Yet again, Nouriel Roubini inspires in us a palpable fear using nothing but words and numbers with his latest column in the Daily News. Only this time, he specifically targets those 15.7 million unemployed Americans who would dare believe that they might once again be productive members of society:

Think the worst is over? Wrong....

The last recession ended in November 2001, but job losses continued for more than a year and half until June of 2003; ditto for the 1990-91 recession.

So we can expect that job losses will continue until the end of 2010 at the earliest. In other words, if you are unemployed and looking for work and just waiting for the economy to turn the corner, you had better hunker down. All the economic numbers suggest this will take a while. The jobs just are not coming back.

Roubini has completed his transformation into a vampire who feeds on the hopes and dreams of the unemployed in order to fund his personal International Hunnietary Fund. What better time to look back on the myriad ways he has for the past year informed us that America has no more money and never will again?

ABANDON HOPE, ALL YE WHO ENTER HERE

Date:February 15
Article: "Nationalize the Banks! We're all Swedes Now" (The Washington Post)
Dow Average: 7,889
Passage of Doom:

$7 trillion — including commercial real estate loans, consumer credit-card debt and high-yield bonds and leveraged loans — is at risk of losing much of its value. Then there are trillions more in high-grade corporate bonds and loans and jumbo prime mortgages, whose worth will also drop precipitously as the recession deepens and more firms and households default on their loans and mortgages.

Date: February 28
Article: "The L Curve" (The New York Times)
Dow Average:7,026
Passage of Doom:

Even if appropriate aggressive policy actions were undertaken... the growth rate would not rise closer to 2 percent until 2011. So this recession may last 36 months.

And things could get worse. We now face a 1 in 3 chance that, if appropriate policies are not put in place, this ugly U-shaped recession may turn into a more virulent L-shaped near-depression or stag-deflation (a deadly combination of economic stagnation and price deflation) like the one Japan experienced in the 1990s after its real estate and equity bubbles burst.

Date: May 5
Article:"We can't Subsidize the Banks Forever" (The Wall Street Journal)
Dow Average:8,411
Passage of Doom:

[The government's] overall message is that the sector is in pretty good shape.

This would be good news if it were credible. But the International Monetary Fund has just released a study of estimated losses on U.S. loans and securities. It was very bleak — $2.7 trillion, double the estimated losses of six months ago. Our estimates at RGE Monitor are even higher, at $3.6 trillion, implying that the financial system is currently near insolvency.

Date: November 1
Article:"Mother of all carry trades faces an inevitable bust"(Financial Times)
Dow Average:9,712
Passage of Doom:

one day this bubble will burst, leading to the biggest co-ordinated asset bust ever: if factors lead the dollar to reverse and suddenly appreciate – as was seen in previous reversals, such as the yen-funded carry trade – the leveraged carry trade will have to be suddenly closed as investors cover their dollar shorts. A stampede will occur as closing long leveraged risky asset positions across all asset classes funded by dollar shorts triggers a co-ordinated collapse of all those risky assets.

(That last one is only scary if you know what a "carry trade" is—but then it's really terrifying.)

We frankly don't understand Roubini's latest apocalyptic pronouncement, published yesterday in the FT, but it has something to do with how "quantitative easing" and "hot money" have created another massive asset bubble that is going to burst and kill us all. Everybody's borrowing in dollars—which we guess the Fed actually will pay you to do, like you get a free dollar for every five you borrow, or something—and investing in the Third World, and it's the "mother of all carry trades" and will ruin the world when the dollar rebounds, which we thought was supposed to be a good thing, but you can't win for losing and Nouriel Roubini will crush your dreams one way or another. It's what doom merchants do. Like the beleaguered Mayan eschatologists busy selling Sony's upcoming 2012, he's simply satisfying a market demand for a framework that renders our generalized anxieties sensible and justified.

And he's got to pay for all those parties at his vulva-studded TriBeCa loft somehow. Last night—on the very day his latest black pronouncement was published—Roubini had Wall Street II director Oliver Stone and some ladies over for post-Halloween merriment. Or, as Roubini put it his Facebook update: "We hanged out."

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, a doomsaying economist who's as well-known for his Tribeca loft parties as his increasingly grandiose predictions of worldwide economic collapse, took a break from wooing young women on Facebook to post a few photos of a copter ride in Brazil. (He simply had to spring for a helicopter "as Sao Paulo car traffic is THE worst in the world.) Check out who he hung out with: New York Times loan shark Carlos Slim Helù, disaster-exploiting hedge fund manager John Paulson, and demise-of-empire chronicler Niall Ferguson. They know all about meltdowns, too!

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.

The Federal Reserve began propping up AIG last September; a recent $30 billion infusion has brought the total bill to $173 billion. The government now owns 80 percent of the many-tentacled insurer, meaning that taxpayers are essentially on the hook for its liabilities. And AIG has spent roughly $50 billion fulfilling contracts it issued to banks to guarantee the value of various derivatives. Those complex financial bets went disastrously wrong as first the mortgage business and then the entire stock market imploded. U.S. legislators have been asking administration officials for names all week after the Treasury . They refused. But the WSJ got them:

Goldman Sachs
Deutsche Bank
Merrill Lynch
Société Générale
Calyon
Barclays
Rabobank
Danske
HSBC
Royal Bank of Scotland
Banco Santander
Morgan Stanley
Wachovia
Bank of America
Lloyds Banking Group

Ah yes, Rabobank, that pillar of the American economy.

Doomsaying economists like Nouriel Roubini have been saying that the global banking system is essentially insolvent. AIG's guarantees have allowed banks to avoid losses on otherwise worthless securities. To what extent is the protection issued through the government-backed AIG been masking their insolvency? Government officials have been saying since September that we must support AIG, lest its failure ripple through the banking system. But could we be just prolonging the inevitable?

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.

[Nouriel "Dr. Doom"] Roubini reports on his Facebook page that he " is partying with the other Horsemen of the Apocalypse (Taleb, Ferguson) and Julia Alllison."

Or:

Subject: What????
To: tips@gawker.com

Who the hell is paying for Julia Allison... to take a private jet back from Davos?????

Who knows. The global establishment is turned on its head: those "elites" once anointed as leaders wise enough to navigate us through up and down markets alike are too scared to show up, or, if they've secured government work, working too frantically at home. Labor leaders, meanwhile, are warning of global revolution.

Perhaps the world will be saved by the new global "elite," including the likes of fameball Julia Allison, who crashed the party without an invite; manic blogger Robert Scoble; young Facebook overlord Mark Zuckerberg; Napster co-founder Sean Parker; startup blogger Mike Arrington; YouTube chief Chad Hurley; new media ranter Jeff Jarvis or former heads of state like Bill Clinton and Tony Blair.

Photos below are from Getty, AP, Allison's lifestream, Robert Scoble's Flickr stream and ultimatewhit on Flickr.

And if Allison seems overrepresented in the gallery below? Well, we apologize, but it's just been that sort of year for the World Economic Forum: The pretenders have taken over. The saddest part is, that may be for the best.

The Forum has the world's elite meet and greet at the Swiss resort town of Davos every year. And every year, organizers pretend that it's a serious event for serious bankers to talk about serious economics. This year, the pretense is more serious than ever.

The evidence in their favor: Goldman Sachs has nixed its party, and John Thain, the ousted Merrill chief, will no longer host a Friday breakfast. The evidence against: The conquerors of Wall Street, like JPMorgan Chase and Barclays, will still host fizzy bashes.

The very theme of the event is denial. Klaus Schwab, the event's founder, has a neat semantic dodge for avoiding talk of current economic woes: He's entitled the event "Shaping the Post-Crisis World." Yes, we'd all rather think about when the unpleasantness will be over.

No chance of that with Roubini around. He will ruin Schwab's plan two different ways. The New York University economist made his bones by predicting the mortgage meltdown and the ensuing recession. He will surely not want to softpedal his doom-mongering for airy talk of the future. But at home in Manhattan, he's better known for the louche soirées he throws for young women in his vulva-studded TriBeCa loft. (Which, by the way, we applaud!) Roubini embodies the true spirit of Davos: wild partying in the face of the world's doom.

And once he's joined by Allison, the globetrotting stalker of married Internet executives, we must all dress up for the apocalypse.

(Photoillustration by Richard Blakeley)

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]

To stay on good terms, the NYU professor must grin and bear it. At least that's what he did on CNBC when the business network chided him about his often-rowdy salons. Presumably Roubini has chilled a bit since calling Gawker's Nick Denton "an anti-semite with a Nazi mind" for writing about the same topic. Clip above.

One thing everyone agrees on: The current economic contraction, which began a year ago, will be the longest on record since the Great Depression. The optimistic scenario, voiced in the New York Times, is that it will end by the middle of 2009, as the housing market recovers and the government pours money into public works. That will put the recession at 18 to 21 months. Even playboy economist Nouriel Roubini, the professional doomsayer who installed a wall of vaginas in his personal misbegotten real-estate venture, thinks that the worst-case scenario is a recession that ends by December 2009 — 24 months. Consumers are resilient, economists say, and love nothing better than earning money and spending it.

But that's a rather U.S.-centric forecast, amid a globalized economy. (Who knew the halls of economics departments were filled with such isolationists?)

There are, even today, sectors of industry which make physical things. So old media, I know! The business is called manufacturing, and its forecasts are abysmal. A strengthening dollar, predicted as the rest of the world suffers economically, will hurt manufacturers' exports. And weak foreign markets will hurt many of the technology giants which thrived on overseas growth.

So could the recession last through 2010? Quite possibly. But it's a scenario no one's contemplating — even the most bearish of economists.

(Photo via the New York Times)

Roubini—recognized as one of the few economists who predicted the credit crunch—was at the same time just as gloaty as any other self-satisfied real-estate owner about the appreciation of his own apartment. In one of his regular party invitations in 2006 (reproduced below), Dr. Doom boasted to friends and random Facebook hotties that Scarlett Johansson had moved into an apartment directly above him—paying 2½ times what he had just three years earlier. (The apartments have the same double-height 1,300-square-foot floor plan though one assumes the decoration upstairs is more conventional than the moulded vaginas on Roubini's wall.)

But the actress' purchase—"very good taste/style on her part"—was less of a boon than it first seemed. The buxom young movie star, most recently in Woody Allen's Victoria Christina Barcelona, was among neighbors who complained about Roubini's party guests wandering the halls of their Leonard Street building, says a former tenant. The building's new policy on parties—the doorman checks off all names against an RSVP list—is apparently designed for Roubini's haphazard salons.

Dear friends,
this Wednesday March 29th it is my birthday (in between a trip to Australia last week and one this coming weekend to Brazil)...I am almost sweet sixteen (time 2x or 3x)...So I will have some mellow drinks and desserts at my place starting at 9.15pm this Wednesday (this late hour as I have a wonky business dinner before, even on my b-day...)
Lovely if you can make it...and please No Gifts as your charming and friendly company would be plenty...
So, hope to see you Wednesday nite...
66 Leonard St. #2B
Ciao,
Nouriel
PS: Scarlett Johansson has just bought the loft above mine - same size/layout - for a price 2.5 times what I paid for 3 years ago (http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/26/realestate/26deal.html?_r=1&oref=slogin);
so very good taste/style on her part, but you got to pay a large premium to live above the very famous - or infamous? - Roubini...lol...so, be quiet on a week nite or my neighbours will lose their Beauty Sleep...not that...

But confronted by Mashable about his relationship collection, Alsop freely fessed up: "In his mid-50s, Alsop reaches out to young attractive women and asks if he can be their friend. Many say yes. Alsop says he's an old guy and it makes him feel as if he's got something going on. There's no downside for Alsop. Some may think it's weird, but it doesn't change anything for him."

In case you had any doubts on how free-thinking the Bay Area is on such matters, Robin Wolaner, Alsop's "No. 1 girlfriend" and the CEO of social network TeeBeeDee, supports her man's Facebook habit. Even though, in the same Mashable article, she recommends against accepting friend requests from people you don't really know. Like, say, her 50something venture-capitalist boyfriend.

When are you going to write a column saying that Nick Denton is the biggest Jerk in town? Or is he blackmailing you so much all with his Gestapo/Stasi threats that all of you members of the journalistic crowd are afraid of him? You were just a coward: it was easy and cheap to shamelessly and gratuitously and cheaply insult me on your trashy column and never say anything about that jerk. You should be ashamed of yourself So much for independent and corageous journalism. You are a just a bunch of wimps being blackmailed by that sleazy jerk as he - in Nazi style. - has files on all of you.