"Dr. Doom" Nouriel Roubini: U.S. Headed for "Growth Recession," Not Market Crash

For nearly two decades, economist Nouriel Roubini has worn the nickname “Dr. Doom” with pride.

"Dr. Doom" a short period of cooling growth, followed by a powerful rebound led by technology and capital spending that keeps the U.S. in the top spot. (Photo: APB Speakers)

He earned it in the mid-2000s for warning of a housing crash that Wall Street dismissed — until he was proven catastrophically right, Eva Roytburg and Nick Luchtenberg reported for Fortune.

Since then, the NYU Stern School of Business professor emeritus has become one of the most recognizable bears in global finance, regularly sounding alarms about debt spirals, geopolitical shocks, pandemics, AI disruptions, and what he once called “the mother of all crises.”

So it’s perhaps surprising, even disorienting, that in the midst of investors teetering on the edge of a bear market, Roubini is breaking with his cohort — including fellow 2008-financial-crisis prophet Michael Burry — to dismiss their pessimism about the U.S. economy as misplaced.

In a new essay for the Financial Times, he argues that the conventional view — that America’s “Liberation Day” tariffs would trigger stagflation, tank the stock market, kneecap the dollar, and end U.S. exceptionalism — is simply wrong.

Instead, he sees nearly the opposite: a short period of cooling growth, followed by a powerful rebound led by technology and capital spending that keeps the U.S. in the top spot.

“The now common view that the US stock market is in a massive bubble and bound to crash is incorrect over the medium term,” he wrote.

The near-term picture, however, looks like a “growth recession,” he said — meaning slower, below-potential GDP growth. It’s not the hard landing or 1970s-style stagflation many have predicted, and it isn’t a bubble popping, but it is a lopsided economy, a trend many Wall Street analysts have also noticed.