December 08, 2009
Defining Moments
When Nouriel Roubini, professor of economics at the Stern School of Business, New York University and chairman of RGE Monitor, the economic consultancy firm, looked out of the windows of his world in the mid 2000s, something startled him. Speaking to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in 2006, he spoke of a scenario in which "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." His talent and intuitive understanding of economics and mathematics led him to present us with 3 ‘alphabet-shaped’ recession scenarios, as early as April 2008:
- V-shaped recession that was short and shallow, lasting close to 6 months
- U-shaped recession that would last between 12 to 18 months
- W-shaped recession, which was a double-dip recession, with a small temporary upward blip in the middle
Writing in his popular blog, Nouriel Roubini observed ‘My view is closer to a U-shaped recession as I expect that the economic contraction will last at least 12 months and possibly as long as 18 months through the middle of 2009.’ Well, it is 2009—the last three weeks of it—and we see that Roubini was spot-on on the prediction. Seers like Nouriel Roubini open the windows of our understanding to complex worlds we know so little of.
For that reason, I recommend Nouriel Roubini and his compellingly communicated world of global economics analysis at http://www.rgemonitor.com/blog/roubini/. And if you ask me, the best part of getting past the U, V and Ws of the Recession is getting to its ‘Z’…!
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Tags: u, v, w, recession, nouriel roubini, rge monitor, blog, stern school of business, new york university, imf, z
