Nouriel Roubini: 8% Interest Rates By 2030 & 80% Unemployment by 2045??

**Nouriel Roubini** (0:00)
My prediction on 8% on 10-year yields is a medium term by the end of the decade.
I provocatively said, but it was not for provocation, I believe it, that 20 years from now, not this year or any other decade, potential growth in the US could be as high as 8% rather than 1.8. Really, growth becomes exponential. I mean, really stuff we have never seen even in US history. But the unemployment rate could be as high as 80%.

**Adam Taggart** (0:39)
Welcome to Thoughtful Money. I'm its founder and your host, Adam Taggart. Today's guest earned well-deserved fame by successfully predicting the 2008 financial crisis. I'm pleased and honored to welcome to the program, economist, author, and educator, Dr. Nouriel Roubini, the co-founder and chairman of Roubini Global Economics. As he makes his first ever appearance on this channel, hopefully the first of many, let's ask him about his macro outlook for 2025 Dr. Roubini, thanks so much for joining us today.

**Nouriel Roubini** (1:10)
Great pleasure being with you today.

**Adam Taggart** (1:12)
Thank you. Well, it's a great pleasure having you on the program here. I've got a lot of questions for you based on a lot of your recent work, your books, some recent interviews you've done. But before we get to those, I'd like to just start this conversation with a general question, intentionally broad general question that I ask everybody at the start of these interviews. What's your current assessment of the global economy and financial markets?

**Nouriel Roubini** (1:37)
You know, it's hard to tell because, of course, as he asked Europe, emerging markets, China, it's hard to generalize. And when people ask me about what's the state of the world economy and market, I'm reminded of, towards the end of the Soviet Union, the Prime Minister of the UK, I think, was John Major, goes to Moscow and he meets the Secretary General of the Communist Party. And he asked him, what's the state of the Soviet economy? Can you tell me briefly? So the Communist leader looks at him dourly and he says, good, Major is the perplex and says, maybe you can elaborate in a couple of words. So the Secretary General looks at him dourly again and says, not good. So I have to say, what's the state of the world economy? In one word, I would say good. In two words, not good. Why I say that? The good news is that we have not had a global recession in the last two or three years, in spite of the fact that inflation after COVID got out of control, both in advanced economies and emerging markets. And the conventional wisdom among most economies was as the Fed and other central banks are going to increase interest to fight inflation, of course, we're going to have a recession because in US history for the last 60 years, anytime inflation was above 5% and unemployment was below 2% and the Fed increase interest rates went up in a recession. So for a whole bunch of reasons, we could discuss whether there was lack of policy. We end up in not there. That's the good news. We avoid the US and global recession. The bad news is that many parts of the world are growing in a mediocre way. Many emerging markets are fragile. Even China is growing closer to 3%, 4% rather than 8%, 10% of the previous decades. Some economies and markets are very fragile. The US looks like it's exceptional. People refer to the US as exceptionalist because US growth for the last few years has been above potential, estimated by the fact to be only 1.8. Last year, we grew 2.8, while inflation was falling. Was it a miracle? Good policy, good luck? We don't know.
But the US is exceptional. Most advanced economies are growing poorly. This year, US growth could be 2.5 percent, while in the Eurozone might be only 0.8, one-third of the US growth. Just to give you a comparison even among advanced economies and of course, 60 poor countries in the world are considered a bankrupt insolvent by the IMF and World Bank. They will not be able to pay back their foreign debts or public debts. They'll have to restructure. Those are fragiles. There are of course pockets of the world where geopolitical tension are leading to war. Russia, Ukraine, Israel, Gaza, and the Middle East. And that creates not just political tension, but also economic. And even in the US, think of it this way. During the Biden administration, growth was above potential. Inflation surged, but then it fell towards 2 percent. Bond yields remained low, and stock prices went to the roof. With that type of economic, how to say, performance, historically, whoever was in power, incumbent, should have won by a landslide. Instead, Trump beat Kamala Harris. Why was that the case is that while the macroeconomic data, on average, suggest strong growth, low unemployment, stock market all the time high, many people feel left behind. There is rising income and wealth inequality. There is rising economic insecurity.