The NYT has a big feature on Nouriel Roubini, whose forecasts have brought him to prominence.

The dismal science, it seems, is an optimistic profession. Many economists, Roubini among them, argue that some of the optimism is built into the very machinery, the mathematics, of modern economic theory. Econometric models typically rely on the assumption that the near future is likely to be similar to the recent past, and thus it is rare that the models anticipate breaks in the economy. And if the models can’t foresee a relatively minor break like a recession, they have even more trouble modeling and predicting a major rupture like a full-blown financial crisis. Only a handful of 20th-century economists have even bothered to study financial panics. (The most notable example is probably the late economist Hyman Minksy, of whom Roubini is an avid reader.) “These are things most economists barely understand,” Roubini told me. “We’re in uncharted territory where standard economic theory isn’t helpful.” 

Quite. Although standard economic theory isn’t helpful in charted territory, either.

Some critics are dismissing Roubini’s prescience as luck, saying that he has been a bear for a long time and the present situation represents luck or coincidence, rather than skill. While it is certainly true that being early is indistinguishable from being wrong, this bubble has been growing for a long time. It became much larger than most forecasters who saw it, including myself, were prepared to believe.