Is Nouriel Roubini a False Prophet?
by ilene - August 19th, 2009 6:34 pm
Damien Hoffman makes a case against Nouriel Roubini’s status as all-knowing prophet of doom.
Is Nouriel Roubini a False Prophet?
Courtesy of Damien Hoffman at Wall St. Cheat Sheet
Nouriel Roubini and His Acolytes
Psychics and prophets have been in business since that other oldest profession. Like the more commonly referred to oldest profession, the secret to success for psychics and prophets is to turn many tricks.
As a lawyer by training, I have been rigorously conditioned to see the logical techniques employed in everything I hear and read the same way Neo from The Matrix sees the 1’s and 0’s underlying superficial reality. So, I am concerned when I watch self-proclaimed psychics and prophets use the equivalent of logical black magic to seduce their prey.
Wall Street has a laundry list of such charlatans. They tend to capture the spotlight during the heat of emotional peaks in the markets because emotion and reason tend to maintain an inverse relationship. During times of crisis we need something, sometimes anything, to reduce our pain and restore order to an uncomfortable new chaos.
During the height of the most recent economic crisis, the media offered the center-stage spotlight to NYU Economics Professor Nouriel Roubini to comfort us with his soma. At the peak of the crash, Roubini was as ubiquitous as Coca-Cola and cellphones. He was the go-to guy because his PR team branded him as “The Prophet of Doom.” A perfect fit when you need someone to call at an overwhelmingly bullish place like Wall Street.
Roubini is clearly an intelligent fellow who has produced some interesting works. However, just as clearly, he is not a prophet or anything close. More accurately, Roubini has disingenuously promoted himself as nailing the crisis, when truthfully he was wrong until other hard working analysts fixed his broken crystal ball.
Like any lawyer preparing to argue in front of the Supreme Court (of public opinion, in this case), I made sure to do my homework and collect my evidence boxes of smoking guns. Rather than bore you with a full recount, I have pulled the most important comments from each source and linked to the original material for your due diligence pleasure. So, without further ado, I respectfully address the court:
As we can see, in March 2005 Roubini started by predicting a crisis
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Dr. Doom Has Some Good News
by ilene - July 15th, 2009 2:52 pm
Here’s some good news from Dr. Doom, in fact, that’s the title.
Dr. Doom Has Some Good News
By James Fallows writing in The Atlantic
Nouriel Roubini, the New York University economist who accurately forecast the bursting of the housing bubble and the resulting economic contraction, has become famous for his pessimism—he has been the gloomiest of the doomsayers. Which is what makes his current outlook surprising: Roubini believes that the Obama administration’s policy makers—and especially the much-maligned Tim Geithner—have gotten a lot right. Pitfalls may still abound, but he is now projecting an end to the recession, and he sees growth ahead.
Read the article here >>
Photo: Nouriel Roubini 02, by Kjetil Ree, photo and license at Wikipedia.
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Philip R. Davis is a founder Phil's Stock World, a stock and options trading site that teaches the art of options trading to newcomers and devises advanced strategies for expert traders...
Ilene is editor and affiliate program
coordinator for PSW. She manages the site
