PRATT: So what is your forecast for the recovery right now? I've been hearing sub par growth. What exactly does that mean?
ROUBINI: First of all, in my view the recession is going to continue through the end of the year. It's not over yet, and while potential growth rate for the U.S. economy is 3 percent, I expect that the growth rate of the economy is going to be very anemic, below trend, then on 1 percent for the next two years. Why? You have U.S. consumers are shopped out, saving less debt burden. They're not going to consume very much. Your financial system is severely damaged, and credit growth is going to be limited, and now we have also this massive re-leveraging of the public sector with a large budget deficit and increases in public debt are going to eventually crowd out the economic recovery of the private sector. So I don't see a lot of economic growth ahead of us.
PRATT: Are you worried at all about a double-dip recession?
ROUBINI: Yeah, the risk is that by the end of the next year, if budget deficit remains very large, around $1.5 trillion, and if the Fed keep on monetizing them, essentially printing money to try to prevent increases in interest rates, expect that the inflation is going to go up, and if expecting inflation were to go up, long-term government bond yields would go up, and mortgage rates will go up. Borrowing costs for consumers (INAUDIBLE) will go up, and that's going to crowd out the recovery, so there's even a risk of a double-dip recession.
PRATT: How great a risk would you expect? I mean is there a percentage that you'd be willing to put it at?
ROUBINI: Well, that's going to depend on the decisions that are going to be made about exit strategies from these massive monetary easing and massive fiscal easing. It's going to be difficult because if you reduce the fiscal stimulus too much too soon, raising taxes, cut spending, the economy is weak, is going to tip into recession. If you wait too long and the deficit remains too large, then eventually the market's going to worry about rising inflation, rising deficits (INAUDIBLE) rates are going to go up, and you'll have recession again. So the timing and the sequencing and when to do it is going to be a very difficult policy proposition.
PRATT: If your economic projections are correct and I have to point out that they are below consensus, it would seem that the stock market may have gotten way ahead of itself here at the current levels. Do you agree with that?
ROUBINI: Yes. Some increase in stock prices are justified because we avoided the risk of a near depression. That was the risk we were facing in the first quarter. But markets have gone up too much, too soon based on economic fundamentals. If the recovery is going to be weaker, therefore profits are not going to recover as fast. If you are going to have still weaknesses in the rest of the world, Europe, Japan I think there will be downside risk for the stock market from this point on.


