Leo and Sam are awesome, to be sure. I think their political activity with Canadian workers is far preferable to the attempt by my PhD supervisor, David Harvey's, to help the capitalists think in their class interests.
But on these matters, Leo and Sam were absolutely wrong to downplay the building crisis. When I worked with them for a year, 2003-04, they harassed me incessantly because I invoked the c word periodically. Like Doug, they just didn't see the Big One coming, though they've been a bit more humble about that than comrade H.
As for Fred, when I saw him last year, yes, he was a bit wobbly on that question. But his work has generally shown a long-term decline in the rate of profit (1970s until the early 2000s, and then a bit of an upturn). But to be fair to the Marxist project, the huge difficulties in measuring the core dilemma for capital - surplus value extraction rates - means that while some profit rates have improved, particularly for firms that switch revenue streams out of glutted value-producing sectors and into speculative financial markets (like GM, Ford, GE, etc etc), the temporary profit rise thereby achieved is not a sign of the crisis being resolved. It's a displacement of the crisis - so that when it does come back to bite you... ouch, it really hurts.