A Change in Government is likely in India and Indonesia | NOURIEL ROUBINI BLOG

Thursday, March 20, 2014

A Change in Government is likely in India and Indonesia

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According to the positive narrative about emerging markets, industrialization, urbanization, per capita income growth, and the rise of a middle-class consumer society were supposed to boost long-term economic and sociopolitical stability. But in many countries recently wracked by political unrest -- Brazil, Chile, Turkey, India, Venezuela, Argentina, Russia, Ukraine, and Thailand -- it is the urban middle classes that have been manning the barricades. Likewise, urban students and the middle classes spearheaded the Arab Spring, before losing authority to Islamist forces.

This is not a complete surprise: in many countries, working classes and rural farmers have benefited from per capita income increases and a broadening social safety net, while the middle classes feel the pinch from rising inflation, poor public services, corruption, and intrusive government. And now the middle classes tend to be more vocal and better politically organized than in the past, in large part because social media allow them to mobilize faster.

Not all of the recent political unrest is unwelcome; a lot of it may lead to better governance and greater commitment to growth-oriented economic policies. Among the Fragile Five, a change in government is likely in India and Indonesia. - in todayszaman

Nouriel Roubini is an American professor of Economics at New York University`s Stern School of Business and chairman of RGE Roubini Global Economics

Nouriel Roubini, (born March 29, 1958, Istanbul, Turkey), Turkish-born American economist and educator who was best known for predicting the 2007–08 subprime mortgage crisis in the United States and the subsequent global financial crisis.

Born to Iranian Jewish parents, Roubini moved with his family to Iran and Israel before they settled in Italy in 1962. After a year at Hebrew University of Jerusalem, he studied economics at Bocconi University in Milan (B.A., 1982) and Harvard University (Ph.D., 1988), where he specialized in macroeconomics and international economics. He joined the economics faculty at Yale University in 1988 and taught there until 1995, when he moved to New York University. He also served as a visiting scholar to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), was a research associate with the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), held single-year terms on the White House Council of Economic Advisers (1998–99) and at the U.S. Department of the Treasury (1999–2000), and cofounded (2004) the consulting firm Roubini Global Economics. Roubini spent much of his early career studying countries that experienced extreme economic failures, such as Mexico (in 1994), Thailand and other countries associated with the 1997 Asian financial crisis, Russia (1998), and Argentina (2000). He determined that each shared one common element: a massive current account deficit.(www.britannica.com)

Nouriel Roubini is the Chairman and CEO of Roubini Macro Associates, LLC, his own global macroeconomic consultancy firm. He is also a professor of economics at New York University’s Stern School of Business. Dr. Roubini has extensive policy experience as well as broad academic credentials. From 1998 to 2000, he served as the senior economist for international affairs on the White House Council of Economic Advisors and then the senior advisor to the undersecretary for international affairs at the U.S. Treasury Department, helping to resolve the Asian and global financial crises, among other issues. The International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and numerous other prominent public and private institutions have drawn upon his consulting expertise.