by Gary North
Nouriel Roubini, known as "Dr. Doom" – having replaced Henry Kaufman in this capacity – now says that Karl Marx was right, according to a recent article.
Roubini teaches at New York University's Stern School of Business. Kaufman earned a Ph.D. at the Stern School of Business. They are both very stern fellows.
I can hardly blame Kaufman for being stern. He ended his career at Lehman Brothers as the chairman of the Finance and Risk Committee. He is the author of The Road to Financial Reformation: Warnings, Consequences, Reforms (2009), also known as Do As I Say or Wind Up as We Did.
Dr. Roubini is from Persia, which is the Establishment's term for Iran: "way back when and someday soon, we hope."
We learn on Wikipedia that "during the administration of President Bill Clinton, he was a senior economist for the Council of Economic Advisers, later moving to the United States Treasury Department as a senior adviser to Timothy Geithner, who is now Treasury Secretary." Anyone who worked for Geithner must know the man's abilities. I can hardly blame Roubini for worrying about impending doom. I have the same concern.
On the other hand, the reasons for my concern are different from Roubini's. According to a recent article, Roubini thinks Marx had things accurate.
"Karl Marx had it right," Roubini said in an interview with wsj.com. "At some point capitalism can self-destroy itself. That's because you can not keep on shifting income from labor to capital without not having an excess capacity and a lack of aggregate demand. We thought that markets work. They are not working. What's individually rational...is a self-destructive process."
[continued...]
He must have meant Schumpeter had it right...