Eventually, of course, the bubble did burst and Roubini the Cassandra morphed into Roubini the Sage. During the global financial crisis, you couldn’t change TV channels without staring at him on CNBC, Bloomberg TV and CNN or reading one of his op-ed pieces in The New York Times, Financial Times or The Wall Street Journal. 

 

You see, Roubini is a prolific writer who can churn out highly opinionated stuff far faster than most professional hacks. Up until two weeks ago, he was still predicting further collapse in housing prices in the US. “If house prices are going to fall another 5% to 10%, another eight million households are going to be in negative equity,” he was quoted as saying in November. “We are going to have another nasty crisis. Forget about subprime, look at prime.” 

 

So, imagine the reaction when New York newspapers reported that “Dr Doom” was trading his New York loft close to the university where he teaches for a US$5.5 million ($7.1 million) luxury condo in Manhattan’s tony East Village. Roubini is putting down US$2.6 million cash for a 3,700 sq ft triplex penthouse and has locked in a low 3.62%-interest US$2.9 million mortgage. Just about everyone was agog. Was the man who correctly called the top of US housing market and was one of the first to predict the last bubble now calling the bottom with his daring property purchase? Or does Roubini just need a bigger pad for his wild weekend parties?

 

If you have just been watching CNBC or reading op-ed pieces in The Wall Street Journal, I’m afraid you don’t know the real Roubini. To be sure, Roubini has, in the words of one writer, “parlayed predictions of an economic bust into fame, rising fortune and a vigorous social life” in New York. Two years ago, just before it went belly up, Condé Nast’s business magazine Portfolio did a long offbeat profile of “Dr Doom”, complete with a big photo of him half-drunk, half-asleep, leaning at a bar in New York’s TriBeCa neighbourhood that trendy, young fashionistas 30 years younger are known to frequent. “Life is good for New York University’s party-boy economist, once regarded as a crank,” the piece said.