Roubini, Dr. Doom, Starts To Surrender

By Douglas A. McIntyre Published Jul 16, 2:20PM EDT

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Nouriel Roubini, the notorious bear who called for all this mess we have seen, is finally throwing in the towel on being so bearish and looking more like a soft-bull. Maybe only a bit, but that may be enough. There was originally some issue over the timing of when, but late 2009 or early 2010 is when Roubini expects the recession to end.

While Roubini said deflation is a near-term risk, Roubini noted that inflation is going to be an issue if the US does not adjust its policies in the near-term. Just like Buffett, Roubini is said to also favor another stimulus package.

In the Daily Digest at Roubini’s RGEMonitor.com website, they are calling for the economy to turn the corner in 2010. This may seem a bit odd considering that it was just Tuesday when Roubini’s EconoMonitor was talking about mounting job losses as a huge risk and just last week when Roubini said the recession would end in six months and have only a shallow recovery.

If you have been following Roubini for some time, he has actually been getting less and less bearish for a few months. He still tried to sound cautious and negative, but you have to interpret what perma-bulls and perma-bears say sometimes to really know what they are saying.

Much of this may in fact be very much the same sort of issue as Meredith Whitney’s first upgrade this week. That was a good-bad call, so to speak.

JON C. OGG
JULY 16, 2009

About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.