Roubini Nailed The Euro Crisis Six Years Ago, And Was Told To Shut Up By Italy's Finance Minister

TBI ^ | 11-11-2011 | Gus Lubin

[blam]

Roubini Nailed The Euro Crisis Six Years Ago, And Was Told To Shut Up By Italy's Finance Minister

Gus Lubin
Nov. 11, 2011, 11:54 AM

ROUBINI: There's Only One Thing That Will Stop The 'Upcoming Disaster' In Europe

Excellent pickup from Adam Button at ForexLive...

Six years ago Nouriel Roubini was speaking at Davos when he was interrupted by a cry of "Go back to Turkey!" by Italian Finance Minister Giulio Tremonti.

Here's what Roubini was saying that pissed off the Italian:

My current concerns are that, while EMU has lead to a process of convergence of nominal variables (inflation, interest rates, etc.). it has also been associated with a process of increased divergence in economic performance, especially regarding economic growth rates. This economic performance divergence is a serious problem for some EMU countries (Italy, Portugal, Greece) and it may eventually lead to a collapse of EMU. I am not supportive of such a collapse but, unless appropriate macro and structural economic policies are undertaken, the risk of a break-up becomes serious.

And here's the conflagration that followed, as described by Roubini days later:

This was the end of my formal remarks at the Davos panel on EMU. But, as I told at the beginning of this blog Minister Tremonti rudely interrupted me while I was presenting my Italy-Argentina comparison shouting: “Thank you for your consideration! Go back to Turkey!!!” I politely replied that I was an independent academic thinker being paid to present sensible analyses and arguments. And I also pointed out that Prime Minister Berlusconi, the boss of Mr. Tremonti, had declared in public that the “Euro has been a disaster for Italy”. At which the minister rudely interrupted me again shouting: “You are independent of logic”.

(snip)

[definitelynotaliberal]

Perhaps I don’t know enough to appreciate Roubini’s bona fides, but I don’t understand how having made this prediction 6 years ago makes him a hero. I’m not a world class economist, but even I knew this was coming.

[SkyPilot]

I used to live in Germany. When the Euro first started coming out of the ATM machine, it was 82 cents to the dollar (or something like that).

A very few short years later, it was in the neighborhood of 1.50 or so to the dollar.

I stated here on the forum that it was all madness.

Most of the good folks here knew it too.

There were a few posters who told me I didn't understand currency exchange rates, and tried to used made up technical terms that translate to physics and engineering, but when applied to economics, they are laughable. "General Equilibrium." "Convergence." "Sterilized Intervention."

Economics is not a hard science.

The Euro was all politics based on secular humanistic one world utopia.

We will have a one world currency someday, perhaps sooner than later. And it will be the Antichrist who controls it.

[Dubya-M-DeesWent2SyriaStupid!]

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