Nouriel Roubini (born March 29, 1958) is a Turkish-born American economic consultant, economist, speaker, and writer. He is a professor emeritus since 2021 at the Stern School of Business of New York University. Roubini earned a BA in political economics at Bocconi University in Italy and a doctorate in international economics at Harvard University. He was an academic at Yale University in the 1990s, and a researcher/advisor researching emerging markets.
During the Bill Clinton administration in 1998-99, Roubini was for one year a senior economist in the Council of Economic Advisers. He was one of the people who predicted the 2008 subprime mortgage crisis and he predicted the ensuing Great Recession, and warned that the COVID-19 recession could be even worse. Roubini is also a frequent critic of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies.
Roubini was born on March 29, 1958, in Istanbul, Turkey, to Iranian Orthodox Jewish parents. When he was young, Roubini was expected to go into the rug business himself, and follow in his father's footsteps. When he was one year old, his family lived briefly in Tehran, Iran. When he was three years old, the family moved to Tel Aviv, Israel. From 1963 when he was five years old to 1983, he lived in Italy, primarily in Milan, where he attended the local Jewish school. He later attended the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in Israel where he completed a one-year program of undergraduate studies, in 1976–1977. He subsequently attended Bocconi University in Italy, earning a B.A. (1982) summa cum laude in economics, and in 2009 was named Bocconian of the Year. He received a PhD in international economics in 1988 from Harvard University, where his adviser was Jeffrey Sachs.
For much of the 1990s, Roubini taught at Yale and then in New York, while also working for stints at the International Monetary Fund (briefly as a summer intern and visiting scholar), and World Bank (briefly as a consultant). In 1998–99, he worked for one year in the Clinton administration as a senior economist in the Council of Economic Advisers. He worked from July to October 1999 at the U.S. Treasury Department as a senior adviser to Timothy Geithner (who was then the undersecretary for international affairs), and from October 1999 to June 2000 was director of its Office of Policy Development and Review.
Roubini returned to the IMF for July through August 2001 as a visiting scholar. He co-wrote Bailouts or Bail-ins?, a book on saving bankrupt economies, wrote MegaThreats: Ten Dangerous Trends That Imperil Our Future, And How to Survive Them, and started a series of economic firms. In 2021, he became a professor emeritus at the Stern School of Business at New York University.
Roubini says that his economic analysis approach is "holistic." Rather than focus on mathematical models and formulas, he draws his ideas from a combination of history, literature, and international politics, what he calls the "entire enchilada." He also described his approach at an IMF meeting, when discussing how he arrived at the percentage likelihood that there would be a recession, by saying: "If you ask me where I got that number: Just out of my nose. I will be very honest about that... my model is like a 'smell test'." Political economist Benjamin Kunkel described his approach as "almost shamanistic." Journalist Julia Ioffe observed "Roubini-ism-- [is] sprawling, non-linear, and hypercaffeinated-- ... his talking points are ... pluralized, rushing out quickly, like a magician's scarves ...."
Roubini's predictions earned him the nicknames "Dr. Doom" and "permabear" (economist slang for someone who continually projects downturns) in the media.
In 2004 he said that an upcoming recession would lead to the crash of the dollar; when a few years later a recession did come, it actually strengthened the dollar. In 2005 after Hurricane Katrina hit the US, Roubini predicted that an economic disaster was imminent; however, the next two years instead saw an increase in financial activity.
Roubini was one of the people, along with among others economists Dean Baker, Fred Harrison,Raghuram Rajan, Stephen Roach, and William White, analyst Meredith Whitney, investment advisers Gary Shilling, Peter Schiff, and Marc Faber, and CFTC chair Brooksley Born who predicted the crash of 2007–08.
However, financial journalist Justin Fox observed in the Harvard Business Review in 2010 that "In fact, Roubini didn't exactly predict the crisis that began in mid-2007... Roubini spent several years predicting a very different sort of crisis — one in which foreign central banks diversifying their holdings out of Treasuries sparked a run on the dollar — only to turn in late 2006 to warning of a U.S. housing bust and a global 'hard landing'. He still didn't give a perfectly clear or (in retrospect) accurate vision of how exactly this would play out... I'm more than a little weirded out by the status of prophet that he has been accorded since." Others noted that: "The problem is that even though he was spectacularly right on this one, he went on to predict time and time again, as the markets and the economy recovered in the years following the collapse, that there would be a follow-up crisis and that more extreme crashes were inevitable. His calls, after his initial pronouncement, were consistently wrong. Indeed, if you had listened to him, and many investors did, you would have missed the longest bull market run in US market history." Another observed: "For a prophet, he's wrong an awful lot of the time." Tony Robbins wrote: "Roubini warned of a recession in 2004 (wrongly), 2005 (wrongly), 2006 (wrongly), and 2007 (wrongly)" ... and he "predicted (wrongly) that there'd be a 'significant' stock market correction in 2013." Speaking about Roubini, economist Anirvan Banerji told The New York Times: "Even a stopped clock is right twice a day," and said: "The average time between recessions is about five years ... So, if you forecast a recession one year and it doesn't happen, and you repeat your forecast year after year ... at some point the recession will arrive." Economist Nariman Behravesh said: "Nouriel Roubini has been singing the doom-and-gloom story for 10 years. Eventually something was going to be right."
In 2006, Roubini warned that a housing bust would trigger a global banking crisis and deep recession within a few years. U.S. subprime collapse spread through the financial system; the 2008 financial crisis ensued, and as a result he was known as Dr. Doom. In 2020, he argued the COVID-19-related recession would produce a slump "deeper than 2008" unless policy action was swift. The World Bank soon confirmed the worst global contraction since World War II (–5.2 % GDP in 2020). In 2021, he warned that post‑COVID-19 pandemic supply shocks plus loose policy could bring a stagflationary decade. Inflation in advanced economies shot to multi‑decade highs (U.S. CPI 6.8% y/y by December 2021) and growth slowed, reviving stagflation talk.
In January 2009, Roubini predicted that oil prices would stay below $40 for all of 2009. By the end of 2009, however, oil prices were at $80. In March 2009, he predicted the S&P 500 would fall below 600 that year, and possibly plummet to 200. It closed at over 1,115 however, up 24%, the largest single-year gain since 2003. CNBC's Jim Cramer wrote that Roubini was "intoxicated" with his own "prescience and vision," and should realize that things are better than he predicted; Roubini called Cramer a "buffoon," and told him to "just shut up". Although in April 2009, Roubini prophesied that the United States economy would decline in the final two quarters of 2009, and that the US economy would increase just 0.5% to 1% in 2010, in fact the U.S. economy in each of those six quarters increased at a 2.5% average annual rate. Then in June 2009 he predicted that what he called a "perfect storm" was just around the corner, but no such perfect storm ever appeared. In 2009 he also predicted that the US government would take over and nationalize a number of large banks; it did not happen. In October 2009 he predicted that the price of gold "can go above $1,000, but it can't move up 20-30%"; he was wrong, as the price of gold rose over the next 18 months, breaking through the $1,000 barrier to over $1,400.