(FORTUNE Magazine) – The best-selling author of The Crash of '79 and The Panic of '89 is out with another high-finance page turner, The Swiss Account. Don't look for a third end-of-decade prediction of financial mayhem however. This time Paul Erdman, 60, spins a web involving Swiss banks, Nazis, and treasure looted from victims of the Holocaust. As his fans know, Erdman is no stranger to Switzerland -- or its banks. He used to run one, the United California Bank of Basel, which he founded in 1964 after earning a Ph.D. in economics at the University of Basel. His bank collapsed in 1970 in the wake of a cocoa futures trading scandal. Erdman was arrested and served ten months in jail until he could raise $100,000 in bail. After putting up the cash, he skipped the country -- and has not been back. Nor will he be. He was convicted of fraud in absentia and sentenced to nine years. Erdman admits he owes the Swiss two debts. He learned to write fiction while in jail, a 17th-century monastery that he concedes was ''not exactly San Quentin.'' Debt two: His wife, Helly, 60, was born in Switzerland. They met as college kids at a symphony in St. Louis and now live on a 40-acre ranch in Sonoma County, California. These days the novelist, who made two killings predicting doom (with varying degrees of accuracy), has become something of an optimist. He forecasts three to four years of moderate growth starting sometime next year. Erdman leans toward Clinton for the next President as someone who could get the U.S. ''hepped up'' and boost national confidence.