When Nouriel Roubini was 16 years old, his father took him from their home in Milan for a holiday in London. It was the winter of 1974, just before Christmas. They wanted to see the lights of Piccadilly Circus, but when they arrived, the shops were closed and the famous signs that he’d seen in photographs were dark. He wondered if this winter, or next, the lights will go out again.
But the future Roubini, 64, predicts features more than an energy shock. If he is right in his assessment of the world economy, the next decade will contain mass unemployment, mass personal bankruptcy and business insolvency, a severe, protracted recession, and a wave of financial crises and defaults in countries around the world – a new Great Depression, and one that will not be solvable using the tools of the past.
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