Professor Nouriel Roubini

In all this mess, only a very few economists saw what was coming and warned about it months ago. One of the most prominent of these was Professor Nouriel Roubini, Professor of Economics and International Business at the Stern School of Business, New York University. In February of this year, before the first of the big bank failures took place, he published a paper entitled “The Risk of a Systemic Financial Meltdown: The 12 Steps to Financial Disaster” , which described with uncanny accuracy just the sort of crisis we find ourselves in. At the time his predictions were widely derided as excessively pessimistic by the "more knowledgeable" government and financial experts, who now look extremely foolish and naive.

It's worth following his continuing discussions as this crisis unfolds. They can be found, among other places, at http://www.rgemonitor.com/.

This afternoon he is arguing for dramatic government intervention (of the sort I suggested was needed in my post earlier today), including a WPA-type program to immediately spend $300 billon to jump-start the economy again (he suggests it be spent on infrastructure and green energy, which addresses other critical problems as well). One might want to read, for example, "Revisiting my February paper “The Risk of a Systemic Financial Meltdown: The 12 Steps to Financial Disaster”…And Some New Policy Recommendations to Avoid the Meltdown", and

"Global Money and Credit Markets Continue to Worsen Despite Coordinated Rate Cut: What Needs To Be Done?"