Economist Dr Nouriel Roubini remains downbeat about the likelihood of a rapid recovery.
Dr Nouriel Roubini, the US economist who shot to fame by predicting the credit crunch, has released a characteristically downbeat assessment of the economy's recovery prospects.
The expert, who has been dubbed "Dr Doom" by the press for his consistently bearish outlook, said that he saw "yellow weeds" rather than "green shoots" of recovery. He added that the large budget deficits built up by governments attempting to tackle the crisis would result in "slow" growth when the recession finally ended.
In the UK, the economy is contracting at its fastest rate for decades due to the crunch, with official figures noting a 1.9 percent drop in output for January-March 2009. Falling tax revenues, rising benefit claims and the cost of bank bailouts will also result in the government running up an unprecedented debt of £175 billion this year, according to forecasts.
Predictions as to when the downturn will end have varied, with the Treasury claiming in the Budget that the recession would be over by the end of the year and the Bank of England saying in its latest Inflation Report that recovery will only come in 2010.
Referring to the US economy, Dr Roubini rejected outright some of the most upbeat predictions of the end of the crisis. "People talk about a bottom of the recession in June, but I see it more like six to nine months from now," he told business network CNBC.
"The green shoots everyone talks about are more like yellow weeds to me."
Dr Roubini put on record his reservations about runaway house prices as far back as 2005, saying that great economic damage would result from the bursting of the bubble. In mid-2007, the collapse of the US sub-prime mortgage market resulted in a global credit crunch - which has in turn resulted in what some are predicting to be the worst recession since the Great Depression of the 1930s.
