Telegraph: Roubini Gets It Wrong

There’s finally some big media pushback against the Great Predictors, all of whom missed one of the greatest stock rallies in history:

Never mind what Nouriel Roubini, the New York economist credited with having seen the economic meltdown coming, is predicting for next year – surprise, surprise, he’s pessimistic – let’s take a look at what he forecast at the time of the World Economic Forum in Davos this time last year.
Er, well, the great sooth sayer and now standing feature of this mountain top conference for the elite of business and finance thought that even if governments and central bankers did everything right in terms of fiscal and monetary policy, we’d all still be in recession across the advanced economies for all of 2009 and 2010. And for sure, the S & P was going to 600. Admittedly, it did get as low as 650, but now it’s back above 1,000. If you’d listened to Mr Roubini, you would have missed out on one of the greatest stock market rallies ever. As for recession, some economies were growing again by the second quarter of last year, and even Britain is now showing marginal growth.
Still, these forecasting errors are perhaps forgiveable for one who got the big call spot on. Except that he was making it as far back as 2002. Which all goes to show that if you say something consistently enough for long enough, eventually you will be proved right.

(HT: TBI)

Posted by on February 8th, 2010 at 11:49 am


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