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Top Seven Attention-Hungry Doomsayers
The banks are imploding! Your home is worthless! We’re all going to die! A new crop of Dr. Dooms are making careers out of scaring you.
So there you have it: With the news that both Obama’s stimulus plan and Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner’s new bank-bailout plan are likely to go full steam ahead, the stock market reacted with a 300-plus point plunge. Investors, it seems, are finally wise to the fact that the global economy is in one hell of a bind, and a few hundred billion here or there won’t make a damn bit of difference.
It was only a few years ago, you will recall, that the stock market was pretty much a daily Pamplona—the Bulls were running, and they were a large pack indeed. Everyone was having a hell of a time watching the value of his or her portfolio climb to ever-greater heights. These days, it’s a different kind of stampede—the Bears are in charge now, and they’re soaking up the attention as they are periodically wont to do. Herewith, we present those bears you should be most afraid (or in awe) of.
Win McNamee / Getty Images
(1) NOURIEL ROUBINI
New York University economics professor Nouriel Roubini is the suddenly ubiquitous forecaster of financial doom. While he’s been right—the same goes for the rest of this list, to give them all the props they so rightly deserve—the man hasn’t passed by a microphone he didn’t speak into in the past year, with his predictions of a total implosion of the banking industry. He’s worth listening to, but he’s also getting a little too used to the sound of his own voice.
Chip East / Reuters
(2) MEREDITH WHITNEY
Who at this point hasn’t heard of Oppenheimer & Co.’s Meredith Whitney, the silver-tongued financial-services analyst who today strikes fear in the heart of banking executives? One of her latest zingers, in a recent New York Times article: “Because the banks haven’t been able to raise capital, the government has had to raise it for them.” Ouch! The light is shining so brightly on Whitney that she reportedly thought the best way to spend a recent vacation was at Bikini Boot Camp. You can never look too good under the cameras on CNBC, after all.
(3) PETER SCHIFF
Peter Schiff of Euro Pacific Capital is locked in battle with the equally bearish Roubini over ownership of the moniker Dr. Doom. The two had dueling editorials on the same day in the Wall Street Journal a few weeks back. May the bigger bear win! Schiff made waves with his prescient book Crash Proof in 2007, but a good chunk of his advice—to stash your portfolio in foreign stocks—has proven completely wrong. Give the man credit, however. He claimed from day one that owning US real estate was a fool’s game. Kudos, Mr. Schiff.
David Levenson / Getty Images
(4) NASSIM NICHOLAS TALEB
Self-styled financial philosopher Nassim Nicholas Taleb is the author of the wildly popular books The Black Swan and Fooled by Randomness and subject of countless fawning profiles of late. Taleb would probably like to think his books are at least a little unreadable by dint of the sheer amount complexity within. They are unreadable, but not for that reason. It’s more because the man can’t go more than a page without preening. Both he and Roubini strutted their stuff in Davos in January, trying to one-up each other with ever-more-dire forecasts.
Brendan McDermid / Reuters
(5) JAMES GRANT
Much less visible than his more attention-seeking bear compatriots, Grant is the longtime author and editor of the market newsletter Grant’s Interest Rate Observer. He’s the guy who pops up during every market swoon pointing to the words of wisdom he’d once again been offering but which had once again been ignored. At $850 a year, it’s a costly newsletter, but worth every penny to those who pay attention to the bow-tied man’s prognostications.
(6) JEREMY GRANTHAM
Jeremy Grantham is the guru of investment-management firm GMO. Like Grant, he is a man of bearish letters who doesn’t show his face that often. A recent missive began with the eloquent notion that, “The time to blame should be past, or at least in abeyance until the crisis is past, but I find it impossible to avoid it completely.” In other words, Grantham is pissed, too! His quarterly letters, available for free on the GMO website, are Warren Buffett-like in their educational quotient.
(7) CHRISTOPHER WOOD
Christopher Wood is a Jim Grant for the subprime generation. He writes the report Greed & Fear for investment firm CLSA Asia-Pacific Markets. The man’s in Asia, so we don’t even know what he looks like, but we like what we read. One of his latest intros: “It would be comical if it was not so pathetic.” He was talking about the “bad bank” concept being bandied about in Washington at the time. Full of insight and data, Wood’s missives are the antidote to those sick of reading Taleb writing about himself. You’ll need an account with his firm to get his newsletter, though, so pony up!
The Running of the Bears only happens every ten years or so, so you’ve got to give the likes of Roubini, Whitney, Schiff, and Taleb a break for seeking to monopolize our attention while they’ve got it. After all, nobody likes a pessimist, and we’ll tune them out as soon as we’re brave enough to do so. That said, the depth of the current crisis suggests this bear market may last a little longer than the last few, so get used to hearing their names. Taleb’s got at least one more book in him about how smart he is.
Of course, even a stopped clock tells the correct time twice a day. If the likes of Whitney or Roubini want to truly cement their place in the history of financial prognostication, they will show the foresight to call a turn in the other direction, back to bullish conditions. Elaine Garzarelli made herself famous calling the 1987 crash. She never made another big one again.
Duff McDonald, a contributing editor at Conde Nast Portfolio and New York magazines, is working on a book about Jamie Dimon, to be published by Simon & Schuster in the fall of 2009.
John Talks Joe
Lloyd Grove is editor at large for The Daily Beast. He is also a frequent contributor to New York magazine and was a contributing editor for Condé Nast Portfolio. He wrote a gossip column for the New York Daily News from 2003 to 2006. Prior to that, he wrote the Reliable Source column for the Washington Post, where he spent 23 years covering politics, the media, and other subjects.
The Right Dumps Carrie
Jacob Bernstein is a senior reporter at The Daily Beast. Previously, he was a features writer at WWD and W Magazine. He has also written for New York magazine, Paper, and The Huffington Post.
Geithner's Stock Plummeting
Jeff Madrick is a contributor to the New York Review of Books and a former economics columnist for the New York Times. He is editor of Challenge Magazine, visiting professor of humanities at Cooper Union, and senior fellow at the New School's Schwartz Center for Economic Policy Analysis. He is the author of Taking America, The End of Affluence (Random House) and The Case for Big Government.
Palin's Gold Mine
Duff McDonald is a contributing editor at New York magazine and a former contributing editor at Condé Nast Portfolio. His book, Last Man Standing, about Jamie Dimon, chairman and CEO of JPMorgan Chase, was published by Simon & Schuster in October.
Gross Vampire Product
Duff McDonald is a contributing editor at New York magazine and a former contributing editor at Condé Nast Portfolio. His book, Last Man Standing, about Jamie Dimon, chairman and CEO of JPMorgan Chase, was published by Simon & Schuster in October.
King of the Street
Duff McDonald is a contributing editor at New York magazine and a former contributing editor at Condé Nast Portfolio. His book, Last Man Standing, about Jamie Dimon, chairman and CEO of JPMorgan Chase, was published by Simon & Schuster in October.
James Grant, at least, has been consistent in his views. He was saying this throughout the great stock market boom.
If we had all looked around us; we could have done it too.
Bobhall - i think that's the point. It's "broken clock" theory.
Point is, given that markets are driven by fear and the media (of which I am a member) stokes fear since, historically, it sells better than happy news, here's the reality of these doomsayers....
Say I'm Roubini -- I'm getting listened to, laid, offered speaking engagements, book deals, everything. And the man himself admits he likes the limelight. Say he says the economy will suck through 2010 at least. Economy turns around 3q09 (hypothetically of course). So can we expect an above-the-fold headline in the WSJ saying "US economy grows 1.9% in 3Q; Roubini a turd"? Nope, we can expect 500 words inside the weekend edition somehwre that says "Hey, whatever happened to...".
In short, there's no real downside to being a permabear. Because when they're wrong, no one cares. When permabulls are wrong, everyone wants a lynching.
I'm not saying we're out of this mess yet...but I'll guarantee we'll be out of it before Roubini forecasts it.
Nice hit piece, Daily Beast!
Not only can I find out here that I need to engage in oral sex, advocate for equality of orgasms, consider the benefits of the sex trade for part time work, and contemplate the abdication of an entire political party's responsibility to address the economic crisis we're in because the GOP personally dislikes the Chief of Staff -- I can now join in with you and pooh pooh Nouriel Roubini and Nassim Taleb's longsuffering attempts to warn us that having 28 year olds doing coke, riding Maserati's, and gambling with the investments of Merrill Lynch et al was reckless and would lead to ruin. Silly guys...
On second thought, I'm with them.
You guys should stick to pointless nonsense and leave the real concerns of the economy to Bloomberg where you'll see Nouriel and Nassim treated with the dignity they deserve.
If orgasms were easier to come by (oops!), we wouldn't have investment bankers doing coke with 28 year-olds in Maseratis. We all could use some work on this orgasm controversy. More research please, TDB!
Good old Duff McDonald! Making fun of the people who pointed out the emperor wasn't wearing any clothes. Duff is a hack who's never met a bubble he wouldn't imbibe. This little article is like Bush criticizing Michael Moore for being right about the Iraq War. What are you selling today, Duff? Keep moving, you sleazy prostitute.
thanks for the time telling proverb correction, common to see wrong:: "right once a day".
@ scotian
Did you see Keynes opinion of the British Economy in 1930? Here it is:
Economic Possibilities for our
Grandchildren (1930)*
I
We are suffering just now from a bad attack of economic pessimism. It is common to hear people say that the epoch of enormous economic progress which characterised the nineteenth century is over; that the rapid improvement in the standard of life is now going to slow down %u2011-at any rate in Great Britain; that a decline in prosperity is more likely than an improvement in the decade which lies ahead of us.
I believe that this is a wildly mistaken interpretation of what is happening to us. We are suffering, not from the rheumatics of old age, but from the growing%u2011pains of over%u2011rapid changes, from the painfulness of readjustment between one economic period and another. The increase of technical efficiency has been taking place faster than we can deal with the problem of labour absorption; the improvement in the standard of life has been a little too quick; the banking and monetary system of the world has been preventing the rate of interest from falling as fast as equilibrium requires. And even so, the waste and confusion which ensue relate to not more than 7½ per cent of the national income; we are muddling away one and sixpence in the £, and have only 18s. 6d., when we might, if we were more sensible, have £1 ; yet, nevertheless, the 18s. 6d. mounts up to as much as the £1 would have been five or six years ago. We forget that in 1929 the physical output of the industry of Great Britain was greater than ever before, and that the net surplus of our foreign balance available for new foreign investment, after paying for all our imports, was greater last year than that of any other country, being indeed 50 per cent greater than the corresponding surplus of the United States. Or again%u2011if it is to be a matter of comparisons%u2011suppose that we were to reduce our wages by a half, repudiate four fifths of the national debt, and hoard our surplus wealth in barren gold instead of lending it at 6 per cent or more, we should resemble the now much%u2011envied France. But would it be an improvement?
The prevailing world depression, the enormous anomaly of unemployment in a world full of wants, the disastrous mistakes we have made, blind us to what is going on under the surface to the true interpretation. of the trend of things. For I predict that both of the two opposed errors of pessimism which now make so much noise in the world will be proved wrong in our own time%u2011the pessimism of the revolutionaries who think that things are so bad that nothing can save us but violent change, and the pessimism of the reactionaries who consider the balance of our economic and social life so precarious that we must risk no experiments."
Not very Scotian to miss these details. Usually Scots are rather sharp at economics ... no?
Couldn't you find a decent picture of James Grant wearing his question mark suit?
Did you forget the part about
America heading toward
" A More Perfect ( Socialist ) Union "
. . . nationalizing private industry ?
we are under the delusion that nothing can hurt us we have been thinking that for the last 60 years. well that kind of thinking is wrong and painful all you have to do is look out your window walk down your street look at your tv what are we going to leave to the next ones who come after us, who are going to hold their hand and tell them it's ok how are we going to fix this you can't do the same old same old that doesn't work anymore
I listened to Roubini and last summer moved all my stocks to t-bills.
I did not lose any money in the meltdown. Did you?
It's not a matter of the twice daily correctness of a stopped clock. It's the inevitable wrongness of our particular form of capitalism. Its pendulum swings from extreme to extreme -- from good and/or bad regulations to the looting of the treasury. When the jig is up, the Roubinis of the world start screaming. Soon everyone's listening.
Question: without the Cassandras would the system go up and up forever? Why not? -- it's all fantasy anyway!
joymars- did you ever hook up with MarineLtColonel? That guy needs to get laid before he becomes a General and starts another war. Carpe Diem!
genoftheheart,
LOL. In fact, LMAO. My hunch is he's probably been on porn sites all weekend and the world has been spared -- for now.
But thanks for the concern.
Thank you.
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