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Sharp economic predictor selling his firm because it looses money

Nouriel Roubini forecasts a contraction for the US, EU and UK economies

Roubini Global Economics, the global investment research firm co-founded by doom and gloom economist Nouriel Roubini, is reportedly for sale, according to a report from CNBC.

According to the report, RGE is projected to lose 2 million dollars this year on revenues of 14 million dollars, prompting the company to look for interested buyers, despite its projection of 8% growth in 2012 and 40% growth in 2013. The asking price for the company is unknown, although interested parties have been reportedly asked to submit bid ranges.

Roubini, a professor of economics at NYU’s Stern School of Business, founded the company in 2004 as a means to enhance and enable the discussion of economics by policy leaders and fellow economists. He frequently contributes columns to the site’s EconoMonitor blog. Outside of prominent columns and reports, Roubini Global Economics offers clients research, market analysis and direct access to analysts and strategists.

Roubini is known for a particularly bearish outlook – he was one of the most lauded economists to predict the financial crisis in 2008 – earning him the moniker of Dr. Doom. Recently he has been living up to that name, with increasingly gloomy predictions.

“My own analysis suggests that the U.S., the Euro zone, and the U.K. are going to end up in a contraction — whether you call it a double dip or a continuation of the first dip is a just semantics — by Q4 or Q1, we’re going to be there. Certainly, we’re there already in terms of economic contraction in the peripheral of the Euro zone — and soon the core will be in an economic contraction” Roubini told Foreign Policy on Monday. “The question, in my view, is not whether we’re going to have a double dip, but whether it’s going to be a plain-vanilla recession or one as severe as the last with the financial crisis”.

In an exchange of ideas with Steve Forbes at the beginning of the year, Roubini identified four potential downside risks for the United States economy: “One is high unemployment rates staying with us; two, the housing and real estate double dipping; three, the state and local governments, many of them are near bankrupt and fourth, the fact that we are still doing nothing about our federal deficit problem”.

Nine months later, little has changed. Perhaps the sale of RGE is an effort to get out before things get any worse.