Roubini was out on the town earlier this week and struck up a convo with a New York magazine reporter, and explained his charm:

So, what makes his parties so great? we asked.

"Fun people and beautiful girls," Roubini said, grinning. "I look for ten girls to one guy." His friend Bill Clinton, he added, is a fan of this ratio.

BUT: we hear that Roubini has been so traumatized by the digital explorations of Nick Denton that he now hates all reporters, and refuses to invite them to his freaky deaky parties! Is it worth leaving the profession in order to get into one of these things? Anybody know? Julia?

It's the iconic battle of our economic era: The guy who always says everything is getting worse, and the guy who tells you to buy everything every time the market ticks up, until you lose all your money. A regular WWIII of the markets! Or maybe it's just two jerks who can't shut up? You decide!

"Cramer is a buffoon," said Roubini, a New York University economics professor often called Dr. Doom. "He was one of those who called six times in a row for this bear market rally to be a bull market rally and he got it wrong. And after all this mess and Jon Stewart he should just shut up because he has no shame."...
"He's not a credible analyst. Every time it was a bear market rally he said it was the beginning of a bull and he got it wrong," Roubini said in an interview with The Associated Press.

Rather accurate! Cramer wrote a blog post saying "Roubini is 'intoxicated' with his own 'prescience and vision' and said Roubini should realize that things are better since the stock market bottom in March." Unfortunately, Jim Cramer is always wrong about everything.

Round one goes to Roubini. Round two: Charity naked boxing match in the fameball vulva loft of Doom? Think about it, guys. [AP]

That would be the "walls indented with plaster vulvas" in back, and JA in the front. She Twittered it, but then deleted it. We saved it for you, JA. (You forgot to invite us though!)

Up until now, each one of these precious op-eds has offered only damning criticism of Treasury Secretary Geithner. But today, Roubini, a cheerful person with a few close friends and eclectic group of friends, sounds positively glowing on the subject of Geithner's new bank plan thing that no one understands (besides Nouriel Roubini):

Secretary Timothy Geithner's new toxic asset plan is a serious step in the right direction in that it creates a public-private partnership to buy the troubled assets of financial firms - in other words, to do the necessary cleansing. Up until now, with all the government bailouts, the financial system has been barely treading water. With this plan, it will still be a hard swim, but, at least, there is a path to shore.

We're saved! Crisis over! That's what this means, right?

What happens if removing toxic assets from a bank's balance sheet at near-market prices shows it is effectively insolvent? Then we will have to face the elephant in the room. We may then have to start asking, "Why keep insolvent banks afloat?" And having asked that, we will have to search for ways to manage the ensuing systemic risk.

This plan is marginally better than nothing and perhaps the best that could be hoped for given the current political situation and the rank idiocy of everyone in congress, Nouriel Roubini totally <3's Tim Geithner!

Roubini reiterated that "most" American financial institutions are "entirely" (not partially!) insolvent; that the government should nationalize the banks; that the world economy may shrink and that there are signs we're in deflationary death spiral.

Then he added that the economy is literally dying, via 1,000 cuts, and that we're in the 15th month of a lengthy (he predicts) 36-month recession or near-depression. Breaking "every mortgage contract" might improve things, Roubini helpfully added.

It was a dark forecast even by the barely-legal standards of the pessimism porn pusher. While it's disconcerting to see CNBC still chock-a-block with vocal defenders of the Wall Street status quo, at least one knows where that leads: more of the same, with boomtime robber-barons socializing their losses during the busts. Roubini may well be right, but it is no doubt frightening for your typical, self-styled big-government-hating, Euro-socialism-fearing American to contemplate where it might take us.

Amusingly, the business school economics professor is now the official national spokesman for we have to nationalize all the banks now. All of them—all four of America's remaining banks!—are insolvent, he insists, and unless the government seizes control of them we're basically fucked.

Roubini is basically responding to Tim Geithner's every move with a lengthy piece in a major publication on how dumb Geithner's plans are. Geithner used to be his boss, right? Dr. Doom is having fun!

The Forbes piece on nationalizing all the banks is for expert readers. For the amateur pessimism porn enthusiast, try Roubini and fellow Stern prof Matthew Richardson's Post Sunday Outlook piece.

Here is why the plan won't work: because if it does work all it will do is prove that Citi and BoA and JPMorgan and Wells Fargo are all insolvent.

But unfortunately, the plan won't solve our financial woes, because it assumes that the system is solvent. If implemented fairly for current taxpayers (i.e., no more freebies in the form of underpriced equity, preferred shares, loan guarantees or insurance on assets), it will just confirm how bad things really are.

And then, hey, all our banks are broke! Nice work Geithner! We know Roubini is "quite a cheerful person with a few close friends and eclectic group of friends" but he is really bringing us all down. Look at the downer note he ends on:

Basically, we're all Swedes now. We have used all our bullets, and the boogeyman is still coming. Let's pull out the bazooka and be done with it.

Oh, great, now we're Swedish. Brush up on your Strindberg and Bergman! There's your great depression, jeez.

The Guardian profiled Roubini this weekend, and his insights into the bleak prospects for the global economy in 2009 and beyond are well worth reading. Of course, since British journalists are all cold-blooded character assassins, they ask him about his funktastic loft parties (of which we approve!), which have dogged his reputation, and his subsequent mindless Facebook rant at our boss:

I ask Roubini if he regretted that course of action, and he gives me a look of such angry disappointment that I want to hide under my chair.

No, he says, he didn't regret it. He then reprises the rant, embellishing it with references to the KGB, Denton's sexual orientation and a sweary suggestion of what the man might do with himself, which he belatedly asks me not to quote. For the sake of the record, I feel obliged to clarify that the piece of art in question is described by Roubini as the work of a highly regarded feminist artist whom he won't name and which doesn't, he assures me, look anything like a vulva.

Just because Nick Denton is a KGB-controlled Jewish "Anti-Semite with a Nazi Mind and a McCarthist Bigot" doesn't mean you can shame him for it, Nouriel. One day I know that you two will be good friends! See you at the next roof party. [Guardian UK]

• Peter Schiff: "Peter D. Schiff is the president of Euro Pacific Capital Inc., a brokerage firm based in Darien, Connecticut... His extremely bearish views on the U.S. Dollar, the United States stock market, bond market, and the United States economy have earned him the nickname 'Dr. Doom.'" Here he is being so, so right about things:

• Nouriel Roubini: "The NYU professor's once-mocked warnings—of a real-estate collapse, equity market slaughter, the systemic bust of the banking system—have largely come to pass. It's no wonder Roubini has earned the nickname Dr. Doom."
• Dr. Ravi Batra: "Batra is a professor of economics at Southern Methodist University, Dallas, and the author of five international best sellers. His latest book is: 'The New Golden Age: The Coming Revolution against Political Corruption and Economic Chaos.'...Dr. Ravi Batra, a.k.a. 'Dr. Doom.'"
• Marc Faber: "Dr Faber publishes a widely read monthly investment newsletter "The Gloom Boom & Doom Report" report which highlights unusual investment opportunities, and is the author of several books."
• Henry Kaufman: "Currently president of Henry Kaufman & Company Inc...He was well-known during the 1970s and early 1980s for the interest rate forecasts he wrote for Salomon, and for their bearish views, generally predicting that bond prices would decrease (interest rate would increase). Thus, he earned the nickname 'Dr. Doom.'"
• Nick Denton: (What the hell?) "Today Nick has issued his 2009 Internet Media Plan, which amounts to one big Forecast of Doom."

God, we really need better nicknames here. Until further notice let's just call them all "The guy who is not currently wrong."