How is he wrong? His analysis was for the two months ahead. Logic no?

Thanks, Michael.

https://peterattiamd.us15.list-manage.com/track/click?u=21bc5f75235505c27ce465f90&id=2125f1d4a7&e=f81ec39819

I guess you are in the "It is just the flu camp." You have many friends. DLS

Sound just like a far right politically oriented friend. Huge overreaction driven by the media - he moved from "just a cold" in early March to now saying "overreaction" . The thing that gets me is that there a lot of people canceling events in the music and sports worlds where those events make up a majority of their annual budget. These people, who are generally smart managers, are killing their annual income due to this overreaction. I don't think so. Just wonder how many people that see this as just a cold would be willing to volunteer themselves and family to get the virus so we can build herd immunity and be a source of antibodies for doctors to use on sick patients. Doubt we would see a lot of volunteers from this group.

I'm not right/left or anything, we're talking pure epidemiology here. There is no excess mortality here. The numbers cannot, and won't, catch up even to the bad flu seasons of 2017 in the USA and Italy, for example. The virus has likely been around for months already, and there are localities far more affected (NYC, for example, like the smaller Italian cities that had max capacity and far more deaths in 2017 --- look it up) given the local culture and demographics. I watch and respect Attia, and if you notice he has been scaling back since previous days, just like all the embarrassingly incorrect models originally touted about a month ago (biggest flop being the Imperial Academy hoax of 500k down projected to 20k, whoops) --- but think of the bigger picture, he is a public figure and posts all these on instagram with a big following. Is he going to put his balls on the line and risk saying it's a nothing burger? Of course not. Advertisers might even pull the rug out on him. These are the times we are living in. Chris, your "volunteering" point isn't the plan and is sensational as well as irrelevant. Sweden has done the open up model, use some precaution for the at risk, and is perfectly fine. But go ahead and shut down the economy and act like it's no biggie. Give me a break, CFR is going to eventually 0.5% max for this [relative/media] hoax. Your lack of understanding of corporate structure, legalism and conformity is showing. I'm not that surprised.

COVID is a MacGuffin.

Shale is currently profitable at $35-$40...

Vaccine may be the only thing that stops the virus but there is a good chance we may have some drugs that server as antivirals and make the virus significantly less lethal in the near term. The whole technological focus of the world is on it and there are a number of promising drugs out there in the pipeline.

I know, right?

I feel like an optimist now. :D

He is just being realistic. Forget this optimistic/pessimistic duality. DLS

Lol..i know what you mean. I’m typing this from the window leeeeeeedge.

Well said. I learnt so much. Took me two hours to watch, with all the notes i was making. Such passion in someone is a pleasure to witness. And Ash..great job in giving him enough time to not just get his view across, but also in letting him embellish and dig deeper. To a macro philistine like me, that is incredibly useful. Thank you. The pair of you.

And Ash looks kind of frightened))))

Please can we give him a break as it's not his first language.

There's https://www.realvision.com/shows/the-interview/videos/theory-vs-practice-the-father-of-mmt-on-policy-profits-and-politics

Thanks for the synopsis. Short on time so I just read your takeaways rather than watching. Very helpful!

You should still watch, Jeff. From all videos I watched in last 3 weeks Nouriel's case and reasoning feels most logical and well articulated. He is also in line with Raoul btw.

Well done Pavel...my prayer is a different outcome...but we just never learn...even so come Lord Jesus!

He has been quite harsh talking about Bitcoin though. I know him quite well from crypto and bitcoin conferences were he gets invited to represent the opposite view. He says that Bitcoin is the mother of all baubles and it's much worse than tulipmania. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V2lwyuSrCg4

I know. I am a crypto guy, too. We all know Nouriel is wrong about bitcoin as he did not do his proper homework on it yet. It does not stop me from respecting him big time on macro.

Thanks, David.

Ash B. - You earned it. DLS

I think he is globally oriented, and if we don't get effective therapeutics soon, one or two million certainly could die globally.

I live in a small country Andorra. We do more testing per million of population as Germany and South Korea. We have just ordered 150K antibody test kits to test the whole population of 75K to find out herd immunity rates. Plus we have also expanded hospital ICU and ventilators to deal with more volume. The idea of this test is how far can the economy be opened whilst still providing care. This would be interesting to watch for other countries.

That was certainly an interesting prediction. With his ties to that part of the world, will be interesting to see if it happens.

Did you see Trump's tweet today about Iran?

In today's WSJ, April 2, article titled "Iran or Allies Are Plotting Against U.S. Forces in Iraq, U.S. Intelligence Suggests."

That's funny.

Seems obvious, test everyone (not easy to do but not impossible). Isolate infected. Others can go back to work.

what snags?

Very interesting question. I'll ask him next time.

Ash, it is a good question! Maybe you could just email him and ask and then post the response here on the message board. (Just a thought <smile>)!

I should add: It's interesting especially because Nouriel hasn't been constructive on gold in past crises, esp GFC — but, as he points out in this interview, he now sees the rising specter of inflation risk in the longer term, which is a certainly a shift.

RICHARD M: We hope to have him back again soon!

Ash, thank you for your quick response! After finally finishing the interview, with him repeatedly suggesting a return to the 1970's style stagflation I think the gold question is moot <smile>. Gold positive in other words!

For me cash is king for now. I will add to gold as soon as the cash crunch is abating. Of course, I can change my mind at a moments notice. My buy/sell orders do not move markets. DLS

And bitcoin as well. Would be great to know how he views the crypto space against the backdrop of his macro views. Fantastic interview.

Found the guy who is levered long

SORRY IN CASH FOR OVER A MONTH TRADING AROUND TLT. MADE SO MUCH LAST YEAR THANKS HEDGEYE... JUST DONT LIKE STUPID ECONOMISTS

Steve h, which subscription to hedgeye do you have? Thanks

We are so far down the rabbit hole, no one can implement policies that will save us without a great deal of pain. We kicked the can down a dead-end alley. There is only a warehouse wall in front of us. We chose to listen to people we knew were lying to be part of the in crowd. It is shocking how many major talking heads said that last week was the bottom of the market. Each were just talking their book. Dr. Roubini and many others on RVTV told us this story for years. Only the few listened. You cannot ask Sir Isaac Newton to save you after you leaped off the cliff. DLS

But you can buy SPY / VOO PUTs. Hep-hep! Chin up, ladies and gentlemen!

So much here to unpack. But frankly there is a lot of backward looking observations (mostly known), with forward looking opinion, that's not based on any quantitative measures. Unfortunately very little actionable edge.

to Mike K: the trading implications of this dire perspective (if you believe it) are of course not immediately clear.... But they are enormous if you think it through.

But which level.

He is definitely passionate about his world view. Thought it was a good interview.

William M. - I hope we come up with a vaccine ASAP also. As far as the markets, the debt/pension genie is out of the bottle. DLS

Interesting assessment. Maybe Raoul should interview you.

"De-Globalization" occurs when trade is reduced, if we're switching to a competing countries willing to be our ally instead of adversary, that's probably a good thing and is "Re-Globalization," if anything. The U.S. producing more of it's own things has it pros and cons, but in my eyes there are more pros than cons: --It is more expensive, but the money goes back into the hands of americans...recirculating in the economy-something that is always ignored by economists because it's very difficult to predict and calculate accurately. --We can't/shouldn't rely on anyone else for mission critical supplies. --We can better protect the environment when we can oversee production. U.S. china cold war has been going on for a while. The U.S. won WWI, WWII, Cold War I, and will probably win Cold War II. We are not a perfect nation, nor have we ever been even remotely close to perfect!! We've always been barely functional! (read "Economic History of the United States" by Douglas North) Other nations grow faster than us, but end up imploding due to the centralization of power--wiping away all gains. It turns out in order to win, you only need to foster slow, steady, compounding growth without imploding/centralizing power. Debt Jubilees and deleveraging aren't that bad if handled correctly. The Fed will probably go the way of Japan and buy up most of the debt, only to wipe away the obligations in due time. As long as we get a few key regulations passed to keep debt in check, we'll be fine. Technological race between Russia and US, who won? Russia stole lots of fundamental science coming out of the US and other nations. U.S. has many more irreverent scientists willing and able to take risks and be independent. You need this in order to maximize scientific output. Does an authoritarian regime who punishes the scientist who publicized COVID-19 sound like pleasant place to do great science? If you take money from the CCP(willingly or by force), will you be able to explore and take scientific risks, knowing that if you fail there will be harsh consequences? "Fiscal spending in the U.S. will be wasteful."--OK? but maybe all you need is for spending to increase to get recover from the current headwinds. Not to mention, we can afford more inflation than ever, due to an aging population and automation, both occurring at an unprecedented scale. We **should** be printing money and giving to businesses and people. I'd prefer most of it go directly to people, but hey, gotta start somewhere. The Fed sees the pension crisis and the debt crisis, and they know we could go into a depression, so they're going to use every ounce of power invested in them to pump our way out of both the pension and debt crisis. The point is, there's risk of a melt up, not just a melt down. Other counties that have stock piled gold might have to sell, keeping price flat or down for a couple years before any meaningful price movements. In the mean time, stocks could keep climbing, backed by an infinite Fed balance sheet and slowly growing economy. I say these things not in spite, but is pleasant discourse. I wish you and your portfolio the very best. May we all ride the next wave of money printing to the moon, and may the printer always go brrrrrr! <3

Wissam A. and Byte B. – Great constructive commentaries! DLS

Marius, Two points: (1) One of the small challenges of doing remote interviews via Skype is that it's a bit more challenging to break in during conversation because of connection lag and latency. That's something we're working on and expect to see improve. (2) I stay pretty well-read into Nouriel's work. (Disclosure: I used to run Nouriel's macro econ blog.) In this case, my goal was to make sure to get in Nouriel's expansive views on the current crisis. With Nouriel, all of his views tend to be connected in to a broader framework in a way that benefits from unfolding their full scope. —Ash

Marius, Ash, I'm so satisfied with the reporter. It was a great pleasure to hear him connect the dots, knock-on effects etc. uninterrupted

Mr. Bennington – You did a fantastic job. Dr. Roubini is a whirlwind of economic knowledge, experience and understanding. I feel privileged to listen to Dr. Roubini on RVTV being interviewed by you. I respect and understand Marius S.'s position, but I feel that no other interviewer could have done a better job. Thanks. DLS

I've noticed this over the last 5 interviews and articles written by him in MSM. He is also a rabid anti-Trumper, TDS victim. "Climate Change" even made it into his last op-ed analysis on whichever MSM financial site. Of course he is going to accurately portray some things, but he is ultimately a politically motivated guy, just look at his personal history and comments over the years. We tend to lionize the guys who "made a prediction" that was correct (like Roubini was warning up to 2008) and then expect them to repeat something of that value, not understanding likely that most of it, while suggested, wasn't as much a prediction as it was storytelling. Luckier than good. Schiff is a good example of this as well, I like the guy, but after a while it's like me telling people "One day I'm gonna die" over and over again; not that valuable information when we are aware of reality, cycles, etc --- timing IS everything, ultimately.

Good thing you’re not politically motivated Lemony S.

I am following the wisdom of Mark Twain. DLS

I thought the same thing --- I'm setting the over/under for Nouriel at 5 turkish coffees before that interview.

Dr. Roubini has a lot to say. He understands the problem on many levels. He tried his best to help investors and politicians the problems for years. He is trying to tie all the loose ends together so people will listen. DLS

China has PPE supplies available for export, but someone has to buy them. I read on the news earlier today that a chartered Antonov plane landed in my domicile country (Europe) with 80 tons of medical supplies. Converted passenger planes have been arriving with medical cargo from China every other day.

From what was said I would say 2 daysago. Like March 30th

https://www.theboombust.com/

Adrian S. - Dr. Roubini is correct from both a common sense and a theoretical point of view. The pandemic just reveals the flawed economy we created. There is no free lunch. Why do we have to keep proving it? DLS