Nouriel Roubini

At the start of 2017, Roubini speculated that the election of Donald Trump as President may portend a geopolitical shift away from globalization and more toward isolationism, a change which he feels could lead to global instability and rising military conflicts among other countries.

Partly to fulfill this need, he formed Roubini Global Economics, an economic consultancy for financial analysis. In describing the purpose of RGE Monitor, he said, "the world is my home, so everything about society and culture—no matter how miniscule [sic]—is worth knowing. I am an information junkie and created RGE Monitor to collect information about what's happening around the world."

Roubini announced on Twitter in early 2014 his new practice of Transcendental Meditation.

Asked whether he invests in stocks, he replied, "Not as much these days. I used to have a lot in equities—about 75%—but over the past three years, I've had about 95% in cash and 5% in equities. You're not getting much from savings these days but earning 0% is better than losing 50%. ... I don't believe in picking individual stocks or assets. ... Never invest your money as though you are gambling at the casino. Buying and selling individual stocks is a waste of time."

Europe is fully occupied for the moment with saving the eurozone. Japan is likewise tied down with complex political and economic problems at home. None of these powers' governments has the time, resources, or domestic political capital needed for a new bout of international heavy lifting. Meanwhile, there are no credible answers to transnational challenges without the direct involvement of emerging powers such as Brazil, China, and India. Yet these countries are far too focused on domestic development to welcome the burdens that come with new responsibilities abroad. We are now living in a G-Zero world, one in which no single country or bloc of countries has the political and economic leverage—or the will—to drive a truly international agenda. The result will be intensified conflict on the international stage over vitally important issues, such as international macroeconomic coordination, financial regulatory reform, trade policy, and climate change. This new order has far-reaching implications for the global economy, as companies around the world sit on enormous stockpiles of cash, waiting for the current era of political and economic uncertainty to pass. Many of them can expect an extended wait.

By May 2014, Roubini had become bullish, arguing many of the risks to the global economy had receded. He pointed to an improving European economy and stronger euro, steadying of the economy in Japan, and a marked improvement in the United States. He praised the Federal Reserve for its unconventional monetary policy, which he forecast would last for a few more years, supporting equity markets.

In 2010, he again warned that despite an improved economy with rising stock markets, the crisis was not over and new bubbles were on the horizon:

In late May 2010, markets around the world began dropping due partly to problems in Greece and the Eurozone. "Roubini believes Greece will prove to be just the first of a series of countries standing on the brink," writes the Telegraph. Roubini explains the new issues governments must deal with:

During an interview in June 2009, he was asked about his personal lifestyle expenses and other investments. He said, "I regularly save about 30% of my income. Apart from my mortgage, I don't have any other debts. The credit crunch hasn't affected me much. ... I've always lived within my means and, luckily, have never been out of work. I would say I'm a frugal person—I don't have very expensive tastes. ... You don't need to spend a lot to enjoy things."

By May 2009, he felt that analysts expecting the U.S. economy to rebound in the third and fourth quarter were "too optimistic". He expected the full recession to last 24 or 36 months, and believed in the possibility of an "L-shaped" slow recovery that Japan went through in The Lost Decade.

In August 2009, Roubini predicted that the global economy would begin recovering near the end of 2009, but the U.S. economy is likely to grow only about one percent annually during the next two years, which is less than the three percent normal "trend." He noted that the Fed is "now embarked on a policy in which they are in effect directly monetizing about half of the budget deficit," but that now "monetization is not inflationary," as banks were holding much of the money themselves and not relending it. When these attitudes reverse at the end of the recession, that would be time for an "exit strategy, of mopping up that liquidity" and taking some of the money back out of circulation, "so it doesn't just bid up house prices and stock values in a new bubble. And that will be 'very, very tricky indeed,'" he stated.

As of January 2009, he remained pessimistic about the U.S. and global economy. He said in September, 2008, "we have a subprime financial system, not a subprime mortgage market". "As the U.S. economy shrinks, the entire global economy will go into recession. In Europe, Canada, Japan, and the other advanced economies, it will be severe. Nor will emerging market economies—linked to the developed world by trade in goods, finance, and currency—escape real pain." He was quoted in South Africa's 2009 budget speech for his role in predicting the current financial crisis in the developed markets.

Roubini notes that the subprime issues are a global, and not just a U.S. problem. In an interview with author James Fallows in late spring of 2009, he stated, "People talk about the American subprime problem, but there were housing bubbles in the U.K., in Spain, in Ireland, in Iceland, in a large part of emerging Europe, like the Baltics all the way to Hungary and the Balkans. It was not just the U.S., and not just 'subprime.' It was excesses that led to the risk of a tipping point in many different economies."

His pessimism is focused on the short-run rather than the medium or long-run. In Foreign Policy (Jan/Feb 2009), he writes, "Last year's worst-case scenarios came true. The global financial pandemic that I and others had warned about is now upon us. But we are still only in the early stages of this crisis. My predictions for the coming year, unfortunately, are even more dire: The bubbles, and there were many, have only begun to burst".

At a conference in Dubai in January, 2009, he said, the U.S. banking system was "effectively insolvent." He added that the "systemic banking crisis. ... The problems of Citi, Bank of America and others suggest the system is bankrupt. In Europe, it's the same thing." To deal with this problem, he recommends that the U.S. government "do triage between banks that are illiquid and undercapitalized but solvent, and those that are insolvent. The insolvent ones you have to shut down." He adds, "We're in a war economy. You need command-economy allocation of credit to the real economy. Not enough is being done," he felt at the time.

Roubini met officials in China during spring 2009, and pointed out that many Chinese commentators blame American "overborrowing and excess" for dragging them into a recession. However, he stated that "even they realize that the very excess of American demand has created a market for Chinese exports." He adds that although Chinese leaders "would love to be less dependent on American customers and hate having so many of their nation's foreign assets tied up in U.S. dollars," they're now "more worried about keeping Chinese exporters in business. ... I don't think even the Chinese authorities have fully internalized the contradictions of their position."

Roubini is one of few economists who predicted the housing bubble crash of 2007-2008. He warned about the crisis in an IMF position paper in 2006. Roubini's predictions have earned him the nicknames "Dr. Doom" and "permabear" in the media. In 2008, Fortune magazine wrote, "In 2005 Roubini said home prices were riding a speculative wave that would soon sink the economy. Back then the professor was called a Cassandra. Now he's a sage". The New York Times notes that he foresaw "homeowners defaulting on mortgages, trillions of dollars of mortgage-backed securities unraveling worldwide and the global financial system shuddering to a halt". In September 2006, he warned a skeptical IMF that "the United States was likely to face a once-in-a-lifetime housing bust, an oil shock, sharply declining consumer confidence, and, ultimately, a deep recession". Nobel laureate Paul Krugman adds that his once "seemingly outlandish" predictions have been matched "or even exceeded by reality." By highlighting some of his many past predictions as being accurate, Roubini has promoted himself as a major figure in the U.S. and international debate about the economy, and spends much of his time shuttling between meetings with central bank governors and finance ministers in Europe and Asia. Although he is ranked only 985th in terms of lifetime academic citations, he was #4 on Foreign Policy magazine's list of the "top 100 global thinkers." In 2011 and 2012, he was named by Foreign Policy magazine as one of the Top 100 Global Thinkers. In December 2013 Roubini was awarded by Global Thinkers Forum the honorary GTF 2013 Award for Excellence in Global Thinking. He has appeared before Congress, the Council on Foreign Relations, and the World Economic Forum at Davos.

In September 2006, he foresaw the end of the real estate bubble: "When supply increases, prices fall: that's been the trend for 110 years, since 1890. But since 1997, real home prices have increased by about 90 percent. There is no economic fundamental—real income, migration, interest rates, demographics—that can explain this. It means there was a speculative bubble. And now that bubble is bursting." In the Spring 2006 issue of International Finance, he wrote an article titled "Why Central Banks Should Burst Bubbles" in which he argued that central banks should take action against asset bubbles. When asked whether the real estate ride was over, he said, "Not only is it over, it's going to be a nasty fall."

In the summer of 2006, Roubini wrote that the U.S. was headed into a long and "protracted" recession due to the "collapse" of house prices, which he noted were already in freefall.

Roubini returned to the IMF in 2001 as a visiting scholar while it battled a financial meltdown in Argentina. He cowrote a book on saving bankrupt economies entitled, Bailouts or Bail-ins? and launched his own consulting firm. He is also a regular contributor to Project Syndicate since 2007.

By 1998, he joined the Clinton administration first as a senior economist in the White House Council of Economic Advisers and then moved to the Treasury department as a senior adviser to Timothy Geithner, then the undersecretary for international affairs, who in 2009 became Treasury secretary in the Obama administration.

For much of the 1990s, Roubini combined academic research with policy making by teaching at Yale and then in New York, while also being employed at the International Monetary Fund, the Federal Reserve, World Bank, and Bank of Israel. Currently, he is a professor at the Stern School of Business at New York University. Long study of emerging market blowouts in Asia and Latin America helped him spot the looming disaster in the U.S.(in 2008). "I've been studying emerging markets for 20 years, and saw the same signs in the U.S. that I saw in them, which was that we were in a massive credit bubble," he said.

In the 1990s, Roubini studied the collapse of emerging economies. He used an intuitive, historical approach backed up by an understanding of theoretical models to analyze these countries and came to the conclusion that a common denominator was the large current account deficits financed by loans from abroad. Roubini theorized that the United States might be the next to suffer, and as early as 2004 began writing about a possible future collapse. Business Week magazine writer Michael Mandel, however, noted in 2006 that Roubini and other economists often make general predictions which could happen over multiyear periods.

Nouriel Roubini was born in Istanbul, Turkey, to Iranian Jewish parents. When he was an infant, his family lived briefly in Iran and Israel. From 1962 to 1983 he resided in Italy, especially in Milan, where he attended the local Jewish school and then the Bocconi University, earning a B.A., summa cum laude, in economics. He received his Ph.D. in international economics from Harvard University in 1988, where his adviser was Jeffrey Sachs. He is a U.S. citizen and speaks English, Persian, Italian, Hebrew, and conversational French. He is a cousin of leading technology expert and former PC Magazine lead technology analyst Jonathan Roubini.

Nouriel Roubini (born March 29, 1958) is an American economist. He teaches at New York University's Stern School of Business and is chairman of Roubini Macro Associates LLC, an economic consultancy firm.

Roubini is also a member of the Berggruen Institute's 21st Century Council.

Roubini and political scientist Ian Bremmer have described the 21st century world as fragmenting economically and politically, where the "old models of understanding global dynamics are struggling" to keep up with rapid changes. In an article in Foreign Affairs magazine, they describe what they call a "G-Zero world," where the United States no longer has the resources to continue as the primary provider of global public goods. As a result, there is likely to be more conflict than cooperation between countries, creating a "zero-sum game," a "game in which my win is your loss." They explain their rationale: