Economics

Les ingrédients d’une récession et crise financière d’ici 2020

Sep 13, 2018 Nouriel Roubini and Brunello Rosa

NEW YORK – Dix ans après l’effondrement de Lehman Brothers, des interrogations demeurent autour des causes et conséquences de la crise financière, de même que la question de savoir si les leçons qu’il faudra appliquer face à la prochaine crise ont été intégrées. Mais dans une perspective d’avenir, la question la plus pertinente consiste à déterminer ce qui provoquera la récession et la crise mondiale de demain, ainsi que le moment de leur survenance.

L’actuelle expansion mondiale devrait se poursuivre l’année prochaine, dans la mesure où les États-Unis enregistrent d’importants déficits budgétaires, où la Chine applique des politiques budgétaires et de crédit assouplies, et où l’Europe reste sur une trajectoire de reprise. Seulement voilà, d’ici 2020, les conditions tendront vers une crise financière, suivie d’une récession mondiale.

Dix raisons expliquent cela. Premièrement, les politiques de relance budgétaire qui poussent actuellement la croissance annuelle américaine au-dessus de son potentiel de 2 % ne sont pas tenables. D’ici 2020, la relance se sera épuisée, et un freinage fiscal modéré réduira la croissance de 3 % jusque légèrement en dessous de 2 %.

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Nouriel Roubini

Writing for PS since 2007
177 Commentaries

Nouriel Roubini, Professor Emeritus of Economics at New York University’s Stern School of Business, is Chief Economist at Atlas Capital Team, CEO of Roubini Macro Associates, Co-Founder of TheBoomBust.com, and author of MegaThreats: Ten Dangerous Trends That Imperil Our Future, and How to Survive Them (Little, Brown and Company, 2022). He is a former senior economist for international affairs in the White House’s Council of Economic Advisers during the Clinton Administration and has worked for the International Monetary Fund, the US Federal Reserve, and the World Bank. His website is NourielRoubini.com, and he is the host of NourielToday.com.

Brunello Rosa

Writing for PS since 2018
5 Commentaries

Brunello Rosa, CEO of Rosa & Roubini Associates, is a visiting professor at Bocconi University.

Italy’s Slow-Motion Euro Train Wreck
ALBERTO PIZZOLI/AFP/Getty Images

Politics 15

Italy’s Slow-Motion Euro Train Wreck

Nouriel Roubini & Brunello Rosa
Financial markets have finally woken up to the fact that Italy could soon be ruled by a populist government with designs to take the country out of the eurozone. And, given Italy's tepid economic performance since adopting the single currency a generation ago, there is little reason to think that the current crisis is a one-off event.
warn that even if most Italians still support the single currency, their long-term commitment is in doubt.
Populist Plutocracy and the Future of America
The Washington Post/Getty Images

Politics 51

Populist Plutocracy and the Future of America

Nouriel Roubini
In the first year of his presidency, Donald Trump has consistently sold out the blue-collar, socially conservative whites who brought him to power, while pursuing policies to enrich his fellow plutocrats. Sooner or later, Trump's core supporters will wake up to this fact, so it is worth asking how far he might go to keep them on his side.
warns that Donald Trump may be willing to try anything to maintain the support of the voters he's betraying.

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0 Comments on this paragraph, 55 Comments on this article

TR TR Jan 26, 2019

What do you think the IMF's and World Bank's role will be in the next financial crisis?

Could they be vested with extra powers to help solve the crisis?

What would that look like?
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aethelwulf e Dec 30, 2018

The hard life of the professional gloomster!?
Why do I never read this guy, because always the same moan.
Rhetorical minimalism.
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Janos Nagy Dec 30, 2018

Of course this is not just an opinion but the wishes of some people mostly the globalists desperately want the USA economic to have a bad few years so they can be the pretenders to fix it.
The USA has 20 to 30 million job deficits through trades with the world and 50 plus millions abled body people out of the workforce that doesn't count as unemployed.
So why is any wonder that has almost a trillion deficit spending year after year.
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Janos Nagy Dec 30, 2018

Wouldn't dare to attack north Korea?
Are you really wishing for war with no winners
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Janos Nagy Dec 30, 2018

Legal immigration is not limited at all.
So what are you talking about?
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Janos Nagy Dec 30, 2018

The problem is not inflation but!
Why is that in a so called free market economic the most important element namely the interest rate is not guided by the market but some persons in a room.
If savings and demand for money would determined the interest rate than it would be well above 10percent.
Money wouldn't be pushed into the stock market that do nothing for growth except at the initial IPO
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William Wallace Nov 1, 2018

None of this really matters anymore. Growth is always the answer to economic problems, and must be promised to ethically impoverished voters, who could actually do with far, far less. Unfortunately, growth is also the economic policy goal whose inexorable effects are guaranteeing the ongoing global mass extinction event unfolding daily before our eyes.

Cash on the barrel head, the only universally worshiped God. So much for "values" and "good faith."

Meanwhile, failure to deliver the benefits of growth to all levels of society is creating a generation of nuclear bomb fans. "Gimme!" Soon enough, game over for humans, done in by their waste, egged on by the deadly hubris that has them forgetting they, too, are animals and depend on the web of life.

Top predators really must be mindful not to scorch the ground where they hunt, or face starvation. Oops.
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Edoardo Ferrazzani Sep 29, 2018

Millenaristic article! Just an opinion of course. Q: Could you please articulate more on why debt-to-GDP ratio close or over 100% in almost advanced economies in the world - especially in Europe and NA-, are not "bid deal", but when it comes to Italy there is this millenaristic hysteria of seeing the country on the brink of default? We are the third most important country for manufacturing of the biggest economic area of the world, and yet there this idea that we cannot payback our debt. It is nonsense to me.
- Michele Bina Nov 7, 2018
  
  Because Italy's economy is in a two-decade growth and productivity slump, has long term structural problems that politicians have been unwilling to tackle to raise the potential growth rate of the economy, because Italy cannot control monetary policy and cannot monetize public debt.
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Alex Aslanidis Sep 24, 2018

Nonsense. Public debt, as long as it's internal, is meaningless. Japan has proved as much, and yet Roubini and his peers turn a blind eye. Bloated central-bank balance sheets are equally meaningless. Only orthodox economists pretend otherwise. As for financial sector bailouts, a rein in of said sector is long overdue.
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Alex Aslanidis Sep 24, 2018

Complete nonsense. First, the US isn't overheating. Second, Roubini and co. had no problem when assets were overheating due to monetary stimulus. Third, so what if it pushes interest rates up? Private entities have proven time and time again that they can't provide sustainable growth. They should be put on a leash. As for government, it doesn't matter if rates go up cause the FED returns it's earnings to the government. The only thing that needs to change is free-trade, so that the US doesn't pay interest abroad.
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Alex Aslanidis Sep 24, 2018

Why is it unsustainable? The United States can always "print" dollars, no matter what. The only problem is that, due to free-trade, the "printed" dollars leak outside the US, therefore creating growth in Germany, China and elsewhere, rather than in the US itself.
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Robert Wolff Sep 22, 2018

The US . . . "has no infrastructure policy to address supply-side bottlenecks."
This is the one that scares me, because once stock markets begin to fall, EVERYBODY pulls their money out, and supply of needed capital dries up.
A capitalist society like the US cannot stop this phenomenon, and if the upcoming crisis is worse than 2008 we shall certainly have another political crisis in which Socialism will be heavily pushed by the Left, with those Americans who are suffering staunchly behind them.
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Jack Harllee Sep 17, 2018

Trump will start a war with Iran? Maybe. It's worth noting that thus far, Trump is the first President since Carter who has neither gotten us into a new war nor intervened in a war we weren't already involved with.
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NIYATI BHANJA Sep 17, 2018

What're the possible EU-level reforms indicated here?
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David Punabantu Sep 17, 2018

Around the early 1960s there was the Bretton Woods crisis. By 1993 there was the EU Maastricht Treaty crisis including the increased floating rates of the US dollar. In 2020 there should be another crisis all operating on around a 30 year cycle. It is a structural crisis "monopolistic" in nature. One currency value rules the world which is reflected in the IMF fixed cross rates. Over taxation by governments as taxes above 8.3 percent causes governments to collect their budget spend it and recollect it in a cyclical pattern many times over within a calender year. The higher the tax above the 8.3 percent threshold the greater the recycling which is no different to Keynesian economics of printing money. The reality is that "value" cannot be fixed and should vary between markets and within markets. Take for example the value of one Euro on the 24th of July 2013, which in value terms was equal to US$1.3196 and £0.86154. The cross rate of the Euro for both currencies on the 24th July 2013 values was 1.53167, while the US dollar to Sterling pound exchange rate on the same day was around £1 per US$1.5317.
The same value configuration was also noted on the 10th of October 2014 in the Chinese Yuan Reminbi (CNY). At this time the Reminbi was worth ¥9.88736 per Sterling pound and ¥6.13033 per US dollar which gave a cross rate similar to the exchange rate of the two transatlantic nations noted in £1being worth US$1.612.
The same pattern was again observed on the 26th of September 2014 in African currencies like the South African Rand (ZAR). At this time the Rand was worth ZAR18.2438 per Sterling pound and ZAR11.2276 per US dollar which gave a cross rate similar to the exchange rate of the two transatlantic nations where £1 was worth US$1.6249. In value terms these fixed cross-rates appear day in and day out, in many national currencies.
However, the reality on the ground in many national money markets is that the existing Sterling pound and US dollar liquidities within these national money markets do not reflect the demand for Sterling/US dollar exchange rates against their national currencies as dictated by the cross-rate position. Such nations therefore persistently lack the same trade levels between the United States (US) and the United Kingdom (UK) within their own money markets to precisely shadow the imposed IMF fixed cross-rate. The reality is that the US dollar supermarket, were goods and services are sold and paid for in US dollars spatially in one area will have different demand rates hence varying values that the current economic structure ignores. The trick is how to reflect that variation in value across markets and allow currency arbitrage operations equalise quotations between markets. Free floating cross rates are needed as the IMF fixed cross rates are not market sensitive.
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john mesrobian Sep 17, 2018

Nouriel I agree with your comments but, disagree with 2020, it will be sooner, suggest it has begun and become very visible in near future and 2019 will be the year and we will see the destruction in Debt, Debt Deflation

The growth has been built on non liquidating Debt and the house of cards will fall and fall hard and it will be worse than 2008, we will see new new lows.
- Andrew (Andy) Crow Sep 17, 2018
  
  Agreed. It will be nothing short of a travesty if the crashes don't materialise before the end of 2019.
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Robert REYNOLDS Sep 17, 2018

Hmmm, .... now where did I put that copy of Das Kapital that I bought when I was a kid?
I feel that quite soon, it may have some real relevance.
- Andrew (Andy) Crow Sep 17, 2018
  
  It never ceased to be relevant. By the same token it was never 100% right.
  - Robert REYNOLDS Sep 17, 2018
    
    You are probably quite right, Andy.
    But I continually ask myself, for how much longer can this this neo-liberal inspired, debt and speculation fueled economic 'Sodom and Gomorrah' last for?
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Douglas Leyendecker Sep 16, 2018

Key is to grow production and reduce service/consumption parts of our economy. Production has a much higher economic multiplier than service or consumption. And a lot of consumption now exports our capital overseas rather than recycling it domestically. Global trade is great but it's destroyed America's Middle Class and more.

The domestic oil and gas boom provides a solid foundation to further grow production in the U.S. All economy starts with natural resources. Now the U.S. has the cheapest power and transportation costs, as well as some cheaper intermediate raw material. And the U.S. has a labor pool of great production workers. Sure we'll have more robotic production but more production is the right path for all workers. We want Made in the U.S.A. to be the desired brand around the world.

The turn from the U.S. subsidizing global prosperity to a focus on domestic sustainability has started. That's not going to stop any time soon. And with a proper pace of re-shoring and domestic capital investment the current expansion could have significant legs.
- Andrew (Andy) Crow Sep 17, 2018
  
  The key is to tax back the illicit and fruitless inflationary gains in assets.
  
  Monetary policy doesn't do that. You can't run an economy with fiscal and monetary policy out of balance. It doesn't work. Circumspice !
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Len Charlap Sep 16, 2018

By "massive public debt" are you referring to the debt of the federal government in general or to the part of the debt owed to the public, i.e. outside of government?
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David Neunuebel Sep 16, 2018

So what’s the point? There is no prescription suggested, just 10 awful things that ... what, can’t be avoided or managed? I appreciate the content but it’s not very helpful.
- Andrew (Andy) Crow Sep 17, 2018
  
  The object of the exercise is that those in the know get well stashed with cash so when the FED interest rate hikes crash the economy the vultures can pick up the next raft of bargains.
  
  It is deliberate. No policy makers could be so wrong and so stupid for so long without deliberate intent.
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Douglas Leyendecker Sep 16, 2018

Yes, at some point soon we will have a "reversion to the mean" type of economic correction. Globalization impoverished the United States and only by using fiscal and monetary stimulus has the country been able to keep the economic wheels on. Debt to GDP skyrocketed because the country transitioned from a production to a service/consumption economic model. Eventually the U.S. will have to pay the piper. And when the U.S. catches a cold the world may catch pneumonia.
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edward Sep 15, 2018

Inflation has risen above target after a decade of being below target on average. Wage inflation needs to exceed consumer price inflation to constitute real wage growth, which we are finally seeing. Real wage growth increases labour force participation (deferring retirement, finishing school on time, getting back into the workforce after giving up), which is what is needed to undo the macro-prophets who insist that the economy is at “full capacity” when the average price level of everything is as expected. The Keynesian-monetarist consensus has stripped away price and wage increases during expansions like it’s a public indecency, which has kept real wages stagnant since the fall of Bretton Woods and diverted real employment income gains to the profit and tax components of GNP, which has removed much of the incentive for productivity gains, which is “stagflationary” (same nominal prices/wages for less production, measured on readings as inflation) on a per capita basis given the increasing % of the population that is not of working age (who need more productivity/participation from those who are of working age).
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edward Sep 15, 2018

Policy normalization defeats your own thesis that the government won’t have the policy tools to counteract a crisis. The Fed might choose not to rescue a developing country, and the risk for the global financial system is that this may be a miscalculation.
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edward Sep 15, 2018

Can use give some numbers to quantify “clearly excessive”? Perhaps in someone’s opinion this has continuously been the case since 1990, but we haven’t had a continuous global recession and financial crisis.
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edward Sep 15, 2018

“Almost certainly”
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edward Sep 15, 2018

I think these are not 10 reasons but 10 risk factors. They do not make a compelling case for a “financial crisis, followed by a global recession” because they lack a mechanism of causality.
- simon noble Sep 19, 2018
  
  quite
  - J W Sep 27, 2018
    
    @EDWARD @LIVE.CA: "lack a mechanism of causality"
    Not at all. Trump is a mechanism. The most obvious Trump trigger is listed -- a war with Iran. The bottom line is that vulnerability is high and getting higher. There are any number of potential crises, political and economic, that could be the trigger. Argentina is imploding right now. Whether such things are contagious depends on risk factors such as these and how much slack policy makers have to shore things up.
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Paul Daley Sep 14, 2018

Actually, some policy-makers are already moving to take the air out of asset markets and re-establish the latitude for policy action. The FED has run down its balance sheet by about $250 billion over the past year and is due to take another $50 billion/month off from now on out. With the economy booming and asset prices so far out of line with income flows there may be scope for the FED and other central banks to do more. A change in the legislative majorities in the US in the upcoming elections may also quell some of the trade tensions, and contain some of the deficit fears. So, while Roubini is right -- the financial cycle is too far advanced to be rolled back without some pain -- continued pressure from central banks, and more rational policies from governments may largely confine the losses to asset markets and property owners, as in the 2000-2001 recession. Coming off the Great Recession, that would be a win.
- simon noble Sep 19, 2018
  
  The flaw in Roubini's trademark prediction is that the Fed wants inflation to rise and it wants rates to be nicely above 3%. For 8 years all that Roubini and others have said is that the Fed has no options because rates are too low, QE hasty been unwound and inflation and growth are too low. Now we are approaching a more normal set of conditions complete with a late cycle equity overvaluation, Roubini says those things are a disaster. Hmm
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vaishnav79 Sep 14, 2018

What is your take on the South Asia in perspective? Will US re-kindle Afgan war?
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Oreste Gallo Sep 14, 2018

Could you provide more details about the law/regulation which would prevent the FED from providing dollar liquidity to non bank and foreign financial institutions?
- John Sweeney Sep 17, 2018
  
  I also would like to know the specifics of this.
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M M Sep 13, 2018

The losers in such eventualities are known, the question is who shall benefit / gain from these doomsdays scenarios, if and when they happen!
- Andrew (Andy) Crow Sep 17, 2018
  
  Who will gain?
  
  Check out the invitee list for Davos. That's a start. After that add the usual suspects.
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Jose Antonio Vanderhorst Silverio Sep 13, 2018

In their timely Sep 13, 2018, article NOURIEL ROUBINI and BRUNELLO ROSA tell us that "As we mark the decennial of the collapse of Lehman Brothers, there are still ongoing debates about the causes and consequences of the financial crisis, and whether the lessons needed to prepare for the next one have been absorbed." What follows next comes from comments that I have posted here recently in the Project Syndicate website:

Except for at least one value, we propose that the “Mission & Values” of the “Open Society Foundations,” does not deal yet with the Updated Global Conceptual Model #MCGA of #TheWealthOfGlobalization aimed, for example, to minimize #FakeNews. The #MCGA makes obsolete the Simplistic Globalization Model #MSG of #TheWealthOfNations, that underlies, for example, Joseph E. Stiglitz new book, “Globalization and Its Discontents Revisited: Anti-Globalization in the Era of Trump.” I suggest that said value that fits the #MCGA but not the #MSG is: "We believe in taking on controversial issues and supporting bold, innovative solutions that address root causes and advance systemic change."

So, proposing that the #MSG is the cause of the financial crisis, lets jump to the last two paragraphs of the article in order to "create the institutions necessary to combat the next financial crisis and downturn" by adopting the #MCGA. Once the #MCGA is adopted, "bold, innovative solutions that address root causes and advance systemic change" will emerge “to prevent a free fall.”
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Raunak Bhiwal Sep 13, 2018

Can you add some data points also, it helps us (me) get a clearer picture of what is going on?
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Sergio BULIAN Sep 13, 2018

N. ROUBINI mi ricorda J.P. MINSKY nell analizzare i limiti del economia del 21 secolo, e per questo condivido le sue analisi, ma spero sempre che si sbagli soprattutto perché i primi a rimetterci sono sempre i più poveri.
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Mark Cancellieri Sep 13, 2018

Are deficits stimulative or not? There is essentially zero possibility of a budget surplus in the coming decades, so we are left to believe that if our politicians are successful in merely reducing the deficit (doubtful), it will be contractionary. I don't buy it one bit.
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Philip Verelger Sep 13, 2018

There is more to the story. The Great Recession of 2008 began in 2007 when oil prices unexpectedly jumped, rising to more than $130 a barrel. The price increase was caused by the requirement that the world’s refining industry move sulfur from diesel. Refineries lacked the capacity to meet the requirements form China, Europe and the United States. In a desperate effort they bid the prices of those crudes that naturally produced the low sulfur diesel.

A similar, but more severe, problem will occur in 2020 when a little known UN agency, the IMO, requires that the sulfur content in the fuels used by ships drop from 3.5 percent to o.5 percent. Refiners are again unprepared. Once again oil prices will rise maybe to $200/bbl. Diesel prices in the US may double. Look for trucker strikes and more. The Trump administration might even ban exports of diesel.
- Andrew (Andy) Crow Sep 17, 2018
  
  "....Refiners are again unprepared...."
  
  No they aren't. You know about it the refiners know about it. They choose to do nothing about it and at the last minute they'll kick up a fuss and demand yet more government funds for a supposed crisis.
  
  How stupid are we supposed to be ?
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ROHIT CHANDAVARKER Sep 13, 2018

The doomsday scenario seems likely, though the time might get advanced. For starters, were the Dems to take over in the November midterms, there is a strong possibility of forcing Trump to go or be impeached.
Come November, the Iran sanctions kick in and one suspects Iran is unlikely to rest easy. A restive population would force the hardliners and IRGC to retaliate. Trump's tacit aim of a regime change in Iran might instead galvanise the hardliners to possibly, intervene in the Straits of Hormuz as they have indirectly stated last month. Winter demand for oil in the West coupled with geo political tensions in the Gulf are bound to send oil prices north. The US may have factored in an increased oil demand for itself but China has discontinued oil purchases due to the trade war. Hence one suspects that this oil price shock might singe most economies. Trade war between US and China is bound to find reverberations across the globe and whichever nation raises the victory banner would find that its Pyrrhic victory.
Hence one could hazard a guess that the doomsday scenario might get advanced before 2020.
- Andrew (Andy) Crow Sep 17, 2018
  
  "....Trump's tacit aim of a regime change in Iran ..."
  
  It has not much to do with Trump. He does what he's told. Does he even know where Iran is ?
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