Nouriel Roubini

Nouriel Roubini, January 2009

Nouriel Roubini (born March 29, 1958) is a Turkish-American professor of economics at New York University and chairman of the economic website Roubini Global Economics. He was a Treasury official during the Clinton administration and has taught at Yale University.

Quotes

• It’s not as if there’s infinite wealth. There are thousands of new luxury units coming on the market, and the question is, who will buy them? If people start losing jobs, who can afford to pay 2, 3, 4, 5 million dollars? Do you know 10,000 new investment bankers on Wall Street?
  • Quoted in S. Jhoanna Robledo, "The Descent," New York Magazine (2006-09-24).

• I think globalization actually maintains and fosters various elements of national and cultural identities. I don’t think everything is being homogenized. If anything, your food, your culture, and your ethnicity might become part of the globalized world, and thus absorbed by other countries.
  • Quoted in Janera Soerel, "Talking to Nouriel Roubini," Janera (2007-05-02).

• Janera:: Do you think then that it’s good that the French are abolishing the headscarves or the yarmulke?
  Roubini: I’m not in favor of restricting what people wear. It’s counterproductive and creates more separation. The effect of the French policy is that children will attend a religious school and won’t be exposed to the secular education that France offers. They won’t learn the value of western modern secular values.
  • Quoted in Janera Soerel, "Talking to Nouriel Roubini," Janera (2007-05-02).

• The challenge we face is how to integrate the Muslim world into the global economy. Asia has become part of it, but not Africa or the Middle East.

  One could realistically think about a Marshall Plan with respect to this part of the world, to succeed in integrating the Muslim and Arab world into the global economy as we did in Europe after World War II. For example, we’ve wasted hundreds of billions of dollars on the Iraq war. Had we taken a third of this money and invested it into a Marshall Plan for the Middle East, the benefits would have been ten times more than wasting it on a war.

  • Quoted in Janera Soerel, "Talking to Nouriel Roubini," Janera (2007-05-02).

• Reckless people have deluded themselves that this was a subprime crisis. But we have problems with credit-card debt, student-loan debt, auto loans, commercial real estate loans, home-equity loans, corporate debt and loans that financed leveraged buyouts... We have a subprime financial system, not a subprime mortgage market.
  • Quoted in Stephen Mihm, "Dr. Doom," The New York Times (2008-08-15).

• Our biggest financiers are China, Russia and the gulf states. These are rivals, not allies.
  • Quoted in Stephen Mihm, "Dr. Doom," The New York Times (2008-08-15).

• The Treasury plan is a disgrace: a bailout of reckless bankers, lenders and investors that provides little direct debt relief to borrowers and financially stressed households and that will come at a very high cost to the US taxpayer. And the plan does nothing to resolve the severe stress in money markets and interbank markets that are now close to a systemic meltdown.
  • "RGE Conference Call on the Economic and Financial Outlook... and why the Treasury TARP bailout is flawed," RGE Monitor (2008-09-26).

• (During the Italian crisis, about the proposal of replacing Silvio Berlusconi with Angelino Alfano, as the new Prime Minister of Italy) Replacing Berlusconi with one of his servile lackeys is unacceptable. Italy needs a credible government run by a respected & competent leader (2011-11-08
  • Quoted in: Italy crisis - Live, BBC.co.uk).

• Cryptocurrencies have given rise to an entire new criminal industry, comprising unregulated offshore exchanges, paid propagandists, and an army of scammers looking to fleece retail investors. Yet, despite the overwhelming evidence of rampant fraud and abuse, financial regulators and law-enforcement agencies remain asleep at the wheel.
  • The Great Crypto Heist, "[1]", Project Syndicate, July 16, 2019

• We cannot achieve price stability, maintain economic growth and have financial stability at the same time. So in the end we will have an economic and financial collapse.
  • Quoted in "Let's get ready for an economic and financial collapse": the alarm of those who predicted the 2008 crisis (April 1, 2023)

External links

• Roubini Global Economics Monitor