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Monday, September 15, 2008

Nouriel Roubini

Roubini received his Ph.D. in international economics from Harvard University in 1988. According to his advisor, Jeffrey Sachs, he was unusual in his talent with both mathematics and intuitive understanding of economic institutions.

Currently, Professor Roubini is a Professor at the Stern School of Business at New York University.

Roubini is known for his predictions of financial crisis, notably at the IMF in 2006, where he was received skeptically, with one commentator noting his lack of mathematical models. As of 2008 many of his predictions have come to fruition. Formerly an obscure academic, he has received invitations to speak before influential organizations such as United States Congress and the Council on Foreign Relations. As of August 2008, he remains pessimistic on the future of the US economy. He has said that "we have a subprime financial system, not a subprime mortgage market". He does not believe that the United States is entering the next Great Depression, but has said that he believes it will be the worst recession since then. He has clarified that his pessimism is focused on the short-run rather than the medium or long-run.

In the 1990s, Roubini studied the collapse of emerging economies. Consistent with the unusual talent noted by Sachs, he used an intuitive, historical approach backed up an understanding of theoretical models to analyze these countries and came to conclusion that a common denominator was large current account deficits financed by loans from abroad. He began to think that the United States might be the next to suffer, and began writing about the possible collapse in 2004.

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