Time Knights Nouriel Econ Icon
It wasn’t so long ago our funky culture conferred celebrity status on the likes of Bobby Flay, Mario Battali and Mr. Pick-it-up-a-Notch Emeril Lagasse.
Photo: Courtesy of CNBC
Now it seems, it’s out with the five-star chefs, and in with–of all people–academic and applied economists. And the most vaunted of the moment is New York University’s Nouriel Roubini, whose insomniac eyes, Chaplinesque shrug, machine-gun verbal style, and preternatural sense of gloom have made him a none-too-reluctant cover-boy for the End-of-the-Beginning-of-the-Global-Recession.
Time magazine–which we continue to believe should hand over all business and economic news coverage to its more capable sister media channel Fortune–affirms Roubini’s star status with a feature Q&A set in Hong Kong between the NYU prof and correspondent Michael Schuman.
Here’s the interview’s piece de resistance, with a fillip of Roubini dure.
What do you think of President Barack Obama’s progress so far?
I have to give [the Obama Administration] credit. In about six weeks, they have done three major things: the $800-billion stimulus package, a mortgage program that is much more than the previous administration did and a bank plan that, however flawed, at least has the benefit of not having another bailout of the banks. The glass is half full. But for each one there are some flaws … the bank plan wants to pretend that the government is half pregnant with the banks. The debate is between partial and full nationalization, not between nationalization or no nationalization. Go and do the job and do it right by taking over the banks and restructuring them and selling them back to the private sector.
What’s the best-case scenario?
If you do everything right, you avoid an “L,” and that’s really good news. But you still have a situation in which global growth this year is negative. GDP growth in advanced economies is going to be negative through the fourth quarter of this year, and next year growth will be anemic, probably 1% or lower. Job creation is going to be negative. Even in the best scenario, there will be job losses through the end of next year. In the best of circumstances, we have a two- to three-year recession in advanced economies.
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