Dr. Doom sees the glass half full...and half empty

I was fortunate enough to attend Wipro's Perspective event where Dr. Nouriel Roubini , the prominent economist, spoke on his view of the state of the global economy. Dr. Roubini was one of the few economists to accurately predict the global recession, earning the nickname Dr. Doom. His predictions are more likely than many (other than Celent predictions for future trends in banking and bank technology) to come true. Dr. Roubini was definitely a good news/bad news kind of guy. There is good news: Global trade is up. The large global corporates are both profitable and sitting on piles of cash. Population growth drives GNP. Productivity growth drives GNP. New technologies are coming along in many areas to drive growth, specifically energy, biotech, and IT. Now the bad news: Most government balance sheets are fragile. Most household balance sheets are fragile. Most European bank balance sheets are fragile. Oil shocks acould be quite disruptive, and aren't unlikely. We're seeing a double dip recession in the Euro zone and the UK. The PIIGS are suffering from austerity fatigue and the Germans are suffering from bail out fatigue. He predicted that Greece would drop out of the Euro within the next year or two. Dr. Roubini states that a monetary union is generally followed by a fiscal union and a political union. This is what happened with the reunification of Germany, Italy, etc. and what he expects to happen in Europe...or not. If Europe doesn't move towards tighter integration, he thinks the monetary union will ultimately fail. Thank you to Dr. Roubini for an enlightening discussion.