He is less wealthy than the likes of Nouriel Roubini, Paul Krugman, Joe Stiglitz or Amartya Sen, and he has yet to win a Nobel prize for economics, but in his own quiet way the figure of Edward Hugh has just as respectable a record, if not more, in the treacherous field of economic forecasting – and in particular the near collapse of the euro. Chillingly, he now thinks Germany should leave the single currency. 
 
 From his base in Barcelona, the British economist, who makes his living as a language teacher, has used his self-taught knowledge of "the dismal science" to entertain and educate his readers of his blog. Now he has earned himself an increasingly high profile among the world's rich and powerful. 
 
 He has advised the IMF and last week addressed a major conference of Spanish politicians and economists on the crisis in their country. International banks and the White House have also sought his counsel. However, as a prophet without much in the way of profit, Mr Hugh had to borrow the cash to buy a new suit for his latest appearance on the Spanish national stage. 
 
 Mr Hugh describes himself thus: "Officially I am 59, I live in Barcelona and I have three children – a boy (Morgan) and two girls (Sara and Andrea). If I were pinned down in a corner and had for once to say what I was – as opposed to who I am – I suppose I would say I was an "economist", although this is a destiny that most of the people who know me well would say I had spent the better part of my life trying to avoid." 
 
 He adds: "Deep down I suppose I'm doing this because I've rather stupidly convinced myself that I've got something to say." 
 
 Mr Hugh's principal achievement is to have predicted the crisis in the eurozone. Though others have also done so, it is Mr Hugh who has done so with an uncanny accuracy about the nature of the problems. As he blogged about the divergences between, say, Greece and Germany: "Why haven't these countries converged with the rest of Europe? It's demographics. As populations age, there are fewer people in their 20s to 40s to buy new houses, so they save more. The younger a country is, the more dependent it is on credit to get growth." 
 
 Thus, Germany, where the average age is 45, is a nation of savers but younger Greeks, Irish and Spaniards went on borrowing binges, often to buy property. Now, unable to devalue their currencies, as the British have, they face "internal devaluation" to restore their competitiveness – meaning painful wage cuts. 
 
 Mr Hugh is no Chauncey Gardiner figure – the simpleton, played by Peter Sellers in the 1980 film Being There – who accidentally ends up an economic adviser to the US President by uttering such banalities as "in the spring there will be growth" (he meant daffodils rather than GDP). Mr Hugh's plain language disguises an acute, intuitive understanding of the mechanisms that make economies tick, and, more powerfully, the demographics that define their futures. 
 
 So what future for the euro? Mr Hugh told The Independent: "The problem is growth – how to get the heavily indebted countries on Europe's periphery back to growth. This is why it could be constructive to have an organised exit by Germany, and let the euro drift downwards while growth returns to the periphery. Put things another way, not only are Europe's economies in disorder, the high value of the dollar means the US recovery is steadily grinding to a halt. So we could call the euro break-up story 'how Greece screwed the USA'. 
 
 "Basically the problem has always been trying to set up a monetary union without setting up a political one first. The thing is you need consensus, and people need to feel European (like people in the US feel themselves to be Americans). Then they would be prepared to share difficult burdens. But look how the Greeks and the Germans lose no opportunity to have a go at one another. Do people in Michigan speak this way about people in Florida?" 
 
 As Mr Hugh says on the front page of his blogging website, quoting Keynes; "Economists set themselves too easy, too useless a task if in tempestuous seasons they can only tell us that when the storm is long past, the ocean is flat again." 
 
 Luckily for the Bank of England and the Treasury, Mr Hugh doesn't follow the UK very closely. 
 
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 Edward Hugh counts Nobel Prize winner and American economist Paul Krugman among his avid followers. In fact, Krugman told CNN, "I wish he posted more." 
 
 Hugh attended the London School of Economics in the late 1960s but says he "wasn't learning a lot" and his interest in the subject waned until Japan's economic woes captured his attention, decades later. 
 
 "Suddenly I got interested in economics again, because I found a problem," Hugh told CNN. "I can only get interested in problems." 
 
 Now 61 and living in one of Europe's struggling economies, Spain, Hugh's thoughts on the region's economic problems are attracting attention worldwide. 
 
 An appearance on regional television in Catalonia last October led to a call from the IMF in March. 
 
 A spokesman for the IMF said Hugh had no "official or unofficial role" with the organization and said it casts a "wide net" in terms of collecting information, adding it appreciated his input over coffee in Spain. 
 
 By May, Hugh was speaking at the Círculo de Economía, a respected annual meeting of business minds in Barcelona. And just this week a profile in the New York Times pushed his Facebook page to the limit of 5,000 friends. Around 1,000 people tried to "add him" as a friend in one day. 
 
 "I use Facebook as an online community. And I use it as a kind of blog which has automatically 5,000 readers which is O.K.," he said. 
 
 As followers of his blog would know, Hugh advocates a radical approach to solving the problems of eurozone members burdened by staggering debt levels while being tied to the single euro currency. 
 
 From his vantage point in Spain, he has seen fierce resistance to the government's attempts to cut public sector wages. A strike this week was seen as a dress rehearsal for a wider general strike ahead. 
 
 "Just talking about it -- Spain reducing civil servants salaries by five percent -- is causing all fury to be unleashed. I don't think they are going to do it. So I put forward this idea is that maybe the simplest and quickest solution is for Germany to go back to the mark," he said. 
 
 Germany abandoned the Deutschemark in 2002 when it joined the single currency. 
 
 The theory is that Germany's exit would prompt a steep fall in the euro, which would go some way to restoring the competitiveness of Germany's debt-strapped neighbors including Spain, Portugal, Greece and Ireland. Exports would rise, allowing them to put money aside to pay their debts and to service the future needs of their ageing populations. 
 
 In time, he said, Germany could consider rejoining the euro after a correction in the region's economic imbalance. 
 
 Read more about Edward Hugh's views on the euro crisis 
 
 Hugh believes Europe's problems are rooted in demographics; countries with a high proportion of young people have amassed debt which those with aging populations are now under pressure to service. 
 
 "If you look at the countries that have housing booms, the United States, Britain, Ireland, Spain -- they are all young societies. And the societies that have been paying for these booms like Germany, Japan, Sweden are much older societies who generate surpluses because of the dynamics of saving and borrowing," he said. 
 
 "This money is then lent to the societies that are still with sufficient proportions of people in the younger age groups who have been doing a hell of a lot of borrowing." 
 
 Hugh said demographics do not explain everything. "Having a good central bank and a sound monetary policy is useful. And structural reforms and high quality institutions also help a lot. It's not a one-sided thing," he said 
 
 He predicted that if Germany didn't leave the euro, pressure one day would be so intense that the country's political leaders would be forced to break free of the union by a population tired of bailing out its debt-stricken neighbors. 
 
 "If these countries -- like Spain, Portugal, Greece, Ireland -- can't find a way to get back to growth then the debt is just going to mount and mount and mount on them. 
 
 "There's no future for any country that is in the sort of mess that these countries are in -- they need the protection of the eurozone," he said. 
 
 "It is much more feasible for Germany to say, 'Hey guys 28 percent of our GDP -- and it is growing as a percentage now - is in exports that go outside Europe or outside of the eurozone. So what do we have to lose by coming out?'" 
 
 And remember that German debt is in euros so if the Germans went back to the mark it would be much cheaper for them to pay," he added. 
 
 Hugh told CNN that his rising popularity as an economic commentator had led to job offers of which he had no intention of taking. 
 
 "God no," he said almost incredulously when asked he could be tempted to leave his rural idyll in Spain. 
 
 "I moved here to get way from the office. All these offers I'm getting really, they can go and jump in the lake as far as I'm concerned," he said, before adding, "but I am certainly willing to help the IMF sort Spain out." 
 
 He knows they know where to find him.
– A British man who's made his living as a part-time English teacher in Spain for decades is suddenly the hottest name in economics, because he got it right. Blogger Edward Hugh correctly predicted the current Eurozone crisis, pinpointing the reason as the difference in demographics between Germany and countries like Greece, where a younger population has borrowed heavily to buy property. He warned that it would eventually prove impossible for the Eurozone countries to coexist under the same currency, the Independent notes. The IMF, international banks, and even the White House have been seeking Hugh's advice lately, and Paul Krugman tells CNN that "I wish he posted more." The 59-year-old says he's been getting plenty of job offers but he has no plans to give up his life in the countryside outside Barcelona. "I moved here to get way from the office. All these offers I'm getting, really, they can go and jump in the lake as far as I'm concerned." He did agree to attend a conference of Spanish businessmen and economists discussing the crisis last month, although he had to borrow money from friends to buy a suit.