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Roubini warns on double-dip

(chinadaily.com.cn)
Updated: 2009-08-25 13:16

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SINGAPORE: Nouriel Roubini, the New York University professor who predicted the financial crisis, said the chance of a double-dip recession is increasing because of risks related to ending global monetary and fiscal stimulus.

The global economy will bottom out in the second half of 2009, Roubini wrote in a Financial Times commentary. The recession in the US, the UK, and some European countries will not be "formally over" before the end of the year, while the recovery has started in nations such as China, France, Germany, Australia and Japan, he said.

Governments around the world have pledged about $2 trillion in stimulus measures amid the worst worldwide recession since the Great Depression. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke and other global policymakers have cautioned that the recovery is likely to be muted, indicating they would not soon remove all the stimulus injected into the financial system.

"There are risks associated with exit strategies from the massive monetary and fiscal easing," Roubini wrote. "Policy makers are damned if they do and damned if they don't."

Government and central bank officials may undermine the recovery and tip their economies back into "stagdeflation" if they raise taxes, cut spending and mop up excess liquidity in their systems to reduce fiscal deficits, Roubini said. He defines "stagdeflation" as recession and deflation.

Those who maintain large budget deficits will be punished by bond market vigilantes, as inflationary expectations and yields on long-term government bonds rise and borrowing costs climb sharply, he wrote. That will in turn lead to stagflation, Roubini said.

European Central Bank officials led by President Jean- Claude Trichet are suggesting they won't rush to reverse their emergency stimulus amid mounting evidence of an economic recovery. The ECB has cut its benchmark interest rate to a record 1 percent and is buying covered bonds and flooding banks with money.

"We see some signs confirming that the real economy is starting to get out of the period of freefall," Trichet said at the Fed's annual symposium in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, on Aug 22. This "does not mean at all that we do not have a very bumpy road ahead of us."

When needed, the ECB will implement a "credible exit strategy" from its crisis policies, Trichet said.

Brendan joined The China Daily in 2007 as a language polisher in the Language Tips Department, where he writes a regular column for Chinese English Language learners, reads audio news for listeners and anchors the weekly video news in addition to assisting with on location stories. Elsewhere he writes Op'Ed pieces with a China focus that feature in the Daily's Website opinion section.

He received his B.A. and Post Grad Dip from Curtin University in 1997 and his Masters in Community Development and Management from Charles Darwin University in 2003. He has taught in Japan, England, Australia and most recently China. His articles have featured in the Bangkok Post, The Taipei Times, The Asia News Network and in-flight magazines.