided advertising its wealth -- attitudes he considers to be the cultural norm up north. He moved to the US to attend law school at Syracuse University, graduating in 2004, and moved to New York shortly thereafter.

In New York, Goldstein was shocked by the excesses he saw. He had inherited his investment portfolio and begun earning a fine salary. Though he was himself a millionaire, Goldstein nonetheless felt as if he'd been priced out of the city. He paid $2,700 a month to rent a studio apartment on the Upper East Side. In May 2006, when he looked into buying an apartment in the range of $500,000 to $1 million, he was unable to find anything at all in Manhattan.

“These used to be construction worker's homes, starter homes,” he said, adding, “If I was a millionaire and I couldn’t afford [what once had been] a construction worker’s home, something was wrong.”

This was Goldstein's eureka moment. He believed the economy had become too inflated, asset prices too stratospheric, everyone too leveraged. So he sold everything in his investment portfolio; after a brief hiccup, the stock market shot higher on a straight line. Goldstein felt left behind;  besides the gloomy Nouriel Roubini, there were few who shared his pessimism.