Rajeet Nabha's Profile

He applauded when the Federal Reserve cut interest rates to 2 percent from 5.25 percent beginning last summer. He also supported the Fed’s willingness to engineer a takeover of Bear Stearns. Roubini argues that the Fed’s actions averted catastrophe, though he says he believes that future bailouts should focus on mortgage owners, not investors.

either the government backs up a trillion-plus dollars’ worth of high-risk mortgages (in exchange for the lenders’ agreement to reduce monthly mortgage payments),

the true cost of the housing crisis

but something between a trillion and a trillion and a half dollars.

credit-card debt, student-loan debt, auto loans, commercial real estate loans, home-equity loans, corporate debt and loans that financed leveraged buyouts.

shoddy underwriting, securitization, negligence on the part of the credit-rating agencies and lax government oversight. “We have a subprime financial system,” he said, “not a subprime mortgage market.”

Our biggest financiers are China, Russia and the gulf states,” Roubini noted. “These are rivals, not allies.

“Once you run current-account deficits, you depend on the kindness of strangers,”

“This might be the beginning of the end of the American empire.”