by Calculated Risk on 8/17/2008 08:42:00 PM

From the Sunday NY Times magazine: Dr. Doom (a profile of Professor Nouriel Roubini) (hat tip Peter Viles, L.A. Land)

Roubini, a respected but formerly obscure academic, has become a major figure in the public debate about the economy: the seer who saw it coming.

Professor Roubini may have been "obscure" to the general public, but he was very well known and respected in his field for some time.

The ’90s were an eventful time for an international economist like Roubini. Throughout the decade, one emerging economy after another was beset by crisis, beginning with Mexico’s in 1994. ... Roubini began studying these countries and soon identified what he saw as their common weaknesses. On the eve of the crises that befell them, he noticed, most had huge current-account deficits ... and they typically financed these deficits by borrowing from abroad in ways that exposed them to the national equivalent of bank runs.
...
After analyzing the markets that collapsed in the ’90s, Roubini set out to determine which country’s economy would be the next to succumb to the same pressures. His surprising answer: the United States’.

So far Professor Roubini has been pretty accurate and his blog is always a great read!