Global Economic Crisis

Sheldon Filger-blogger for GlobalEconomicCrisis.com

Economist Nouriel Roubini has written an article for Project Syndicate that looks at the probable scenarios for the trajectory of the Israel-Gaza war, and their likely consequences for the global economy. Bottom line: Roubini thinks that economists, investors, and markets in general are underestimating the risk factors of a worst-case spillover of the Gaza conflict.

Roubini assigns a 35% probability that the Gaza war is transformed into an all-out regional war, with Iran unleashing its proxies against Israel and its U.S. ally. Ultimately, in this scenario, Israel attacks Iran’s nuclear facilities, with American support.

What are the economic implications of such a scenario? A geopolitical shock similar to the oil shock of the 1970s. This would result in global stagflation, with Europe and China in particular being vulnerable. Ironically, the United States would suffer economic dislocation somewhat less, as it is now the number one oil producer in the world, a sharp contrast with the 1970s. However, a regional war in the Middle East would create further political instability in the U.S., with negative economic implications.

Essentially, Nouriel Roubini is warning that global markets are only pricing in a 5% probability of a worst-case scenario, where 35 % is more realistic. This unwarranted optimism, posits Roubini, leaves the global economy highly vulnerable to the worst possible economic consequences.

The world’s foremost economist when it comes to projecting negative economic phenomenon, Nouriel Roubini, recently posted an article on Project Syndicate with a dire warning:

It is tempting to think that the war in Ukraine will have only a minor economic and financial impact globally, given that Russia represents merely 3% of the world economy. But policymakers and financial analysts need to avoid such wishful thinking.

All the negative inflationary trends already baked into the cake for 2022, and long dismissed by the U.S. Federal Reserve, will now be further accelerated and become more broad-based. The sanctions being imposed on Russia will not only damage Putin’s economy but also further augment inflationary pressures in the global economy. Furthermore, Roubini warns, Russia will inflict its own asymmetrical retaliatory measures, adding to the overall pain in major economies.

The cumulative effect of the measures enacted in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine will be massive stagflationary trends-high inflation combined with low or negative economic growth. But with central banks already having loosened their monetary policies for far too long, their ability to engage in damage control is limited, Roubini  warned. Based on recent policy mistakes, Roubini believes the Federal Reserve will likely “fudge” rate hikes to avoid creating a fiscal drag that heightens recessionary forces. But energy prices will continue to spike. Inadequate measures by central banks will only augment inflationary expectations. Attempts to increase alternative supplies of oil with a nuclear deal with Iran are likely to fail, resulting in energy hoarding.

It is not only central banks that are in a bind, according to Nouriel Roubini. The vast deficit spending unleashed by sovereigns to counter the negative shock from Covid have led to soaring public debt levels, leaving little fiscal ammunition to confront the economic consequences of Putin’s war on Ukraine. Furthermore, Professor Roubini points out that the economic crisis generated by Putin’s attack on Ukraine has led to a negative supply shock, fundamentally different from the demand shock generated by the credit crisis that occurred in 2007-09. He warns that fiscal stimulus is the wrong response to the current crisis, and will only accelerate already high inflationary expectations.

Nouriel Roubini offers the following sobering conclusion:

The global impact of Putin’s war will be channeled through oil and natural gas, but it will not stop there. The knock-on effects will strike a massive blow to global confidence at a time when the fragile recovery from the pandemic was already entering a period of deeper uncertainty and rising inflationary pressures. The knock-on effects of the Ukraine crisis – and from the broader geopolitical depression it augurs – will be anything but transitory.

My own assessment; we are now in a deep global economic crisis that will be enduring, likely for the remainder of the decade. It will be the Great Depression 2.0.

Sheldon Filger-blogger for GlobalEconomicCrisis.com

Sheldon Filger-blogger for GlobalEconomicCrisis.com

He predicted the 2007-09 Global Financial Crisis with uncanny accuracy, even while experts including then Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke were dismissive of him. He’s Nouriel Roubini, economics professor at NYU and a highly distinguished economist. Though his correct forecast of the 2007-09 financial implosion earned him the nickname of Dr. Doom, he prefers to think of himself as Dr. Realist. His latest exercise in realism makes chilling reading.

As the Covid pandemic erupted, Roubini was already warning that the world faced a global economic depression sometime during the course of the present decade. With unprecedented sovereign debt expansion during the past year  unleashed by governments under the guise of providing Covid relief, Professor Roubini has taken a fresh look at the data, and published his conclusions in a recent article that appeared in The Guardian.

“Conditions are ripe for repeat of 1970s stagflation and 2008 debt crisis,” reads the headline of Roubini’s article.  “Warning signs are there for global economy, and central banks will be left in impossible position,” he writes.

In essence, Roubini points out that current trends, which include not only the massive expansion  of sovereign debt but also contributing  factors such as the loss of independence by central banks coupled with the decoupling between the United States and China, leading to fragmentation of global supply chains, point to an unavoidable train wreck  for the global economy. It is a hellish forecast, which unfortunately has the ring of truth.  If Professor Roubini’s forecast is as accurate as was his previous warning of the impending Global Financial Crisis of 2007-09, the world stands on the verge of the Global Economic Crisis of the 21st century, a Great Depression 2.0 coupled with high inflation. And, as Roubini warns, central banks  will be powerless to stop it.

In an article  in  Project Syndicate, economist Nouriel Roubini analyzes the outbreak of mass riots  in  the United States, triggered by the police killing of George Floyd.  Roubini argues that the rioting stems from a reaction to police brutality and racism, but have grown to encompass masses of young workers of all races alienated by a failing economic model

Paraphrasing Marx, Roubini makes the case that that the old proletariat has been replaced by a new class-the Precariat- made up of of gig and contract workers, economically exploited and deprived of stable and sustainable wages and benefits. The precarious state of this new proletariat, combined with rising wealth inequality in the U.S., has made mass rioting inevtiable, states Roubini. In effect, his point is that masses of largely young people in America have reached the breaking point of despair, leading to what is emerging as a summer of urban explosions.

I recommend reading Roubini’s article in  full; the link is  https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/main-street-manifesto-for-covid19-crisis-by-nouriel-roubini-2020-06?

In a startling forecast published in Project Syndicate entitled, “The Coming Greater Depression of the 1920s,” NYU economics professor Nouriel Roubini outlines ten negative trends that ensure the inevitability of a full-fledge economic depression sometime during the current decade. Professor Roubini achieved notoriety for predicting with uncanny accuracy the Global Financial Crisis of 2007-09.

Roubini points out that even prior to the coronavirus pandemic there were downside trends involving structural issues left over from the financial crisis of 2007-09, coupled with deglobalization and the balkanization of supply chains, decoupling between China and the United States and other geopolitical rivalries, and environmental factors  such as climate change. What the COVID-19 pandemic has done is accelerate and magnify those negative trends, which already  have created a perfect storm, leading to a “greater depression” later on in the present decade.

The current economic crisis created by the coronavirus will bring about a severe, U shaped recession, which moist economists now believe will exceed the 2007-09 Global Financial Crisis in  severity. There will be no V shaped recovery, in Roubini’s view. The most chilling aspect of Professor Roubini’s forecast is that even if the COVID-19 enabled recession eventually has a U-shaped recovery, it will only be temporary, with a 21st century Great Depression to follow in its wake, making the 1920s  a time of Global Economic Crisis, with prospects of recovery being differed until the 1930s, all predicated on new technologies and the emergence of more competent political leadership.

In a chilling yet cogently delivered live Twitter lecture on likely economic trends stemming from the Covid-19 pandemic, NYU professor and economist Nouriel Roubini gave a harsh yet realistic overview on the unfolding crisis. Professor Roubini was one of the few economists to predict the global financial crisis that occurred more than a decade ago.

The views Roubini relayed in his Twitter presentation can be summed up as follows:

1. The health policy response will determine whether or not the world faces a severe recession or a greater depression. A global recession worse than the 2007-09 global financial crisis is already baked into the cake. However, perusing a mitigation strategy to contain the coronavirus pandemic will ensure the global economy heads into a severe depression. Only a suppression strategy as implemented by China initially and now Italy can prevent the worst economic damage. Though a suppression strategy that shuts down the economy for 2 or 3 months is very painful, a mitigation strategy will ensure that Covid-19 spreads like wildfire, leading to a temporary reopening of the economy followed by further and deeper shutdowns. Roubini urges policymakers to adapt draconian suppression measures as the only alternative to far more calamitous economic collapse.
2. The right policy responses will be crucial to preventing a greater depression. The current wave of unprecedented monetary and fiscal measures, adapted in a very short timeframe, are correct. In particular , very large fiscal deficits equivalent to ten percent of GDP, which in turn are fully monetized by the central banks, are necessary in the short-term. However, such extraordinary measures are unsustainable in the long-term, and will lead to stagflation.
3. The health emergency crippling the global economy is not the only shock confronting it. Roubini identified a geopolitical depression exacerbated by revisionist powers (China, Russia, Iran and North Korea) seeking to further destabilize the United States through cyber warfare. In particular, the emerging cold war between China and the U.S. is leading to decoupling of supply chains and de-globalization, which will increase costs of production and hence inflation.
4. Professor Roubini sees a great risk that Iran’s regime will initiate a full-scale war with the United States as the only means of preserving itself from being overthrown, if Trump is reelected and the economic sanctions lead to its collapse. Such conflict will close the straits of Hormuz, leading to a massive spike in oil prices.

In summary, a sobering and harshly realistic analysis of the global economic crisis now underway.

Perhaps the most insightful economist to watch as the Global Economic Crisis unleashed by the Covid-19 pandemic rages is Nouriel Roubini, economics professor at New York University. In the months leading up to the 2008 global financial crisis , his predictions were eerily accurate. Now he has published an essay on what is unfolding regarding the Coronavirus pandemic induced economic disaster on the Project Syndicate website, entitled ominously “A Greater Depression?”

I urge ever sensible person to read it; the link is: https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/coronavirus-greater-great-depression-by-nouriel-roubini-2020-03?

Among the points Professor Roubini makes is that the collapse in stock markets has greatly exceed in velocity not only what occurred during the global financial crisis of 2008, but also during the Great Depression during the 1930s. While other prognosticators are predicting a U or L or worst case V trajectory and recovery, Roubini views such happy talk as delusional. He sees every indicator as pointing to a global economy in unrestrained free fall. The hope for an eventual recovery lies in a host of unconventional monetary and fiscal measures. However, as he observes, there are a host of probable white swan events and negative political realities that will likely obstruct the unprecedented policymaking the now full-fledged Global Economic Crisis requires.

In 2007,just before the last great worldwide financial and economic crisis was unleashed, a book by Nassim Nicholas Taleb was published entitled The Black Swan. It explored how unpredictable and outlier can events can unleash extreme impacts of greave consequence. Though Taleb’s book foretold of the Global Financial Crisis that was about to occur, it is just as prescient regarding the unleashing of the Corona virus and its increasingly devastating impact on the global economy.

Seemingly out of nowhere, Corona virus, specifically the strain identified as Covid-19, began spreading like wildfire towards the end of 2019 in Wuhan, China. Since then, it has been occurring in dozens of countries, leading health authorities worldwide to label Covid-19 a pandemic. And though we are only in the early stages of the outbreak, the global economy is already in dire straits.

Stock markets are plummeting, global supply chains are being disrupted, the travel and tourism and related industries are being devastated, and economic fear is becoming as contagious as Covid-19 spread with virulence.

The economist noted for predicting  the 2007-2008 financial collapse, Nouriel Roubini, otherwise known as “Dr. Doom,” is now predicting massive economic collapse as the Corona virus spreads and intensifies. In his views, any equity recoveries are only temporary and the worst is ahead of us, with stock markets possibly contracting by 40 percent or more. Other elements, which Roubini describes as Whites Swans, such as tension with Iran and the China-U.S. trade war, will further exacerbate the economic consequences of Covid-19.

This is not a mere correction or cyclical recession that is being discussed, but a global economic depression of massive proportions. Central banks are already slashing interest rates to near zero, and other signs of panic are setting in. The next Global Economic Crisis appears to be just ahead, with the world geopolitically far more divided and conflicted than was the case back in 2008.

He was dubbed “Dr. Doom”  for his uncanny and highly accurate prediction of the 2008 global financial crisis and global recession. Now, Roubini is again making dire predictions of a catastrophic global economic recession. This time, however, the decisive driver of the meltdown won’t be subprime mortgages but rather the increasingly tense relationship between the two largest economies in the world – America and China.

In an article for Project Syndicate entitled, ” The Coming Sino-American Bust Up,” the noted economist  writes,  “Whether or not US President Donald Trump and his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, agree to another truce at the upcoming G20 summit in Osaka, the Sino-American conflict has already entered a dangerous new phase. Though a negotiated settlement or a managed continuation of the status quo are possible, a sharp escalation is now the most likely scenario.“

Roubini sees a global recession occurring as soon as 2020, a predictions that other economists have also prognosticated on. With the previous global economic crisis of 2008 having consumed all the policy perceptions that central  banks and sovereign fiscal stimulus had available for decision makers, the coming global economic recession will find policy makers with  few silver billets remaining. In the meantime, nationalism may replace rational economics in determining the course of the next recession, which Nouriel Roubini believes will be largely determined by the increasingly strife-ridden relationship between the United States and China.

Sheldon Filger-blogger for GlobalEconomicCrisis.com

He emerged in the months prior to the global financial and economic crisis that erupted in the fall of 2008, warning of a deadly convergence of worrying economic and financial dangers. Nouriel Roubini, economics professor at New York University and owner of his own consultancy firm, issued warnings  that in retrospect seem almost magically prescient. Roubini’s prediction that the contraction in housing prices in the U.S. housing market would metastasize into a devastating financial hurricane seemed so incomprehensively dire, the pundits and eternal optimists on Wall Street dubbed him with the moniker of “Dr. Doom.”

For those not punch-drunk on Wall Street’s propaganda, Nouriel Roubini even issued what amounted to as a checklist of discrete steps that would occur until the investment banks imploded, leading to a fiscal Armageddon. During the summer of 2008, the checkmarks on Roubini’s list of foreboding prognostications accumulated, until Lehman Brothers went bankrupt, and the global economic crisis erupted with fury as credit markets worldwide went into cardiac arrest.

Now, four years later, Roubini is back with his prophecies of gloom and foreboding for the global economy. Dr. Doom has taken to the airwaves, warning policymakers as well as the public that there is a high probability that a perfect economic and fiscal storm will erupt in 2013. Essentially, Roubini’s forecast is as follows; until the November U.S. presidential elections  of this year, there will be a deceptive calm before the storm, as every major economy plagued with severe fiscal problems continues to kick the can down the road. Come 2013, there will be a convergence of several major negative metrics. These include the worsening Eurozone debt crisis, likely leading to the exit of Greece from the monetary union. China will face a hard economic landing, and the United States, its economic growth and job creation performance already anemic, will face a high probability of a renewed economic recession, particularly in a political environment favoring austerity. In addition to those economic factors, there is one other element in the turbulent brew that comprises Roubini’s prediction of a perfect economic storm in 2013; Iran. If the Iranian nuclear issue is not resolved peacefully, which at present seems highly doubtful, there is a high probability of a military conflict occurring in the region, which will add further strains upon the global economy, particularly if oil prices spike to highly elevated levels.

Dr. Doom is back, with  a characteristically gloom-laden warning about likely economic trends for 2013. Unlike the pontificators among the politicians, Wall Street glad handlers and central bankers, Roubini’s analysis of future economic trends does have the virtue of reasoned logic  as opposed to overly-optimistic rhetoric. Finally, Nouriel Roubini’s record in predicting future trends impacting the global economy and financial system has been inherently more reliable than the forecasts offered by the U.S. Federal Reserve, as well as by the policymakers in America and Europe.

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