Predicting China’s future

It is hard to know what to make of Nouriel Roubini’s prediction last week that China’s economy faces the possibility of a hard landing. Having convinced the world’s media that he is “the economist who predicted the global financial crisis”, as Reuters again reported last week, Roubini has been under surprisingly little pressure to prove himself.

Despite his reputation as a prophet, he has made some dubious calls since the crisis and very few that would help anyone to make any money. He described the SP 500’s rise as a “sucker’s rally” in March 2009 a call that has stayed wrong for more than two years. Even his famous...