* Zelman alienated her Wall Street employer with her pessimism, and finally quit and set up her own consulting firm. "It wasn't that hard in hindsight to see it," she says. "It was very hard to know when it would stop." Zelman spoke occasionally with Eisman, and always left these conversations feeling better about her views, and worse about the world. "You needed the occasional assurance that you weren't nuts," she says.